Birds of Different Feathers
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Jan Snellen
The Rotterdam merchant and sugar refiner Jan Snellen (1711-1787) was a collector of natural history objects: he is holding a glass cylinder containing an amphibian preserved in alcohol (there are more of these in the wall cabinet at the left), on the table are shells and two books. The collector is neatly dressed, with a wig on his head, standing beside his seated wife Krijna Vroombrouck (1693-1752), who was eighteen years his senior. Beside her, stroking her little lap-dog, sits his mother Margaretha van 't Wedde (1681-1751). The coloured drawing (a gouache) is a silent ‘conversation piece’ - a true contradiction in terms - in which the lack of interaction between the four people represented is remarkable.
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Aert Schouman
The eighteenth-century Dordrecht painter Aert Schouman (1710-1792) was the most famous painter of birds in the Netherlands. He drew living and mounted birds in menageries and in the natural history collections that were so popular among the well-to-do. Stadholder William V had a collection of animals at his palace Het Kleine Loo in Voorburg, where Schouman made numerous drawings for the keeper Arnout Vosmaer. The founder of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Utrecht judge F.J.O. Boijmans, was a lover of Schouman’s ornithological drawings. Schouman was about the same age as Snellen. They knew each other well. Schouman painted wall decorations for the family Snellen’s country house ‘Overmeer’ in Zoetermeer and jan Snellen owned several paintings and drawings by Schouman, as part of his art collection.
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Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao)
The parrot in the foreground is a Scarlet Macaw (Ara macao). This bird usually has a yellow wing-band, but it has been redesigned for this occasion with a white one so that it resembles the Dutch tricolour, probably as a subtle expression of the collector Snellen's patriotism.
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A preliminary drawing in the Louvre
In the Louvre, Paris, is a preparatory study for this gouache. In the finished drawing in Museum Boijmans some of the weaker compositional details of the study have been refined and the shells on the table have been added. The parrot in the study is coloured red and blue, the white of yellow wing-band is missing. Artists generally made preparatory drawings for finished works of art, ranging from picture drawings to paintings and fresco’s. The table cloth in the study is green, whereas it is blue in the finished gouache, as a result of which the contrast with the cloths of both women has diminished.
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Birds of Different Feathers
During a lecture curator Albert Elen elaborates on his favourite drawing, which he acquired for the museum in 2004: an unusual group portrait in an interior, drawn by Aert Schouman in 1746. Depicted are a Rotterdam collector with his wife and mother, a maid, an exotic bird and various objects from his collection.
credits
Albert Elen, part of his lecture ‘The graphic art cabinet of Boijmans around Schouman’, given on 12 September 2009 in Museum Boijmans, on the occasion of the exhibition Birds of Different Feathers. Drawings and prints from five centuries (29.09-29.11.2009).
Camera and editing: Rose Klaver
