5.2 Estrangement
In 1847, a serialised story entitled ‘Two Painters’ appeared in the magazine Kunstkronijk.1 It recounted the fortunes of two young Dutch artists who travelled to Italy together. One of them was soon called back to his homeland, where he went on to have a brilliant career as a history painter. The other remained in Italy and fell prey to the easy money of portrait and genre painting and copying old masters. He married a Roman woman, fell into decline and died an inglorious, anonymous death.
The moral of this story was that it was still an important privilege for young Dutch artists to go to Italy. But at all times, they had to beware of ‘estrangement’; ultimately, the school of Rome served only to perfect their own national style. Woe betide the artist who identified too much with Italian art and Italian life!
The moralism expressed in the Kunstkronijk was not unfounded. The immediate cause for the publication were the experiences of a young painter from The Hague: J(oh)an Hendrik Koelman [2].2 Immediately after completing his training at the Hague Academy of Painting and Drawing, he won the Grand Prize of the Royal Academy in Amsterdam in 1839, which since 1808 had been the Dutch equivalent of the French Prix de Rome.3
On his trip, Koelman was accompanied by one of the former competitors for the Rome Prize, Johannes Adrianus Ehnle (1819-1863),4 who has left us a travel journal with valuable information.5 From Paris, their first stop, on 13 August they, continued to Lyon, Turin, Milan, Padua, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Perugia and Foligno, and finally via the Via Flaminia through Terni to Rome. On the afternoon of 29 September, Koelman and his travelling companion arrived in the Eternal City.6 Thus began the young laureate’s promising stay, for the time being under a cloudless Roman sky.
2
Johan Hendrik Koelman,
Self-portrait, 1840,
pencil on paper, 160 × 117 mm,
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, inv. no. RP-T-1940-198
Notes
1 Anonymous 1847.
2 The first to point out the connection between the serial in the Kunstkronijk and the ‘Koelman affair’ was Reynaerts 2001, there pp. 151-155 and 184-185.
3 On the Dutch Prix de Rome: Bergvelt 1984; Dekkers 1984; Dekkers 1987; Reynaerts 2001, pp. 151-203; Tuijn 2008.
4 On Ehnle: De Raadt 2016. Ehnle’s passport request for his journey is listed in, Geudeker 2016, there p. 182.
5 A.J. Ehnle, ‘Verhaal van de Italiaansche reis van A.J. Ehnle in 1840 en 1841’, Haags Gemeentearchief, accession no. 8001-01, Overige verzamelingen 2 - Schildersbrieven, inv.no. 342, (hereafter Ehnle, ‘Verhaal van de Italiaansche reis').
6 Ehnle, ‘Verhaal van de Italiaansche reis', pp. 1-19.