Art: The Buying Dutchman

The Six family is famed in Holland. In the 16th and 17th centuries Sixes were shrewd magistrates of Amsterdam, portly, solid men with provincial sagacity. Burgomaster Jan Six (1618-1700) was something of a visionary. As he walked by the placid River Amstel he heard the clopping of wooden shoes, saw the bright pageantry of Dutch costume, buxom, healthy girls in voluminous skirts, aprons, peaked caps. He loved little, angular Dutch gables, the wide Dutch sky over the flatlands. He knew an advanced, much-mooted artist named Rembrandt and often bought his etchings which caught the homely beauties of life in Holland in deep chiaroscuro. Jan Six also collected many contemporary paintings. Holland from his doorstep and on canvas was shining, sunny, softly reflected in the canals.

Sir Henri Wilhelm August Deterding is famed in Holland. The son of a Dutch sea captain, he left Holland in 1884, went to the Dutch East Indies to sell kerosene lamps and allied merchandise. In 1892 he was called to Batavia by the Royal Dutch oil interests. He is now Director-General of that gigantic enterprise. Robust, brown-eyed, white-haired, he spends most of his time in St. Helen’s Court, London, centre of the financial district. The English have made him a baronet. His millions rank him with Rockefeller, Ford, the world’s Croesi. He is superficially a brisk cosmopolite. But if his career has taken him further than the Amsterdam Sixes, he, too, has seen the windmills, the dikes, the sunny peace of Holland. He has not forgotten.

Recently the Six heirs found their inheritance taxes a burden. There were too many paintings. Works of art are heavily assessed in an age where everything is interpreted financially. An auction in Amsterdam was announced. To the auction rooms of Frederk Muller, on the banks of the Amstel, came a host of connoisseurs from all over the world. They came to take away from Holland the treasures that the loving Jan Six had collected. Without a particle of sentiment for the Dutch they gathered for refined looting.

But the designing strangers, Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, had not reckoned on the many patriotic Dutchmen, particularly the cosmopolite Deterding. He sped over from London. When the bidding began the potency of Dutch oil, of Dutch nurture, became plain. The Letter by Gerard Terboch stood on the easel, a slight canvas in which a pretty maiden is seen writing a billet-doux. There was a fusillade of bidding. Sir Henri pounced on the foreigners, kept raising the bid “dix mille guilders” at a leap. He triumphed at $127,600. It all happened again with Jacob Ochtervelt’s The Oyster Eaters. For this gastronomic scene Sir Henry offered $83,600. Several Americans slumped in their chairs. The limitless resources of Sir Henry’s preposterous wallet were exasperating. Over and over he took what he wanted. Two of the paintings he gave immediately to Dutch museums. Dutchmen were convinced that at his death he would give them the rest. He safeguarded the civic, esthetic affection of the old Burgomaster. He did it smilingly, proudly.

Manhattan’s Knoedler Gallery managed to secure Meindert Hobbema’s The Hamlet in the Wood for $158,400, the highest price of the auction. Messrs. Colnaghi of London bought Rembrandt’s Portrait of Burgomaster Six for $39,600, the world’s record price for an etching. A total of 64 paintings and 10 Rembrandt etchings were sold. The sales realized $925,012. Of this sum $250,000 had changed hands in four minutes. Auctioner Muller could well afford to smile on the River Amstel. His firm had received the customary 10%, amounting in this case to $92,500. Displaying paintings to serried rows of gentlemen with beards and pince-nez, soliciting their cash, seemed more than ever a genteel and happy profession.

But gladdest of all was Sir Henri. He looked long and lovingly on Amsterdam. Then he returned to the Thames-side with a dual satisfaction. In addition to his auction room success he had persuaded the Six family to withhold a series of ancestral oils from public sale. He, Sir Henry, would dispose of them advantageously, to the credit of Holland, the Sixes, the artists.