William Van Der Hagen (fL.1720 - 1745) A Harbour Scene, Men-of-War Anchored in a Calm Sea with Fishermen beside a Tower; A Coastal Scene with Ships in Heavy Seas off a Rocky Coast A Pair, Oil on panel, each 24 x 30cm Each signed and dated 1738 also each signed on the reverse of the panels. Provenance: Sotheby’s, London, 24 November1972 (lot 32); Private Collection William van de Hagen is rightly seen as the founder of the innovative school of landscape painting which flourished in Georgian Ireland and these small works, painted here in 1738, share both in the European tradition in which he trained and in the nascent Irish landscape school with whose genesis the artist is so closely linked. This was a point made by Anne Crookshank and Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin: ‘The importance of Van der Hagen’s example to the creation of the great landscape school that flourished in Ireland in the second half of the eighteenth century cannot be overstated’. Crookshank and Glin make a telling, if to some provocative, comparison between Van der Hagen’s capriccio landscapes executed in Ireland in the 1730s and those of Roman ruins painted in the following decade by his Italian contemporary Giovanni Paolo Pannini (1691-1765), examples of which were brought back from the Grand Tour by Joseph Leeson, 1st Earl of Milltown (1701-83) to hang at the recently-built Russborough, County Wicklow: ‘Leeson could have acquired as good a capriccio back in Dublin’. They elaborate: ‘In the finest of his capriccio landscapes Van der Hagen equals the achievements of his contemporaries of Europe, indeed often anticipating developments on the continent’ (Crookshank and Glin in William Laffan (ed.), The Sublime and the Beautiful, Irish Art 1700-1830, (London, 2001) pp. 52 & 54). Van der Hagen was a versatile artist and a remarkable series of painted wall hangings, part of a collaboration with Edward Lovett Pearce (1699-1733), the great architect of Dublin’s Parliament House, has recently been acquired by the State for display in Dublin Castle, whose ballroom they once graced. This welcome return forms an appropriate vindication of Crookshank and Glin’s prescient assessment of Van der Hagen’s importance, made twenty-five give years ago: ‘Just as architects such as Pearce are being acknowledged as among the most original of the period, artists such as Van der Hagen, working in the cosmopolitan milieu of Dublin in the first half of the eighteenth century, must be hailed as the equal of their continental counterparts’ (ibid.). In contrast to the loosely painted hangings from Dublin Castle, the enormous scale of which necessitated assistance from members of his studio (specifically, perhaps, Joseph Tudor), the present pair of small cabinet pictures are painted with great delicacy and refinement, and Van der Hagen signs both of them twice – rather proudly as if pleased with their success. The two works portray distinctly contrasting atmospheric conditions. One shows a calm and peaceful harbour with limpid skies and glassy sea; on land sailors and fishermen go about the business of the day. The other is a perilous stormy scene with ships in heavy weather off a rocky coast. Van der Hagen’s work here sits within a long tradition of pairing scenes of calm and storm which was exploited by William van der Velde (1633-1707) and culminated in the art of Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-89), though in light of his politically freighted depiction of the royal yacht in the Landing of King William at Carrickfergus, it is just possible that there is also a symbolic resonance, playing with the longstanding metaphor of the ‘ship of state’, shown in balmy or alternatively perilous conditions to represent a well- or ill-governed polity. Equally, there just may be a biographical element at play here. An early nineteenth-century (and not necessarily reliable) source states that Van der Hagen’s arrival in Ireland was caused by his determination to witness for the sake of his art – like Turner later – the extremities of a storm at sea, and that it was ‘stress of weather’ which marooned him here. Of the pair, the ‘Calm’ sits firmly within the tradition of ‘Mediterranean harbour’ scenes by Dutch-Italianate artists such as Jan Weenix (1642-1719) and at the same time it is clearly related to a series of Irish capriccio landscapes, by Van der Haven including an important example, formerly in Kilsharvan House, County Meath, which dates from 1736, two years before the present pair (private collection). There are, meanwhile, intriguing Irish counterparts to his storm scene. Just the year before, in 1737, Thomas Frye (1710-62) painted a very closely comparable small sea tempest on the reverse of his portrait of the East India merchant Hilary Torriano (Victoria and Albert Museum) while, later in the century, Thomas Roberts (1748-77) painted a ‘sea storm’, inspired, if at some remove’, by Vernet (National Gallery of Ireland). What sounds like a related pair of Van der Hagens to the present lot was in the collection of the Irish artist Henry Brocas, sold in 1869, ‘A Brisk Gale’ and ‘A Shipwreck’. A very closely related version of our storm scene was engraved in mezzotint by the Irish printmaker James Watson (1740-1790) when it was in the collection of the portrait painter Francis Cotes (1726-70), illustrating how Van der Hagen’s art was still appreciated in the metropolis three decades after he painted Van der Hagen seems to have travelled extensively before settling in Ireland. Views are known or recorded of Gibraltar, Sicily and even North Africa although it is not certain that all of them are based on first-hand experience. He moved to Ireland in, or about, 1722. His presence here is first noted by Harding’s Impartial Newsletter that year where he is recorded as ‘lately arrived from London’ and as painting sets for the Theatre Royal. Some ten years later he is known to have painted the scenery for a staging of Cephalus and Procris, which was described at the time as ‘finer painted than ever seen in this kingdom’. In addition to his work in the theatre, from his earliest days in Ireland Van der Hagen was busy with other commissions, which renders suspect Anthony Pasquin’s account of his character: ‘a painter of landscape and shipping in Dublin and other towns in Ireland…This was a most remarkable genius; and had his industry been proportioned to his powers, he might have done wonders; but he would never work while he had a shilling; and when pinched by his distress, he would retire to a public house, and paint a picture to liquidate his reckoning’. This hardly accords with the accomplishment and variety of the commissions that van der Hagen completed in the twenty-three years that he was in Ireland. Two years after his arrival he painted an altarpiece for St Michan’s Church, Dublin, which has not survived nor has the ‘painted glory’ for St Patrick’s in Waterford. In 1728 he was commissioned by the tapestry maker Robert Baillie to ‘take prospects’ of the places to be depicted in six tapestries for the newly-built House of Lords. In the end only two of his compositions were woven and these depart from his designs considerably. It is suggestive, nevertheless, to see Van der Hagen again working here in such close contiguity to Edward Lovett Pearce. Given his scene painting background and facility for composition, it is not surprising that Van der Hagen also found work as a decorative painter. One eighteenth-century source notes ‘he painted many houses in this kingdom’. At Curraghmore, County Waterford, he completed a trompe d’oeil scheme with the staircase decorated with ‘beautiful paintings…such as columns, festoons etc between which are several landscapes’. Given the temporary nature of these decorative schemes, which were so often redone as taste changed, it is remarkable that one of Van der Hagen’s grisaille rooms has survived almost intact, although now dismantled. This was completed for the Christmas family of Whitfield Court, County Waterford and comprises eighteen panels of gods and goddesses (Ballyfin Demesne, County Laois). Van der Hagen clearly had close ties of patronage with the Waterford area. In addition to his house decorations and the work at St Patrick’s, he was commissioned to paint a large view of the city for which, in 1736, he was paid £20 by the Corporation (Bishop’s Palace, Waterford). He also produced views of Drogheda (Highlanes Gallery), Carton (private collection) and the earliest surviving painting of Cork Harbour (private collection).
ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM VAN DER HAGEN (FL. 1720-1745) King William III off the coast of Ireland, June 1690, with an English Royal Yacht and the Lord High Admirals First-rate Flying the Royal Standard Oil on canvas, 85.8 x 142.9 cm The yacht is inscribed on the stern in Latin with the initials of the King and Queen: W(illiam) R(ex) and M(aria) R(egina) King William III set sail for Ireland with the English fleet in the second week of June 1690, arriving off Carrickfergus on 14 June. Here he landed before proceeding to Belfast where he took command of his army and marched towards Drogheda. On the 30 June he faced the combined French and Irish armies of King James II across the River Boyne, where the battle and subsequent rout of the Jacobite army took place the following day. William himself was slightly wounded in the battle, which was the keystone event in securing the Protestant ascendancy for many years to come. It also effectively marked the end of King James's hopes of re-establishing himself on the English throne. After proceeding to Dublin where he entered the city in triumph, William advanced against Limerick, but failed to convert his siege there into capitulation. He returned from County Cork in July after less than two months of campaigning with his throne effectively safe from further opposition. The present painting, which dates from about 1730, is best judged as a fancy picture to the extent that it does not rely on an eye-witness account by the artist. Nor indeed was topographical accuracy what viewers of such works demanded. What the painting does is symbolically celebrate the victory of the House of Orange over the Stuart kings in Ireland. In 1728, William Van der Hagen was employed to paint a series of six Irish views for Robert Baillie which were to be reproduced in tapestry. All of the subjects were to be taken from King William's campaign in 1690, but in the event only two were completed, The Defence of Derry and The Battle of the Boyne. These are still preserved in what was the chamber of the Irish House of Lords, now the Bank of Ireland on College Green. However, he did paint a series of such pictures for other patrons, including King William Landing at Carrickfergus (Ulster Museum), and numerous other topographical and fancy landscapes are recorded in historic Irish collections. In the present painting, the richly gilded Royal Yacht in the foreground is flying the pennant which from 1660 indicated that the ship was under independent, rather than fleet, command. Here it is in the personal service of the monarch. The large first-rate on the right-hand side of the composition is flying on its mainmast the Royal Standard of William III which was in use between 1689 and 1702, whilst the fore flies the Admiralty and Lord High Admiral's flag, with its motif of a gold anchor and rope. At the stern is the senior ensign of the Royal Navy (in use from 1625 to 1707) and the stern mast flies the jack of the Royal Navy which was in service from the same dates. All this indicates the presence on board of the king himself and the commander of his navy, the Lord High Admiral. In the left foreground the small boat flies the red, white and blue striped Dutch Double Prince flag of the Amsterdam Admiralty, which is painted in close contiguity with the naval jack flying from the round tower on shore, emphasising thereby the Anglo-Dutch alliance.
William van der Hagen (Fl. 1720-1745) Capriccio with Figures and Ruins Oil on canvas, 129 x 97cm (50¾ x 38¼'') Signed and dated 1737 Capriccio paintings, usually consisting of classical ruins juxtaposed artificially in an imaginary landscape, belong to a sub-genre of landscape painting, produced in Rome from the seventeenth century by such artists as Claude Lorraine (1600-82). In the early eighteenth century they were to become a speciality of the artist Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765). Often acquired by those on the Grand Tour, their purpose was to provide an evocation of the remains of architectural glories of ancient Rome. William Van der Hagen, the artist of this painting, was a member of a family of painters of Dutch origin, active in London from the seventeenth century. He was first recorded in Dublin in September 1722, when he was employed as a scene painter by the Smock Alley Theatre. A versatile artist, he also painted: altarpieces for St Michan's Church, Dublin (1724) and St Patrick's Church, Waterford (1736); architectural capricci, including for Beaulieu House; panoramic views of the cities of Waterford and Drogheda, as well as landscape prospects to form the background of projected tapestries for the House of Lords, one representing the Battle of the Boyne (Bank of Ireland, Dublin). In Waterford he also received several commissions for decorative painting, such as for Curraghmore, seat of the Marquess of Waterford, for whom he painted the staircase, as well as an entire room on the ground floor with landscapes, surmounted by a fictive dome. His last work appears to have been a view of the waterfall at Powerscourt, Co. Wicklow, which was engraved by John Brooks in 1745. Announcing the publication of the engraving, Faulkner's Dublin Journal described it as being after 'the late ingenious Mr. Vander Egan (9-13 April 1745). This example of one of his architectural capricci, is shown against a dramatic mountainous background complete with a river and lake, the composition recalling the elements of a stage set. Painted with Van der Hagen characteristic precision of detail, the scene contains architectural elements reminiscent of remains at Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli, such as its large baths, seen in the ruins of a large double-height building on the left, as well as the rectangular pool in the centre of the painting. In the background can be seen a temple in the form of a rotunda, with composite columns. To the right stands an honorific column surmounted by an urn, similar to one in the Forum, Rome, dedicated to Phocas (608 AD). The tombs and sacral elements, as well as the decayed buildings with overgrowth, serve to remind the educated viewer of the transience of life and the glories of a past civilization. Typical of Van der Hagen's work, is that the view is enlivened by humans, animals and birds. Figures provide interest as far as the eye can see, from the Franciscan monk astride a donkey clutching his rosary beads in the foreground, to those further away engaged in activites at the water's edge, to the minute figures visiting the temple in the background. Elongation of figures is also a mannerism of the artist, seen here in the tall figure of the woman in the straw hat in the foreground. In the same group, the bent leg of the wounded beggar on the ground, strongly resembles the pose of a boy included in a similar landscape by Van der Hagen in a private collection. Less than ten paintings by Van der Hagen are known and even less are signed. One in the National Gallery of Ireland is another capriccio, which similarly includes architectural ruins, pastoral figures, animals and well painted foliage placed against the light. As the first professional landscape painter in Ireland, Van der Hagen's Claudean-style topographical views were important, in inspiring later generations of landscape painters in Ireland, in particular Joseph Tudor (c. 1695-1759) and Robert Carver (c. 1730-91). Further Reading: Mia Craig, 'The Van der Hagen Problem in the British Isles', unpublished BA thesis (TCD, 1992); Nicola Figgis and Brendan Rooney, Irish Paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 2001, pp. 455-57; Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, Ireland's Painters, New Haven and London, 2002, pp. 68-71. Dr. Nicola Figgis
WILLIAM VAN DER HAGEN (FL. 1720-1745) Capriccio with Figures and Ruins Oil on canvas, 129 x 97cms Signed and dated 1737 Capriccio paintings, usually consisting of classical ruins juxtaposed artificially in an imaginary landscape, belong to a sub-genre of landscape painting, produced in Rome from the seventeenth century by such artists as Claude Lorraine (1600-82). In the early eighteenth century they were to become a speciality of the artist Giovanni Paolo Panini (1691-1765). Often acquired by those on the Grand Tour, their purpose was to provide an evocation of the remains of architectural glories of ancient Rome. William Van der Hagen, the artist of this painting, was a member of a family of painters of Dutch origin, active in London from the seventeenth century. He was first recorded in Dublin in September 1722, when he was employed as a scene painter by the Smock Alley Theatre. A versatile artist, he also painted: altarpieces for St Michan's Church, Dublin (1724) and St Patrick's Church, Waterford (1736); architectural capricci, including for Beaulieu House; panoramic views of the cities of Waterford and Drogheda, as well as landscape prospects to form the background of projected tapestries for the House of Lords, one representing the Battle of the Boyne (Bank of Ireland, Dublin). In Waterford he also received several commissions for decorative painting, such as for Curraghmore, seat of the Marquess of Waterford, for whom he painted the staircase, as well as an entire room on the ground floor with landscapes, surmounted by a fictive dome. His last work appears to have been a view of the waterfall at Powerscourt, Co. Wicklow, which was engraved by John Brooks in 1745. Announcing the publication of the engraving, Faulkner's Dublin Journal described it as being after 'the late ingenious Mr. Vander Egan (9-13 April 1745). This example of one of his architectural capricci, is shown against a dramatic mountainous background complete with a river and lake, the composition recalling the elements of a stage set. Painted with Van der Hagen characteristic precision of detail, the scene contains architectural elements reminiscent of remains at Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli, such as its large baths, seen in the ruins of a large double-height building on the left, as well as the rectangular pool in the centre of the painting. In the background can be seen a temple in the form of a rotunda, with composite columns. To the right stands an honorific column surmounted by an urn, similar to one in the Forum, Rome, dedicated to Phocas (608 AD). The tombs and sacral elements, as well as the decayed buildings with overgrowth, serve to remind the educated viewer of the transience of life and the glories of a past civilization. Typical of Van der Hagen's work, is that the view is enlivened by humans, animals and birds. Figures provide interest as far as the eye can see, from the Franciscan monk astride a donkey clutching his rosary beads in the foreground, to those further away engaged in activites at the water's edge, to the minute figures visiting the temple in the background. Elongation of figures is also a mannerism of the artist, seen here in the tall figure of the woman in the straw hat in the foreground. In the same group, the bent leg of the wounded beggar on the ground, strongly resembles the pose of a boy included in a similar landscape by Van der Hagen in a private collection. Less than ten paintings by Van der Hagen are known and even less are signed. One in the National Gallery of Ireland is another capriccio, which similarly includes architectural ruins, pastoral figures, animals and well painted foliage placed against the light. As the first professional landscape painter in Ireland, Van der Hagen's Claudean-style topographical views were important, in inspiring later generations of landscape painters in Ireland, in particular Joseph Tudor (c. 1695-1759) and Robert Carver (c. 1730-91). Further Reading: Mia Craig, 'The Van der Hagen Problem in the British Isles', unpublished BA thesis (TCD, 1992); Nicola Figgis and Brendan Rooney, Irish Paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 2001, pp. 455-57; Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, Ireland's Painters, New Haven and London, 2002, pp. 68-71. Dr. Nicola Figgis, June 2013
Attributed to William van der Hagen (The Hague fl.c. 1720-1745) A mountainous wooded river landscape with a fortified town in the middle distance, figures resting on a track with livestock in the foreground oil on canvas 49½ x 39 5/8 in. (126 x 100.6 cm.) in a Lely panel frame
