Going Dutch at Lunch
A series of free online lunchtime Zoom webinars organized by the Royal Museums Greenwich to accompany The Van de Veldes: Greenwich, Art and the Sea exhibition, currently on show at the Queen’s House, Greenwich.
Advance registration is free but required. All talks take place via Zoom from 12:00-13:00 GMT. Please see the event website for more information.
Social Networking: Dutch artists at the English court
Talk given by Sander Karst, Lecturer in Art History
During the last decades of the seventeenth century, several dozens of painters migrated from the Dutch Republic to England.
Many of them had a specific goal in mind: they wanted to become court artists. After all, working for a King or Queen was seen as the fulfillment of a successful artist’s career. Since the Dutch Republic had no monarch at its head – but just a stadtholder – England was a logical destination.
In his talk, Sander Karst will show how these Dutch artists strategically tried to come to the attention of the English court. As he will show, they did so by means of networking – by strategically establishing relationships with courtiers who could further their careers at court. These types of relationships were called ‘friendships’ at the time, which had a slightly different connotation than nowadays.
As it was described at the time, friends were ‘honorable people from whose dealings one can also benefit.’ In addition to the Van de Veldes, Karst will specifically discuss Samuel van Hoogstraten, Sir Peter Lely and Sir Geoffrey Kneller; all artists from the Dutch Republic who worked in Stuart England.
Sander Karst
Sander Karst is a lecturer in the art history department of the University of Amsterdam. He specializes in the art of the early modern period, especially that of the Dutch and British seventeenth century. Karst was educated at Utrecht University, where he followed the two-year research master’s program Art History of the Low Countries in its European Context.
Thanks to a grant from The Dutch Research Council (NWO) for young research talent, he was able to conduct his PhD research in Utrecht. In the summer of 2021, he defended his PhD thesis Painting in a country without painters: The Netherlandish contribution to the emergence of the British school of painting, 1520-1720.