Wouvermans, Van Der Heyden, and Van Everdingen

Melville’s four prints after these three painters have quite a bit in common. Three of these prints reproduce paintings that were in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace when young Melville visited London in 1849. Three of Melville’s prints from our previous section also reproduce paintings from the collection at Buckingham Palace: Cuyp’s Landscape, with Ruins of an Old Tower (CAT 219), Hobbema’s A Water Mill (CAT 222), and Potter’s The Shooting Ponies (CAT 223). 

All six of those paintings in the English Royal Collection were created in the Netherlands between the mid-1640s and the late 1660s—the period of the Dutch Golden Age in painting during which Melville’s ancestor Harmen Harmense Gansevoort left the Netherlands to cross the Atlantic for the New World, where he established a brewery near the future site of Albany on the Hudson River. 

All four of the prints in this section were created sometime between 1839 and 1854—the period during which young Herman Melville left his home near Albany, crossed the Atlantic on a merchant ship, sailed the Pacific on whaling ships, returned home on a naval frigate, and then published seven novels while living in New York City and Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where of necessity he became a farmer too. 

The four prints in this section enrich the wide array of subjects and style in the 38 prints after 18 Dutch and Flemish Old Masters we have already cataloged, reproduced, and discussed in this chapter. They also relate well to each other in subject, style, and publication history—as well as in relation to Melville’s own life and art. Their names alone show their pictorial range: The Battle Field, The Harvest Field, The River-Bank, A Mountain Landscape. 

• Works cited in this section:  

  Baetjer, Katherine. “Buying Pictures for New York: The Founding Purchase of 1871.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 39 (2004) 161-235.   

  Berthold, Dennis. “Melville and Dutch Genre Painting.” In Christopher Sten, ed. Savage Eye: Melville and the Visual Arts. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991. 218-45.  

  Cesnola, General Louis Palma di. Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples: A Narrative of Researches and Excavations during Ten Years’ Residence in that Island, with Maps and Illustrations. 2nd Ed. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1878.  

  -------. Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1890.  

  “The Cesnola Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Department of Greek and Roman Art, October 1, 2004, https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/the-cesnola-collection-at-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art 

  Cundall, Frank. The Landscape and Pastoral Painters of Holland: Ruisdael, Hobbema, Cuyp, and Potter. New York: Scribner and Welford, 1891.  

  Davies, Alice I. “Allart van Everdingen.” Grove, 10: 660-61.  

  --------. Allart van Everdingen. New York: Garland, 1978.  

  --------. Allart van Everdingen 1621-1675: First Painter of Scandanavian Landscape; Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings. Davaco: Doornspijk, 2001.  

  Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson. New York: Little, Brown, 1961.  

  Garner, Stanton. “Surviving the Gilded Age: Herman Melville in the Customs Service." Essays in Arts and Sciences XV (June 1986): 1-14. 

  “General Guide to Exhibition of 1888-89,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1888. 

  Hand-book, No. 1 (November 1890 to April 1891): Part 1, The Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection in the New Western Galleries & Part 2, Pictures by Modern Masters in the Old Western Galleries. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, https://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15324coll10/id/5571   

  Head, Barclay V. Historica Numorum: A Manual of Greek Numismatics. New and enlarged ed. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1991.  

  Karageorghis, Vassos. Ancient Art from Cyprus: The Cesnola Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 2000. 

  Klinkert, Christi M., et. al. Allart van Everdingen: Master of the Rugged Landscape: 1621-1675. Stedelijk Alkmaar, 2021. 

  Leidtke, Walter. Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2 v. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007.  

  “Limestone sarcophagus: the Amathus sarcophagus.” The Cesnola Collection. Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/242006 

  Melville, Jane. Letters from Jane L. Melville to General Louis Palma di Cesnola, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, August 29, September 15, and December 3, 1884, Melville, Mrs. Allan (Jane L.), 1884, 1891, 1981, 2001. Office of the Secretary Records, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Archives, New York.  

  “Peasants in the Fields, Hay Harvest,” Dulwich Picture Gallery, https://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/explore-the-collection/151-200/peasants-in-the-fields-hay-harvest/ 

  The Royal Gallery of Pictures. London: James Bond, 1840. 

  Shawe-Taylor, Desmond. Dutch Landscapes. Royal Collection Publications, 2010. 

  “A Skirmish of Cavalry, c. 1646.” Buckingham Palace, https://www.rct.uk/collection/404533/a-skirmish-of-cavalry 

• Smith, Christopher W. The Dutch Pictures in the Collection of her Majesty the Queen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Rev. London: Royal Collection Trust, 2015.   

  “South-West Approach to the Town of Veere with the Groote Kerk.” English Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace, https://www.rct.uk/collection/405950/the-south-west-approach-to-the-town-of-veere-with-the-groote-kerk  

  Wheelock, Arthur K, Jr. “Review of ‘Allart van Everdingen 1621-1675’ (2021).” Oud Holland, November 2022, https://oudholland.rkd.nl/index.php/reviews/86-review-of-allart-van-everdingen-1621-1675.html  

  White, Christopher. Dutch Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen. London: 1982; rev. Royal Collections Trust, 2015.  

  The Works of Eminent Masters. 2 v. London: John Cassell, 1854.