Academic literature on the topic 'Libraries, Netherlands: Hague'

Art history in the Netherlands is supported by a number of art libraries in addition to museum libraries, among them the Royal Library at The Hague, the libraries of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science, both at Amsterdam, university libraries, and libraries of Dutch establishments abroad. The combined art collections of these libraries are considerable; access, however, may be facilitated by the Project for Integrated Catalogue Automation (PICA) which aims to improve on the diversity of existing catalogues.

In addition to Dutch academic and museum libraries, a number of art libraries and relevant document and information centres are attached to government and other institutions. These include the Netherlands Institute for Art History at The Hague (the parent institution of DIAL, an iconographical classification of Dutch art); the Stichting MARDOC at Rotterdam, which is evolving thesauri to facilitate automated access to museum collections; and the Netherlands Office for Fine Art, responsible for coordinating and promoting Dutch art collections. Other institutions are concerned with contemporary Dutch art, photography, architecture, the role of art in society, art education, and museology. Some of these, with some other institutions, are linked by the network Culturele Pool (CUPO) which coordinates and indexes current literature on the art in the broadest sense.

AbstractAmerican libraries began to be developed in the middle of the nineteenth century and were among the world's most prominent a century later. The remarkable history of the major libraries in North America, their European models and their strong and innovative leadership is reported here in more or less chronological sequence from the earliest efforts to about 1970, when the unprecedented growth came to an end. The building of the international library collections could not have been achieved without the enterprising efforts of many booksellers in England and on the European continent. Among those who made significant contributions, were three booksellers from the Netherlands: Frederik Muller, Martinus Nijhoff and Swets & Zeitlinger. This article describes their role, but concentrates on Martinus Nijhoff, publisher and bookseller of The Hague, who had by far the longest successful tenure in supplying American libraries with European books and periodicals. Between 1853 and 1971, three generations of the Nijhoff family – Martinus, Wouter and Wouter Pzn –, with their staff members, built one of the leading international publishing and bookselling houses in the Netherlands. Their legacy is permanently embedded in the collections of the great North American libraries.

How does one gauge the reception of French Renaissance authors in the Netherlands? Auction catalogues from private libraries are certainly the most useful tools for this endeavour, and we have knowledge of them thanks to studies by many scholars. The project Book Sales Catalogues of the Dutch Republic—by the Royal Library of The Hague and of the University of Leiden—made available to researchers a large corpus of sales catalogues from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Currently, the microfilm is being digitized by Brill editions and will soon be available on the Internet. After having studied the Dutch reception of Marot, Rabelais, Montaigne, Du Bartas, Desportes and Molière, the author of this article proposes the synthetic review of this approach for the study of literary reception. The author evaluates the material and methodological problems, the established knowledge and new perspectives, focusing on the importance of these catalogues to both contemporary and modern bibliographical practice. The present article treats mainly sales catalogues from private libraries, saving sales catalogues of bookstore stock, printers’ stock, and other assorted bookseller catalogues for another study.

AbstractBook historians have generally seen the introduction of the printed book auction catalogue as an important event in the history of the book trade. Catalogues were already being printed in the Dutch Republic in about 1600 and the present article discusses the factors that favoured this remarkably early development. In section 2 the author surveys present knowledge of book auctions from classical antiquity up to the year 1598. In particular, he discusses sales of books in the estates of deceased persons in the Low Countries during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with particular reference to auctions in Leiden and The Hague in the last part of the sixteenth century. From the data assembled it emerges that the auctioning of books was certainly not first thought of in the Dutch Republic and that many auctions of property, including books, were held before 1599. In 1596 Louis (II) Elzevier was granted permission to hold book auctions in the Great Hall of the Binnenhof in The Hague, and in the hands of a bookseller it was possible for this form of trade to develop in the best possible way. In section 3 the author moves on to the earliest book sales with printed catalogues, namely the Marnix sale of 1599 and the Daniel van der Meulen sale of 4 June 1601 and following days. In the latter case it is possible to establish that the initiative to print a catalogue came not from the bookseller but from the deceased's widow and executor. Their instructions to the Leiden bookseller Louis (I) Elzevier were merely to conduct the auction, for which service he received five per cent of the proceeds. These large book sales in Leiden were apparently so successful that the inheritors of scholarly libraries in other towns had them auctioned in Leiden. After Leiden, sales with printed catalogues were also held in two other towns: in The Hague in 1605 and in Middelburg in 1605-7. From the catalogue of the auction held in Middelburg on 26 February 1607 it is clear that the collection was not a private one but either a part or the whole of a bookseller's stock. In 1606 and 1607 auctions were held in Leiden to sell some large stocks of books, namely those of the deceased Heidelberg printer and publisher Hieronymus Commelin. Some of these books, however, came from still living members and partners of the Commelin family, and when in 1608 the same group of wealthy dealers again wanted to have large numbers of unbound books auctioned in the town the booksellers of Leiden asked the authorities to ban auctions of this kind on the grounds that they were doing serious damage to the local book trade. Between 1607 and 1610 at least sixteen auctions with printed catalogues were held in Leiden, of libraries both of Leiden scholars and clerics and of owners from elsewhere. Only one catalogue from The Hague is known from this period (1609). One noteworthy element is the 'Appendix' to be found in some of the catalogues. The books in this section were, as the author shows, probably not privately owned but from the auctioneer-bookseller's own stock. He was taking the opportunity to turn part of his stock of books into hard cash. In section 4 the author describes the circumstances in Middelburg, The Hague and Leiden that help explain why book auctions first developed in those three places. After Amsterdam, Middelburg was at this time the most important trading centre in the Dutch Republic, and many merchants from the Southern Netherlands had settled there in the first decade of the seventeenth century. The book collections auctioned in Middelburg were modest in size. However, the number of potential buyers was probably also quite small, certainly compared with Leiden. Circumstances in The Hague were sharply different from those in Leiden and Middelburg. The book auctions were held on land belonging to the Court of Holland, where the regulations drawn up by the town and the rules of the Hague guild did not apply. In the Great Hall of the Binnenhof Louis (II) Elzevier was allowed to hold as many auctions as he liked. The climate was favourable to him, what with the presence of the many delegates to the States of Holland and the States General, the officials working for the many administrative and legal bodies and his fellow booksellers in the Hall. This was particularly true for law books, but in the period described by the author Leiden became the undisputed centre of auction sales of scholarly libraries. The author regards the following factors as of decisive importance. (1) In contrast to other towns in the province of Holland, such as the important book centre of Amsterdam, the Leiden booksellers could themselves act as auctioneers and collect five per cent of the proceeds as their fee. (2) In about 1600 Leiden was the only town in the Republic where the booksellers were not organized into a guild. In practice this meant that there were no rules for the booksellers to have to observe when holding auctions. Furthermore, the auctioning of large and important collections was in the interest of the university community, and the university governors consequently did their best to block any attempt to introduce local regulations which would prejudice the auctions. (3) The university was attracting ever larger numbers of students, both from the provinces of the Dutch Republic and from the surrounding countries. They not only bought for themselves, but also on behalf of friends and relatives in other places. Besides these crucial factors the author also discusses some other favourable circumstances. For example, the whole development of the book auctions took place against the background of extremely rapid economic growth and a great many other new initiatives in the commercial field. In the early decades of the seventeenth century the book trade in Leiden enjoyed almost unlimited freedom of action. The innovations in auctioning books gave the town an important lead over the country's other centres of the book trade. Finally the author turns to two important consequences of the introduction of the printed catalogue. Using a catalogue it became possible to reach so many potential customers that booksellers were now able to turn their own stocks into hard cash for acceptable prices through the medium of the auction. It was thus possible to some extent to nullify one of the disadvantages of the existing system, the 'Change', which tended to produce large, not to say too large, stocks. And in the second place the introduction of the printed catalogue had a particularly stimulating effect on the formation and enrichment of both institutional and private libraries in the seventeenth century.

AbstractThe nucleus of the collection of paintings in the Mauritshuis around 130 pictures - came from the hereditary stadholder Prince William v. It is widely believed to have become, the property of the State at the beginning of the 19th century, but how this happened is still. unclear. A hand-written notebook on this subject, compiled in 1876 by - the director Jonkheer J. K. L. de Jonge is in the archives of the Mauritshuis Note 4). On this basis a clnsor systematic and chronological investigation has been carried out into the stadholder's. property rights in respect of his collectcons and the changes these underwent between 1795 and 1816. Royal decrees and other documents of the period 1814- 16 in particular giae a clearer picture of whal look place. 0n 18 January 1795 William V (Fig. 2) left the Netherlands and fled to England. On 22 January the Dutch Republic was occupied by French armies. Since France had declared war on the stadholder, the ownership of all his propergy in the Netherlands, passed to France, in accordance with the laws of war of the time. His famous art collections on the Builerth of in. The Hague were taken to Paris, but the remaining art objects, distributed over his various houses, remained in the Netherlands. On 16 May 1795 the French concluded a treaty with the Batavian Republic, recognizing it as an independent power. All the properties of William v in the Netehrlands but not those taken to France, were made over to the Republic (Note 14), which proceeded to sell objects from the collections, at least seven sales taking place until 1798 (Note 15). A plan was then evolved to bring the remaining treasures together in a museum in emulation of the French. On the initiative of J. A. Gogel, the Nationale Konst-Galerij', the first national museum in the .Netherlands, was estahlished in The Hague and opened to the public on ,31 May 1800. Nothing was ever sold from lhe former stadholder's library and in 1798 a Nationale Bibliotheek was founded as well. In 1796, quite soon after the French had carried off the Stadholder, possessions to Paris or made them over to the Batavian Republic, indemnification was already mentioned (Note 19). However, only in the Trealy of Amiens of 180 and a subaequent agreement, between France ararl Prussia of 1 802, in which the Prince of Orarage renounced his and his heirs' rights in the Netherlands, did Prussia provide a certain compensation in the form of l.artds in Weslphalia and Swabia (Note 24) - William v left the management of these areas to the hereditary prince , who had already been involved in the problems oncerning his father's former possessions. In 1804 the Balavian Republic offered a sum of five million guilders 10 plenipotentiaries of the prince as compensation for the sequestrated titles and goods, including furniture, paintings, books and rarities'. This was accepted (Notes 27, 28), but the agreement was never carried out as the Batavian Republic failed to ratify the payment. In the meantime the Nationale Bibliolkeek and the Nationale Konst-Galerij had begun to develop, albeit at first on a small scale. The advent of Louis Napoleon as King of Hollarad in 1806 brought great changes. He made a start on a structured art policy. In 1806 the library, now called `Royal', was moved to the Mauritshuis and in 1808 the collectiorts in The Hague were transferred to Amsterdam, where a Koninklijk Museum was founded, which was housed in the former town hall. This collection was subsequertly to remain in Amsterdam, forming the nucleus of the later Rijksmuseum. The library too was intended to be transferred to Amsterdam, but this never happened and it remained in the Mauritshuis until 1819. Both institutions underwent a great expansion in the period 1806-10, the library's holdings increasing from around 10,000 to over 45,000 books and objects, while the museum acquired a number of paintings, the most important being Rembrandt's Night Watch and Syndics, which were placed in the new museum by the City of Amsterdam in 1808 (Note 44). In 1810 the Netherlands was incorporated into France. In the art field there was now a complete standstill and in 1812 books and in particular prints (around 11,000 of them) were again taken from The Hague to Paris. In November 1813 the French dominion was ended and on 2 December the hereditary prince, William Frederick, was declared sovereign ruler. He was inaugurated as constitutional monarch on 30 March 1814. On January 3rd the provisional council of The Hague had already declared that the city was in (unlawful' possession of a library, a collection of paintings, prints and other objects of art and science and requested the king tot take them back. The war was over and what had been confiscated from William under the laws of war could now be given back, but this never happened. By Royal Decree of 14 January 1814 Mr. ( later Baron) A. J. C. Lampsins (Fig. I ) was commissioned to come to an understanding with the burgomaster of The Hague over this transfer, to bring out a report on the condition of the objects and to formulate a proposal on the measures to be taken (Note 48). On 17 January Lampsins submitted a memorandum on the taking over of the Library as the private property of His Royal Highness the Sovereign of the United Netherlartds'. Although Lampsins was granted the right to bear the title 'Interim Director of the Royal Library' by a Royal Decree of 9 February 1814, William I did not propose to pay The costs himself ; they were to be carried by the Home Office (Note 52). Thus he left the question of ownership undecided. On 18 April Lampsins brought out a detailed report on all the measures to be taken (Appendix IIa ) . His suggestion was that the objects, formerly belonging to the stadholder should be removed from the former royal museum, now the Rijksmuseum, in Amsterdam and to return the 'Library', as the collectiort of books, paintings and prints in The Hague was called, to the place where they had been in 1795. Once again the king's reaction was not very clear. Among other things, he said that he wanted to wait until it was known how extensive the restitution of objects from Paris would be and to consider in zvhich scholarly context the collections would best, fit (Note 54) . While the ownership of the former collections of Prince William I was thus left undecided, a ruling had already been enacted in respect of the immovable property. By the Constitution of 1814, which came into effect on 30 March, the king was granted a high income, partly to make up for the losses he had sulfered. A Royal Decree of 22 January 1815 does, however, imply that William had renounced the right to his, father's collections, for he let it be known that he had not only accepted the situation that had developed in the Netherlands since 1795, but also wished it to be continued (Note 62). The restitution of the collections carried off to France could only be considered in its entirety after the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815- This was no simple matter, but in the end most, though not all, of the former possessions of William V were returned to the Netherlands. What was not or could not be recovered then (inc.uding 66 paintings, for example) is still in France today (Note 71)- On 20 November 1815 127 paintings, including Paulus Potter's Young Bull (Fig. 15), made a ceremonial entry into The Hague. But on 6 October, before anything had actually been returned, it had already been stipulated by Royal Decree that the control of the objects would hence forlh be in the hands of the State (Note 72). Thus William I no longer regarded his father's collections as the private property of the House of Orange, but he did retain the right to decide on the fulure destiny of the... painting.s and objects of art and science'. For the time being the paintings were replaced in the Gallery on the Buitenhof, from which they had been removed in 1795 (Note 73). In November 1815 the natural history collection was made the property of Leiden University (Note 74), becoming the basis for the Rijksmuseum voor Natuurlijke Historie, The print collection, part of the Royal Library in The Hague, was exchanged in May 1816 for the national collectiort of coins and medals, part of the Rijksmuseum. As of 1 Jufy 1816 directors were appointed for four different institutions in The Hague, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (with the Koninklijk Penningkabinet ) , the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen and the Yoninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden (Note 80) . From that time these institutions led independenl lives. The king continued to lake a keen interest in them and not merely in respect of collecting Their accommodation in The Hague was already too cramped in 1816. By a Royal Decree of 18 May 1819 the Hotel Huguetan, the former palace of the. crown prince on Lange Voorhout, was earmarked for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and the Koninklijk Penningkabinet (Note 87) . while at the king's behest the Mauritshuis, which had been rented up to then, was bought by the State on 27 March 1820 and on IO July allotted to the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen and the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden (Note 88). Only the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen is still in the place assigned to it by William and the collection has meanwhile become so identified with its home that it is generally known as the Mauritshui.s'. William i's most important gift was made in July 1816,just after the foundation of the four royal institutions, when he had deposited most of the objects that his father had taken first to England and later to Oranienstein in the Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden. The rarities (Fig. 17), curios (Fig. 18) and paintings (Fig. 19), remained there (Note 84), while the other art objects were sorted and divided between the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (the manuscripts and books) and the koninklijk Penningkabinet (the cameos and gems) (Note 85). In 1819 and 182 the king also gave the Koninklijke Bibliotheek an important part of the Nassau Library from the castle at Dillenburg. Clearly he is one of the European monarchs who in the second half of the 18th and the 19th century made their collectiorts accessible to the public, and thus laid the foundatinns of many of today's museums. But William 1 also made purchases on behalf of the institutions he had created. For the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, for example, he had the 'Tweede Historiebijbel', made in Utrecht around 1430, bought in Louvain in 1829 for 1, 134 guilders (Pigs.30,3 I, Note 92). For the Koninkijk Penningkabinet he bought a collection of 62 gems and four cameos , for ,50,000 guilders in 1819. This had belonged to the philosopher Frans Hemsterhuis, the keeper of his father's cabinet of antiquities (Note 95) . The most spectacular acquisition. for the Penninukabinet., however, was a cameo carved in onyx, a late Roman work with the Triumph of Claudius, which the king bought in 1823 for 50,000 guilders, an enormous sum in those days. The Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamhedert also received princely gifts. In 1821- the so-called doll's house of Tzar Peter was bought out of the king's special funds for 2.800 guilders (Figs.33, 34, ,Note 97) , while even in 1838, when no more money was available for art, unnecessary expenditure on luxury' the Von Siebold ethnographical collection was bought at the king's behest for over 55,000 guilders (Note 98). The Koninklijk Kabinel van Schilderyen must have been close to the hearl of the king, who regarded it as an extension of the palace (Notes 99, 100) . The old master paintings he acquzred for it are among the most important in the collection (the modern pictures, not dealt with here, were transferred to the Paviljoen Welgelegen in Haarlem in 1838, Note 104). For instance, in 1820 he bought a portrait of Johan Maurice of Nassau (Fig.35)., while in 1822, against the advice of the then director, he bought Vermeer' s View of Delft for 2,900 guilders (Fig.36, Note 105) and in 1827 it was made known, from Brussels that His Majesty had recommended the purchase of Rogier van der Weyden's Lamentation (Fig.37) . The most spectacular example of the king's love for 'his' museum, however, is the purchase in 1828 of Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp for 32,000 guilders. The director of the Rijksmuseum, C. Apostool, cortsidered this Rembrandt'sfinest painting and had already drawn attention to it in 1817, At the king'.s behest the picture, the purchase of which had been financed in part by the sale of a number of painlings from. the Rijksmuseum, was placed in the Koninklijk Kabinet van Schilderijen in The Hague. On his accession King William I had left the art objects which had become state propery after being ceded by the French to the Batavian Republic in 1795 as they were. He reclaimed the collections carried off to France as his own property, but it can be deduced from the Royal Decrees of 1815 and 1816 that it Was his wish that they should be made over to the State, including those paintings that form the nucleus of the collection in the Mauritshuis. In addition, in 1816 he handed over many art objects which his father had taken with him into exile. His son, William II, later accepted this, after having the matter investigated (Note 107 and Appendix IV). Thus William I'S munificence proves to have been much more extensive than has ever been realized.

Lugt's Répertoire Online, created by IDC Publishers in close co-operation with the Netherlands Institute for Art History RKD in The Hague, is an impressive resource tool and welcome addition for researchers who require information located within the complex arena of auction house art sales catalogs. Also referred to as art sales catalogs, auction catalogs are valuable sources of information on the provenance of art objects, the history of collecting, and historical market trends. Locating auction sales information can be one of the more challenging tasks for a researcher. There are literally thousands of auction house sales catalogs produced worldwide each year, and it is often difficult for a researcher to pinpoint which catalog holds the desired information. Researchers usually turn to union lists of sales catalogs, such as Frits Lugt's Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques. Lugt's Répertoire Online, the first volume of which was released by IDC in January 2003, is the electronic version of Lugt's Répertoire, a union list of sales catalogs that has been critical to researchers for more than half a century. This immense printed work in 4 volumes appeared between 1938 and 1987, and although it has been out of print for years, Lugt's Répertoire is still one of the most widely consulted art historical reference works as it essentially functions as a finding aid for art sales catalogs. In the print version of the Répertoire, which covers the period 1600 to 1925, Lugt lists more than 100,000 art sales catalogs from libraries in Europe and the United States. He not only describes the collections of the larger libraries, such as the Paris Bibliothèque de l'Art et de l'Archéologie, but also catalogs the contents of minor collections. Volume 1 of the Lugt's Répertoire Online lists catalogs from the period 1600 to 1825. Volume 2 (1826–1860) has recently been added and therefore more than doubling the current number of records, and the additional volumes will follow sometime soon thereafter.