The course of Dutch and Flemish furniture during the rest of the eighteenth century tamely follows the channels of French design.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Empire style was in vogue in Holland, as it was throughout Europe. When the Town Hall on the Dam in Amsterdam was presented by the city to the King of Holland, Louis Napoleon, in 1808, the Royal apartments were fitted up in the Empire style, and these hangings and furniture may be seen to-day. A great deal of Empire furniture is scattered through the museums of Belgium and Holland, as well as in the castles and mansions of the nobles and merchants who followed the fashions. A trace of the Empire style is found in the following description of the palace of Laeken, the residence of the royal family, near Brussels, by Robert Hill (Sketches in Flanders and Holland, 1816):
“The apartments had very little of royal magnificence about them: there were no pictures. A few pieces of indifferent tapestry, pier glasses economically put up in three pieces each, and tables, chairs, etc., which might only be called handsome, made up all that I recollect of their furniture. This palace has undergone strange vicissitudes. It was built for an Austrian archduchess; in one of the rooms a sky blue canopied bed was shown, which had belonged to the late Empress Josephine, had next been occupied by Maria Louisa, and, shortly before my visit, had been slept in by the Queen of the Netherlands.”
Mr. Hill was not greatly impressed with the Dutch house of the middle class. He says:
“I saw few things about their furniture and household arrangements worth noticing. The lower parts of their houses were commonly lined with glazed Dutch tiles, and stoves made of the same kind of clay were as commonly used to warm their apartments....
“There are two singularities about the houses of the Dutch which must not be forgotten. The first is that every country seat from the merchant’s domain to the little peddling tradesman’s smoking-box, though surrounded perhaps by nothing but marshes, damps and duckweed, is almost sure to bear on its front or over its entrance the words Land Lust (Country Delight), or Land Zight (Country Prospect), Belle Vue, or some other title expressive of the beauties of the situation, or the comforts and ornaments which are to be found within. The other is that the windows of these Land Lusts and Zights, as well as those of houses in the midst of towns, are generally furnished with little looking-glasses, which, projecting from their sides, command every passing object. These are by no means to be considered as ornamental, but they are so placed (sometimes two or three on each side) that they indulge the curiosity of their owners without putting them to the expense of showing themselves in return.”
He also notes the peculiar custom of breakfasting and dining in bedrooms. “At the country box of one of the most respectable tradesmen in Holland,” he writes, “I dined with his family in the principal room, which had beds concealed behind parts of its wainscoting.” This was in Rotterdam. He says: “At the end of this garden stood a pretty little summer residence, among whose lower apartments was a kitchen with furniture that displayed all the brightness and neatness for which the culinary arrangements of the Dutch have been celebrated, and above which was a large bay windowed room in which we dined. A natural inquiry respecting bed-chambers was here answered by opening parts of the wainscot, behind which were concealed canopies of the master, mistress and their children.”
The homes of Holland changed little during the century, and the cottages, farmhouses and homes of the peasants may be said to have changed not at all. Take, for instance, the fishing village of Maarken, in the Zuyder Zee, of which Esquiros writes:
Plate LVII.—In Bruitlaen, by Artz.