Henri Cassiers and the Netherlands By Marije van Frankfoort. Edited ...

Henri Cassiers and the Netherlands
By Marije van Frankfoort.
Edited by Olaf Klijn.
Translated from Dutch into English by Karen Gamester.
Throughout the latter half of the 1800s and the initial decades of the 20 th century countless
foreign artists visited the Netherlands. Many of them are now quite unknown but they also
included celebrated artists such as Claude Monet (1840-1926), Max Liebermann (1847-1935)
and Emil Orlik (1870-1932). A possible explanation for the stream of visitors to the Netherlands
was the renewed interest in 16 th and 17 th- century Dutch painting in reaction to the academic art of
the 18 th and 19 th century. The call for idyllic and exotic subjects will doubtless have been a
contributory factor. Facilitated by the expanding railway network, the artists travelled to places in
Europe and beyond where they could still find unspoiled scenery and traditional lifestyles -
Brittany, Cornwall, Scotland, the French Provence and North Africa. Cities like Amsterdam and
Venice were likewise highly popular for their picturesque qualities.
The Netherlands was slower to industrialise than neighboring countries, and many places
retained their appeal. From 1880, the Netherlands regularly attracted Belgian artists, including
Xavier Mellery (1845-1921), Théodore van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), George Buysse
(1859-1932), Victor Gilsoul (1867-1939) and Albert Baertsoen (1866-1922). Like so many others,
they were enchanted by the flat countryside and the atmosphere of the water-rich land.
Among the many Belgian painters to visit the Netherlands was Henri Cassiers. For years he
played a key role in the Société Royale Belge des Aquarellistes, the Belgian watercolour society.
This artists’ society was founded in Brussels in 1856. The catalogues of its annual exhibitions
afford an insight into the importance of the Netherlands for Cassiers and the other members. In
1897, for instance, Cassiers submitted watercolours with the following titles: no. 24 Canal à
Volendam (Canal in Volendam), no. 25 Arrivée des bateaux à Katwijk (Boats arriving in Katwijk),
no. 26, L’Angelus à Volendam (The Angelus in Volendam), no. 27 Intérieur hollandaise (Dutch
Interior), no. 29, Une rue à Edam (A Street in Edam). In the ensuing years, from 1898 to 1913,
the picture is no different. Of the four to six works he usually submitted, the majority depicted a
Dutch scene. Meanwhile, the interest of other artists in Dutch scenes gradually diminished.
Between 1914 and 1918 no exhibitions were mounted due to World War I. There were other
repercussions too: the 1919 catalogue lists no foreign exhibitors or honorary members from the
Central Powers. The strong international character of the Société Royale Belge des Aquarellistes
was gone for ever.In 1919 Henri Cassiers exhibited four works, only one of which depicted a
Dutch scene:Village flamand (Flemish Village), L’Escaut à Audenarde (The Scheldt at
Oudenaarde),Ville de Flandres (Town in Flanders) and La porte de mer à Harderwijk (The Sea
Lock at Harderwijk). In 1921, however, two of his exhibits clearly portrayed Dutch scenes.
What is the reason for Cassiers’s enduring fascination with the Netherlands? Contemporaries of
the artist offer the following explanations. Ferdinand Khnopff (1858-1921), like Cassiers a
member of the Société Royale Belge des Aquarellistes from 1892, wrote in the magazine The
Studio in 1902: “He also travelled Brittany and made trips to Holland, Italy and as far north as
Scotland, but it was to Holland he returned most frequently, enamoured as he was with the
constant humidity of the atmosphere, resulting in ever varying effects of mist, the massive clouds,
vibrating undulations of color, the picturesque houses and cottages in town and village, full of old
world furniture and the peasants in their costumes of a time gone by.” During his stay in the
Netherlands Cassiers met the English artist Charles Bartlett (1860–1940). They became friends
and, according to Khnopff in the above-mentioned article, the gifted painter was to have a great
influence on Cassiers.

Another contemporary, Hippolyte Fierens-Gevaert (1870-1926), wrote about Cassiers in the
magazine L’Art Belge (1920): “Le pays que Cassiers raconte sans se lasser, c’est la Hollande, du
haut en bas et pas seulement la Zélande, sa province de predilection.” Fierens-Gevaert goes on
to elaborate on the sternness and melancholy of the northern neighbour which stood in sharp
contrast to the colourfulness of its traditional dress: “C’est la Hollande de Cassiers, c’est son fief
pimpant, joyeux, presque irréel. Il l’a chanté et le chante avec un impertuable bonheur…”
Fierens-Gevaert tells how, during World War I when Cassiers was unable to travel to the
Netherlands, he used preliminary studies to go on painting his Zeeland scenes. Leo van
Puyvelde (1882-1965), who valued Cassiers as a brilliant colourist and watercolour artist, wrote
the following: “And has not the Antwerp artist Henri Cassiers long made his name with his
lighthearted and blithe views of Holland. There is no ‘picturesque’ corner that Cassiers’s eye has
not savoured and his dexterous hand has not painted. For this, he instinctively chose the material
that allowed the fastest application and that seemed to him most appropriate to the light effects of
the Dutch atmosphere; the watercolour paintings were duplicated as prints and, together with his
syntheses and gaily coloured posters that brightened up the stations, they earned him the welldeserved
reputation of illustrator of Holland’s cheerful view.”
Does this passion for the Dutch that emerges from the above quotations still come across in
Cassiers’s work? A colour lithograph of Cassiers’s Gezicht van de St. Nicolaas Kerk te
Amsterdam (View of the Church of St. Nicholas in Amsterdam) may be revealing in this respect.
It is a wintry view of the harbour; here and there, a thick layer of snow coats the masts and jibs of
the boats and the roofs of the buildings. In the foreground a woman in traditional dress stands
with one hand on the helm of a flat-bottomed vessel. The artist must have been positioned
slightly to the east of Central Station. Across the water rise the Schreierstoren and the Church of
St. Nicholas. Everywhere there are boats; in the distance a drawbridge. Everything is steeped in
a reddish glow. While the single figure of the woman points to a certain industry, the absence of
all other human presence evokes a sense of utter tranquility. It is, as it were, an idyll. In the
watercolour Terug van de markt, de Veluwe (Back from the Market, the Veluwe) there is far more
human activity, and yet a feeling of calm is conveyed by the men who, extinguishing their pipes,
have waited for the women to return, and the openness of the landscape. A watercolour with the
Old Church in Katwijk aan Zee conjures up an atmosphere of sand blowing about and the salty
air of the North Sea coast. Besides Zeeland, Cassiers had a predilection for Katwijk and
Volendam. He was in no way unique in his fondness for the latter fishing village on what was then
the Zuyder Zee, for it was frequented by many artists. He is known to have stayed in Hotel
Spaander in Volendam on several occasions. The proprietors were Leendert and Alida Spaander.
The hotel became famous for the many foreign artists who stayed there over the years. The hotel
registers still exist. These reveal that besides numerous artists, such celebrities as Edward Grieg,
Eleonar Roosevelt and Queen Emma of the Netherlands were among the hotel’s guests. Henri
Cassiers’s name appears in the hotel register several times. It records that Cassiers stayed in the
hotel with his wife Césarine and daughter Madeleine in September 1896. On the same page as
Cassiers’s signature we find the name of Paul Dietrich from Brussels. This is no doubt the wellknown
publisher of Cassiers’s work. On the page signed by Cassiers’s wife and daughter we
come across another well-known name, namely that of Henri Stacquet (1838-1906), who was
likewise a watercolour artist and a very good friend of Cassiers. Apparently, when Cassiers
stayed at the hotel, he was in the company of his wife and child, as well as his publisher and
friend. The hotel register also shows that Cassiers was a guest at Hotel Spaander again in 1908.
And in 1911 his name appears once more.During his stay in Volendam, Cassiers will regularly
have met Belgian colleagues. Among the names the hotel registers mention are those of Frantz
Charlet (1862-1928), Maurice Sys (1880-1972), Edgar Farasyn (1858-1938) and Gustave de
Smet (1877-1943).

Cassiers certainly met the Dutch artist Willy Sluiter (1873-1949), famous for his book and
magazine illustrations and posters. A drawing of Henri Cassiers by Willy Sluiter still hangs in
Hotel Spaander. There is also a photograph of Willy Sluiter and Henri Cassiers in which his
daughter and wife and the artists Augustin Hanicotte (1870-1957), Manuel Benedito (1875-1963)
and Nico Jungmann (1872-1935) can also be seen. The French painter Hanicotte married one of
the seven daughters of Leendert Spaander, the hotel proprietor.
Volendam was important for Cassiers for another reason, too. It is here that he made his first and
possibly his last film appearance. In 1911 the French director Alfred Machin came to Volendam to
make a number of silent movies for Hollandsche Films, a daughter production company of the
French parent Pathé Frères. In one of these films, Het vervloekte geld (The Cursed Money),
Cassiers played a minor role. In the Dutch film magazine Skrien (no. 136, summer 1984) we read
the following about Cassiers’s encounter with film: “Cassiers and Hanicotte had no direct
connection with Pathé Frères or with Alfred Machin, who had come to Volendam with his own
peintre-décorateur, Raoul Morand. But being French-speaking, residing in Volendam, and
acquainted with local customs and potential, they naturally became involved with the activities of
Machin’s party and offered their services. There is a production still from one of the other films
that was shot in this period in which Henri Cassiers can be identified.
Much of Cassiers’s work, which resonated with the growing popularity of typical Dutch
landscapes and folk costumes, was extensively reproduced on picture postcards, posters, tiles
and tins. Picture postcards were published by Dietrich & Co. in Brussels, W. de Haan in Utrecht
and Emil Spielvogel in New York. Posters with Cassiers’s Dutch motifs were distributed on a
large scale. For instance, the Amsterdam insurance company Hollandsche Sociëteit van
Levensverzekeringen had a poster made featuring an Amsterdam canal with an elegant lady and
gentleman in early 19 th- century attire and, needless to say, a further six people in assorted
traditional costumes.
Folk dress scenes were used by various tile factories. Around 1905 the catalogue of the
Amsterdam manufacturer Plateelbakkerij De Distel contained two pages with twenty-four scenes
after original designs by Cassiers. The tiles are rare, which would suggest that they were never
produced in large quantities. The same firm also made saucers decorated with regional costume
scenes after Cassiers. The Utrecht firm N.V. Tegelfabriek Westraven produced tiles decorated
with motifs copied from Cassiers’s work. Take the polychrome tableaux composed of 24 tiles that
were created after the above-mentioned Terugkeer van de market, de Veluwe. These tableaux
were incorporated in the tiling of so-called English fireplaces as well being sold framed. In 1908
other tile tableaux were used for the new middle-class housing in the Admiraal de Ruyterweg in
Amsterdam. In the porches of numbers 52, 68 and 72, 12-tile tableaux were incorporated in the
walls on either side of the two entrance doors at a height of approximately two metres. The lefthand
wall of number 52 features a tableau after the watercolor of the beach scene at Katwijk, and
the right-hand wall a tableau with two Volendam women. The lower left tiles of both tableaux bear
an identifying mark with the initials U.T.W.H. This is the trademark of the firm Westraven.
Inscribed on the lower right tiles are the words “Naar Henri Cassiers” (After Henri Cassiers).
These trademarks and signatures are missing from the tableaux at number 68 with the Volendam
and Spakenburg scenes, and at number 72 with the Zeeland (?) scenes. In 1921 the firm
Tichelaars Koninklijke Makkumer Aardewerk en Tegelfabriek produced tiles with traditional
costumes that were partly based on Cassiers’s picture postcards.
Decorations after Cassiers were also reproduced on tins, including cocoa tins. Since the material
these were made of was of little value and not very strong, few examples have survived. What is
more, it was not customary for the designer to sign this sort of work.

Apart from a handful of enthusiastic collectors, few Dutch people are familiar with the name of
Cassiers. But he has not been entirely forgotten, as shown by a poster reproduced in a
large-format calendar for the year 1994. It is one of the four posters by Cassiers in the Stedelijk
Museum Collection in Amsterdam. The poster picturing women in traditional costume from
Marken, Volendam and Zeeland and mills along the water was commissioned by Nederlandse
Spoorwegen, the Dutch railway company, and was directed at the Belgian public, exhorting them
to travel to the Netherlands at reduced excursion rates. As Henri Cassiers had himself done on
so many occasions before.