This year, Oud Holland opens their pages with new biographical information on the seventeenth-century painter Adriaen van de Venne. This data has recently become available through several digitized archival records from the Ecartico database. Combining their discoveries, Edwin Buijsen and Harm Nijboer reshape our understanding of Van de Venne’s milieu and family network.

In-depth technical and archival research on Ferdinand Bol’s portrait of Lieutenant-Admiral Cornelis Tromp of c. 1675-1676 has revealed fascinating insights about the creation of the painting. Demonstrating that Bol continued to paint after his marriage with Anna van Erckel in 1669, Margriet van Eikema Hommes, Inez van der Werf, Piet Bakker and Kathrin Kirsch argue that the painting testifies to a close relation between the Bol and Tromp families.

This issue closes with the remarkable nineteenth-century Rotterdam art collector Fop Smit Jr. Due to a recently discovered photo album in the collection of the RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, Evelien de Visser was able to reconstruct Smit’s extensive collection of as many as 240 contemporary European paintings, among them works by renowned artists of the Barbizon School. She further explains how Smits collection relates to that of his peers.

See the Oud Holland website for summaries of each article.

Oud Holland 136 (2023) 1

Edwin Buijsen & Harm Nijboer
New biographical data on Adriaen van de Venne (1590-1662) and his family

Margriet van Eikema Hommes, Inez van der Werf, Piet Bakker & Kathrin Kirsch
Cornelis Tromp’s trophies: The origins of a late portrait (1675-1676) by Ferdinand Bol

Evelien de Visser
Collecting contemporary art in Rotterdam between 1870 and 1892: The international taste of Fop Smit Jr (1815-1892)

Oud Holland

The oldest surviving art-historical journal in the world is a Dutch periodical. From 1883 until now Oud Holland – Journal for Art of the Low Countries publishes scholarly articles about important archival finds and major art-historical discoveries. The scope of Oud Holland is art from the Low Countries from ca. 1400 to 1920. For more information and news about recent issues of Oud Holland, online reviews, subscriptions and information for authors, visit oudholland.rkd.nl.