De Cuypersbibliotheek wordt druk bezocht door nationale en internationale onderzoekers die zich buigen over de collectie. Wie zijn deze onderzoekers en waar gaat hun onderzoek over? Deze week is Stephanie Lee aan het woord, onderzoeksstagiaire bij de afdeling Rijksprentenkabinet en RMA-student ‘Art History of the Low Countries’ aan de Universiteit Utrecht.

Hi! My name is Stephanie Lee, and I’ve been a graduate intern with the Rijksmuseum Print Room since September. My primary responsibility at the museum was to investigate a 2013 joint acquisition between the Print Room and the Library, of an early eighteenth-century Dutch chinoiserie print album. The album in question was executed by the oft-forgotten father-son duo, Pieter Schenk I (1660-1713) and Pieter Schenk II (1693-1775). Their eighteenth-century etchings are some of the earliest examples of chinoiserie designed and published in the Dutch Republic. Further, their compositions were highly influential as models for European ceramic decoration, and can be found upon the surfaces of Delftware, Meissen, and Du Paquier porcelain objects. What initially drew me to this project was the transmedial appeal of the Schenk chinoiserie prints. However, upon further research, I find myself being seduced by the saucy biography of Pieter Schenk I—but I’ll get to that later.

Let me say from the outset: the Rijksmuseum’s Schenk Album is seminal not only because of its impact on early modern decorative arts, but also in its rarity in both European and American print rooms. In 1964 and 1966, Rijksmuseum curator A. L. den Blaauwen published on the Schenk chinoiserie and its designs on Meissen and Delftware porcelain pieces. But since then, and despite their obvious reach and impact within early modern Europe, these prints have been largely left unexplored. Perhaps this is because there are only a handful of these Schenk chinoiserie prints which survive, in the print rooms of Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, and Braunschweig. However, the Rijksmuseum’s recent acquisition stands to rectify the fact. Containing 84 unique prints, with the subject matter ranging from lange lijs to floral compositions to hunting scenes, it is the most complete collection of Schenk chinoiserie known to date. In fact, seventeen of these prints were previously unknown to scholarship!

I wanted to know: how did the Schenks make their unique designs? The title page of Schenk II’s series makes clear the great effort required to produce such novel works: “met groete moeyte betekent”, it reads. But what kinds of visual sources did the Schenks have access to that allowed them to make these designs? Specifically, what were the European source models the father-son duo looked at to inform their compositions?

One such model is this sixteenth-century print depicting a well-trained pelican regurgitating fish at the feet of a hunter. The print is just one of several examples of Jan van der Straet’s hunting scenes used as compositional models by Schenk II to recreate a “Chinese” composition.

To translate the European model into a chinoiserie print, Schenk emphasized the linearity of the designs and eschewed shading to flatten the perspective. It seems part of the “great effort” it took was studying the Old Masters for inspiration!

What drives my research is engaging the public with interesting object dialogues and socially relevant narratives. I got to curate a kabinetje exhibition, entitled “Dreaming of China: Chinoiserie Prints and Ceramics of the Eighteenth-century” on view from April 23, 2018-September 17, 2018. The goal was to narrate the chinoiserie network between the publishing and ceramic industries of the Dutch Republic and Germany. It is currently on view in room 1.8–you’ll have to see it and tell me what you think! I also have a forthcoming article in the Rijksmuseum Bulletin, “A Dutch Chinoiserie Network: The Schenk Album, Revisited”, which seeks to elaborate on the newly discovered European and Chinese source models used by Schenk II to create his lively compositions, as well as to give other examples of Schenk chinoiserie in the decorative arts.
I’m also working on a short notice about two large chinoiserie Schenk prints, and an article with the working title, “Schenk and the City: Reproductive Landscapes and Early Modern Friendship in his Hecamtopolis”.

The Schenks and the Album is also the subject of my RMA thesis for a degree in Art History of the Low Countries at Utrecht University. In the fall, I’ll move to Chicago to begin a PhD at Northwestern University. Though my time in the Netherlands sadly comes to a close, my love for the Schenk boys and the studiezaal will burn bright.