RKD STUDIES

The number of photographs that can be securely linked to Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn is modest, yet they shed important light on the ways in which a painter could work with the new medium. Broadly speaking, they fall into two groups: informal experiments from his Roman years and reproductive photographs of artworks. Among the experimental works is a small series of glass negatives showing two unidentified young men in what looks like the garden of a Roman townhouse. The atmosphere is relaxed rather than formal. In one photograph the sitters lean casually against a wall [15], in another a cart appears in the background [16], while other shots capture the uneven slope of the garden. These images have the character of private trials rather than finished works. They suggest that Kleyn was testing what the camera could do: how to handle light, how to place figures, and how to use an outdoor setting as a backdrop.

A link to their context comes from a related print preserved in the family archives: a portrait of the Dutch couple Mr and Mrs Van Geuns [17], Dutch acquaintances whom Kleyn photographed during their Italian travels in 1856-57. The note on the reverse states that the sitting took place in the garden of the Protestant hospital on the Tarpeian Rock. The setting matches the garden views in the negatives, and the resemblance of one sitter to Mr Van Geuns supports the identification. It seems likely that Kleyn used the informal shots as a kind of rehearsal for the formal portrait [18], experimenting with natural light and composition before committing himself to the definitive image.

The most photographs we know by Kleyn are, however, photographic reproductions, most of which he made from the collection of princess Marianne. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, this branch of photography gained enormous popularity: artists collected photographic reproductions as study material or as inspiration for their own work.¹ Kleyn not only acquired such photographs but also appears to have trained himself in the practice. One of his notebooks mentions the Italian-born photographer Leonida Caldesi (1822-1891), renowned for his series of museum reproductions, such as the Pictures by the Old Masters in the National Gallery published in London in the late 1860s.²

Letters confirm Kleyn’s active interest. In a letter to the Roman photographer Achille Keller, he requested unmounted proofs of Keller’s photographs to be sent to his friend Luigi Gregori.³ Keller seems to have kept some of Kleyn’s own negatives and prints as well, although the subjects are no longer known. In another letter, dated 12 June 1865, Gregori reminded Kleyn of an earlier request for photographs of artworks, showing how such images circulated among friends as part of their professional exchange.⁴ Other correspondence points in the same direction: Stöver, for instance, wrote to Kleyn about a photograph of one of his sculptures, hinting that Kleyn himself may have taken it.⁵

Traces of further contacts surface via an envelope addressed to the photographer Alfredo Noack (1833-1895), though the letter itself is missing. Noack was an Italian photographer of German origin and opened a studio in the 1860s in Genoa. The address on the cover however is that of the Instituto Fotografico di A. Hautmann in the Via della Scala, Florence. Anton Hautmann (1821-1862), a German sculptor who later turned to photography, was closely connected to other artists of his generation and also had ties to Lodovico Metzger – the same figure who may have helped Kleyn obtain permission to copy Old Masters in Florence a decade earlier.⁶ These links suggest that Kleyn, through Metzger, may have met both Hautmann and Noack, and thereby gained access to yet another branch of reproduction photography.

Although the evidence is fragmentary, a pattern emerges. Kleyn was not merely a casual observer of photography but someone who followed developments closely and sought to integrate them into his own practice. His connections to Keller, Gregori, Noack and Hautmann, together with his knowledge of Caldesi’s work, show an artist moving in circles where photography was becoming part of everyday artistic exchange. This interest eventually found its fullest expression in his work for Princess Marianne, where reproduction photography passed from a private pursuit to a concrete institutional project.

15
Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn (attributed to),
Two Men Posing in a Garden, ca. 1850-1870,
glass negative, 170 x 118 mm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-D-OO-1131-5

16
Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn (attributed to),
Gart in a Garden, ca. 1850-1870,
glass negative, 175 x 120 mm,
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. RP-D-OO-1131-67

17
Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn,
Portrait of Mr and Mrs Van Geuns, ca. 1857,
albumen print,
The artist’s family archives, photo M. M’rani Alaoui

18
Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn
Portrait of Elizabeth Ontijd (1837-1915)
Private collection