Lot 85: HENDRIK DANCKERTS C.1625-C.1680

A VIEW OF ST JAMES'S AND THE GARDENS OVERLOOKING ST JAMES'S PARK FROM THE SOUTH WEST

measurements note
57 by 104 cm., 22½ by 41 in.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Hanover Trust, Brook Street, London, by 1968

LITERATURE

Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England, 2005, pp.252-4

NOTE

This magnificent view of St James's Palace dates from circa 1677-8. The Palace was built by Henry VIII, and the Tudor gateway, with its octagonal towers and lantern, can be seen on the left; it is the only surviving part of the original building. The Palace was extensively refurbished by Charles II and became the principle residence of the Duke of York. After the fire of 1698 which destroyed Whitehall, St James's became the main royal residence, and Queen Anne commissioned Wren to design a suite of state apartments. St James's Park, which is behind the wall of the palace gardens, was laid out by Charles II in the style of Andre le Notre, and beyond the park in the distance the artist gives us a glimpse of Inigo Jones's Banqueting House, built in 1622 for James I, and the only part of Whitehall Palace to escape the Fire of London.

Hendrik Danckerts was a landscape painter and engraver, born to a Catholic family, probably in The Hague. The first record of Hendrick's presence in England was when he married 'Theodosia Hugh's of Staffordshire' in October 1664, in a ceremony witnessed by his brother in St James's Chapel, London. He revisited the Netherlands at least once, in 1670, but otherwise remained based in England until the increasing threat to Catholics and the Popish Plot drove him back to Holland c.1679.

In 1669 Samuel Pepys commissioned four panels for his dining-room from Danckerts, the 'famous lanskip painter', declaring them 'mighty pretty'. Danckerts also provided many paintings for the nobility, including Henry Herbert, later first duke of Beaufort, the Duke of St Albans, and the Earls of Bedford, Radnor, and Berkeley. Danckerts's most important patron, however, was Charles II, who in 1665--7, commissioned some large classical landscapes and a view of the recently completed canal works at Hampton Court. Fifteen of these works are still in the Royal Collection, and one was painted on a sliding panel which covered a portrait of the naked Nell Gwyn. Sir Peter Lely owned at least three of Danckerts's landscapes when he died in 1680, and The British Museum holds six of his drawings.