6.2 Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn's youth and training
Kleyn [2] was born in Demerara, then a British colony in Guiana, but spent most of his youth in the Netherlands, where his family settled in the castle of Dorth near Lochem.1 In 1845 he left for Antwerp to study at the Royal Academy for Fine Arts.2 The academy had a good reputation internationally and attracted many foreign students, including from the Netherlands, and therefore Kleyn was not the only Dutchman. It was probably here that he became friends with Carel Frans Philippeau, who studied at the Antwerp Academy until 1847.3 At the academy, Kleyn followed the ‘Antiques’ course classes in life drawing and most likely classes in history painting; disciplines that demanded close observation of classical models and the Old Masters.4 Among his possible teachers was Joseph-Ernest Buschmann (1814-1853), a history painter who also experimented with photography during the 1840s.5 Whether Kleyn ever saw these experiments is uncertain, but the mere possibility places him in a milieu where the new medium was already circulating in artistic discussions, even if still in the margins. His years in Antwerp thus combined the discipline of academic training with an early, indirect awareness of photography.
By 1846-47 Kleyn had moved to Amsterdam, where Philippeau was also active, alongside the Johan Hendrik Stöver. Both studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts under the Flemish sculptor Louis Royer (1793-1868).6 Surviving correspondence shows that Kleyn moved in the same circles, often exchanging greetings and letters with Royer through his friends.7 Royer himself played a decisive role in the trio’s Italian adventure. In a letter to his colleague, the Ghent-born painter Jan Baptiste Lodewijk Maes Canini (1794-1856) in Rome, he recommended “three honest and respectable young men” soon to arrive in the Eternal City – Stöver, Philippeau, and Kleyn.8 Thanks to this letter of introduction, the young artists could count on support and guidance when they set foot in Rome.
2
attributed to Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn
Portrait of de kunstenaar Laurens Lodewijk Kleyn (1826-1909)
The Hague, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, inv./cat.nr. (BD/1484 - NEG/Originelen (op aanvraag))
Notes
1 Kleyn’s father had moved to the West Indies from Deventer at a young age. He became extremely wealthy as a planter and had a relationship with Charlotte Constantia Brandes (c. 1809-1853), described in the sources as a ‘mulatto’. The couple had three children, Johan Carel, who died at a young age, Laurens Lodewijk and Maria Anna (1829-1892). The latter remained with her mother in the colonies and only joined her father and brother in the Netherlands much later. In 1840 Laurens Kleyn senior had the fourteenth-century castle of Dorth demolished and replaced by a modern country house.
2 Molhuysen/Kossmann 1911-1937, p. 470-471.
3 Antwerp, Royal Academy for Fine Arts, Modern Archives, inv. no. MA 177, enrolment register 1837-1850.
4 Antwerp, Royal Academy for Fine Arts, Modern Archives, inv. no. MA 177, enrolment register 1837-1850.
5 Siret 1870, p. 5; Lampo 2013, p. 101. From 1840 Buschmann taught at the Antwerp Academy. Around 1847 he produced daguerreotypes and calotypes, including portraits and reproductions of works from his collection. Together with the journalist Guillaume Claine he also experimented with glass supports, and in the late 1840s he introduced the process of stylographic engraving into Belgium. On Buschmann: Joseph 1997, vol. 1, p. 74.
6 Reynaerts 2001, p. 176. Royer was the director of the Amsterdam Academy from 1852 to 1859.
7 For example, a letter dated 4 September 1852 that Philippeau and Stöver jointly sent to Royer. Nijmegen, Radboud University, J.A. Alberdingk Thijm Archives, inv. no. THYM-5329.
8 Nijmegen, Radboud University, J.A. Alberdingk Thijm Archives, inv. no. THYM-5422. Undated letter from Louis Royer to Johan Hendrik Stöver; I thank Eva Geudeker for bringing this document to my attention.