Evidence goes to prove that the men who made the designs for the buildings had not yet become detached from the building trades. They were not architects within the present meaning of that term. They were described as masons, stonecutters, and the like, and no doubt were master-builders who, in addition to supplying the design, had a personal hand in the execution of the work of their own particular craft. The idea that a trained director should conceive the work as a whole, and marshal all the supplementary arts to proper subjugation, had not yet been evolved. Architecture as a separate force was not recognised.
Results automatically grew out of the united efforts of the sculptors, bricklayers, carpenters and masons who were engaged on the same production. So de Key, in addition to acting as a designer, was the city mason of Haarlem; H. de Keyzer was sculptor to the city of Amsterdam; and these are typical instances of the conditions then prevailing. It is also not surprising to find in this country, where government by municipalities was so well developed, that the architects were often official servants of the towns. Two such are mentioned above; Dryfhout was town architect of Middelburg, and Ambrosius van Hanenberch held a similar position at ’s Hertogenbosch.[1] The demand for qualified men to protect and guide the public artistic needs was appreciated, a wise and excellent practice from which present-day authorities in England might well take a lesson.
LEIDEN, RHIJNLAND (DATED 1612)
With the advancing seventeenth century came a keener desire for the employment of purer forms of Renaissance art. Architects turned their thoughts to the Italian ideal, which they modified, yet preserved in its essential characteristics. Chief among the exponents of the developed style were Jacob van Campen and Phillippus Vinckboons, both of Amsterdam; and Pieter Post of Haarlem. The massive Town Hall of Amsterdam—now the Royal Palace—by van Campen, is one of the most important buildings of this period. It was erected between the years 1648 and 1655. But the severe classic ideas, directing towards uniformity and symmetrical arrangements, were never really at home, nor did they displace the weakening influence of inherited tradition. In the general mass of work the Dutch national genius continued to assert itself. Up to the time when the native architecture became devoid of character and personality, the houses and trade buildings in which the people lived and worked—even if of strange appearance or sometimes fantastic beyond description—retained an unmistakable flavour of the vernacular and owned something of that playfulness and quaint invention that were the heritage of mediæval times.
“INTERIOR WITH WOMAN PEELING APPLES.” from an oil painting by PIETER DE HOOCH.
(In the Wallace Collection, London.)
It is fitting to conclude this Introduction by referring to the effect of Dutch upon English architecture. For our style of domestic building has in the past owed something to knowledge gained from the Low Countries; details have been derived from the Dutch and their practices adopted. Most obviously the influence is to be seen in the Eastern counties, although it penetrated more or less throughout the country; Staffordshire can show it as well as Norfolk, Wiltshire as well as Kent. To those men of the Netherlands who early engaged in English commerce the germs of this influence are to be traced. Not that many of these foreigners were actively connected with the building trades, but, during a long period of trading intercourse and settlement by merchants and artisans, they, as a matter of course, left distinct impressions of their own ideas. Onward from the fourteenth century the influx of Flemings and Dutchmen into England was considerable and the reasons for their coming various. Apart from the traders, skilled artisans were encouraged to settle for the purpose of improving the home manufactures. Oppression, too, was responsible for many immigrants; to cite an instance, thousands of people left Holland when the harsh Duke of Alva, acting for Philip of Spain, was in 1567 appointed commander of the forces, and numbers of them found refuge in England. But the presence of foreigners such as these, most of whom were not engaged in the building crafts, had only an indirect effect upon the local architecture. It was the imported artificers, coming from Germany as well as the Netherlands, who brought a new development to English building. “Throughout the reign of Elizabeth,” writes Professor Blomfield, “their influence was in the air and predominant.” The results of it are obvious in work then erected, notably in the long series of country houses with strapwork ornament, peculiar decoration of porches and fireplaces, and much patterned woodwork. Again, with the advent of Dutch William to the English throne, further new features were introduced and they are especially traceable in the admirable brickwork of the Queen Anne style. But the lasting and altogether good effect of Dutch influence was on traditional, rather than academic architecture, on those quiet and unpretentious buildings of the countryside. Here the foreign motives were almost imperceptibly blended with those existing, neither suddenly nor inharmoniously. A feature was added here, a detail there, yet the work remained truly English in character. Old villages can yet show buildings that bear upon them traces of an alien hand, or embody ideas drawn from other than local sources of inspiration. Such are the East Kentish cottages at Sandwich, Ickham, Reading Street and Sarre; the halls and manor-houses of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, with corbie-stepped and curved gables; the high brick barns of the Eastern counties; and endless picturesque groupings of certain distinction that exist up and down the land. The industrious settlers from over the water certainly brought something to our traditional architecture, gave it qualities that helped to make it what it was. And when they came to erect their dwellings on foreign soil, they cherished the memory of their own country, and turned their thoughts to home and to the houses on the tree-lined streets and waterways of Holland.
