Lacquer and japanning in seventeenth-century Flemish and Dutch paintings

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2002 by Danielle Kisluk-Grosheide

Trade with the Far East had a far-reaching influence on the West. The Portuguese established the trade during the sixteenth century, joined early in the following century by other European nations. The imported luxury goods, such as silks, porcelain, lacquer, exotic woods, tea, and spices, left a lasting mark on art, taste, and customs in Europe.

Before the seventeenth century, the Portuguese only brought a small number of lacquer objects to the Continent. Admired for their lustrous surface, exotic decoration, and resistance to stains, these rare early examples of Asian lacquer entered a few select collections. (1) Often referred to in this context is a Japanese Namban style lacquer cabinet that belonged to Archduke Ferdinand II (1529-1595) of Tyrol at the time of his death. (2) Namban (literally southern barbarians) was the name the Japanese gave to anything European or intended for the

European market. This early export lacquer was generally decorated with a dense pattern of leaves, geometric designs, and cartouches in gold together with mother-of-pearl inlays against a black ground (P1. 1V).

The early lacquer objects were held in high esteem and sometimes served as official gifts. In 1616, for instance, the Dutch Republic presented Gustavus II Adolphus (r. 1611-1632) of Sweden with a Japanese lacquer trunk embellished with mother-of-pearl in the Namban style. (3) By this time the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie or VOC; founded in 1602) played an increasingly important role in the Far East. In 1639, the Dutch became the only Europeans allowed to trade with the Japanese. (4) As a result, Dutch towns such as Amsterdam, Delft, and Middelburg, which had Dutch East India Company affiliates, received a larger number of chests, coffers, two-door cabinets (known as comptoirs), and smaller wares, ordered and made for export. In these cities the lacquer-work and other overseas products were auctioned off and sold in special Dutch East India Company stores.

During the 1630s and 1640s, the decoration of export lacquer became lighter and more pictorial, and the use of mother-of-pearl gradually disappeared. The Dutch apparently preferred this style, generally painted with landscapes in a gold sprinkled makie technique on a black ground, to the compact foliate patterns and geometric borders of the earlier Namban style. (5) Although Japanese lacquered goods were more highly valued than similar Chinese lacquer objects and were in great demand in the West, the ware was never very profitable for the Dutch East India Company Due to the labor-intensive process of making high quality lacquer, these cabinets and trunks were expensive. They were also bulky in ships' holds that could be better used for the transport of more lucrative wares. Finally the imported objects had to compete with the European imitation of lacquer known as japanning, which was not only less expensive but conformed more closely to the Western taste in shape and decoration. As a result, the quantity of imported Japanese lacquered goods was small compared to the huge amounts of Chinese porcelain shipped to the Netherlands. (6) For this reason it is not surprising that porcelain was far more often depicted in paintings than was lacquerware. The earliest paintings that included porcelain were executed in Italy at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. (7) In Antwerp artists started to include this porcelain during the sixteenth century followed by the Dutch masters in the seventeenth century. (8) It is not always clear; however; if the ceramics depicted are Chinese porcelains or tin-glazed earthenwares produced in Delft and elsewhere in imitation of the imported wares. It is also sometimes equally difficult to distinguish the Japanese lacquered coffers and caskets found in paintings from the japanned imitations made in Europe.

Already before the first Dutch East India Company shipment of lacquer arrived in the Netherlands in 1610, a Compagnie van Lackwercken (company of lacquerworks) was established in Amsterdam where a certain Willem Kick (w c. 1609-1630) specialized in making a type of varnish that resembled lacquer. (9) The procedure for making true lacquer required the resin secreted by the Rhus vemicifera, a sumac tree that was not indigenous to the West and was unknown in Europe until the beginning of the eighteenth century.

The earliest paintings showing lacquered objects were the works of Antwerp artists, just as the Flemish masters had depicted porcelain before their Dutch colleagues. This is not surprising because Antwerp was not only a flourishing cultural center and home to many painters, but also a city of international commerce and finance during the sixteenth century. It was the center of distribution of spices and other products imported by the Portuguese, including, doubtless, porcelain and lacquer. (10) Even after the fall of the city to Spain in 1585 Portuguese merchants continued to live and trade in Antwerp.