Category: Modern(ish)

Rare intact 17th century drawing book donated to Rijksmuseum

Modern(ish), Museums

An exceptionally rare drawing book from the early 17th century has been donated to the Rijksmuseum by the family who has owned it for more than 300 years. Very few drawing books from the period have survived intact because individual drawings were more saleable so the pages made much more money when sold piecemeal. The books were taken apart, bindings destroyed, and the pages scattered.

The Van Eeghen Drawing Book contains about 30 full-page drawings of biblical scenes, some on blue paper, and smaller studies of figures and animals. They are in exceptional condition, because unlike drawings that were cut out of their bindings, the pages inside the book were almost never exposed to light.

The book is named after the Van Eeghen family who treasured the intact book, handing it down through the generations for more than three centuries without selling a single drawing, even though neither they nor anybody else knew who the artist was. It was only very recently, about 20 years ago, that C.P. van Eeghen (1921-2014) saw a drawing by Rombout Uylenburgh in the Rijksmuseum collection and connected it to one in the book.

Rombout Uylenburgh (1580/85–1627/28) was born in Leeuwarden, in the northern Dutch province of Friesland. His family moved to Kraków when he was still a boy and he grew up to become painter at the court of Polish King Sigismund III. He moved to Danzig in 1612 where his career continued to thrive. He specialized in grisailles, monochrome paintings in shades of grey.

After Rombout Uylenburgh’s death, he quickly fell into obscurity, even as his family became ever more prominent on the business side. His brother Hendrick, who had worked for Sigismund III as a commercial agent acquiring art works for the king, moved to Amsterdam and became Rembrandt’s art dealer. Rembrandt’s wife Saskia was one of Rombout and Hendrick’s cousins.

There is no documentation of how the Van Eeghen family acquired the book, but there’s a hint on the binding: an inscription in gold lettering reading “Konstboeck voor Reyer Claessoon” (“Art book for Reyer Claessoon”). Reyer Claessoon was a prominent member of the Dutch community in Danzig when Rombout Uylenburgh lived there. He and Uylenburgh were both Mennonites, so almost certainly knew each other personally. The Van Eeghen family were also part of the Danzig Mennonite community. This is likely the path the book took.

Only two drawings by Uylenburgh are known to survive, one of which is in the Rijksmuseum collection, plus a handful of his paintings, so the Van Eeghen Drawing Book is now one of the stand-out treasures of the Rijksmuseum Print Room Collection. With a loan from the Rembrandt House Museum, the Rijksmuseum has brought together most of the surviving works by Uylenburgh for a special exhibition introducing the drawing book and the little known artist to the public.

Update: Royal Sovereign Trafalgar flag bought by museum

Modern(ish), Museums

The flag flown from HMS Royal Sovereign at the Battle of Trafalgar has been saved for the nation by the North East Museums. One of only three surviving British flags from the epic 1805 battle between the English and Napoleonic navies, it sold at auction to a foreign buyer last year. The UK’s Minister of Culture placed a temporary export bar on the flag to prevent it leaving the country and giving local institutions the chance to acquire it.

Thanks to donations from organizations, including £400,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, North East Museums was able to raise the purchase price of £450,000 ($600,000) and secure this iconic emblem of Britain. They are now raising funds to create a permanent custom display for this huge flag at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle.

The flag has a specific connection to northeastern England. It is also known as the Collingwood Trafalgar flag after Vice Admiral Collingwood, commander of HMS Royal Sovereign and Newcastle upon Tyne native. He was just 13 years old when he enlisted in the British navy in 1761, and worked his way up the ranks, earing the rank of vice-admiral and serving as second in command of the British Fleet under Admiral Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Not only was Collingwood a local lad, but much of his crew was too. They were nicknamed the “Tars of the Tyne” because so many of them came from the Tyne and Wear county of northeastern England. Furthermore, they weren’t just fighting under this flag, they actually made it too. It is the only one of the three surviving Trafalgar flags that was handmade by the crew of the ship whose foremast it flew from.

The Union Flag will form the centrepiece of a new permanent display at Discovery Museum, Newcastle, that will celebrate an important regional and national figure and a significant moment in British history.

It will be located in a new section of the museum’s popular Story of the Tyne gallery, which showcases an extensive maritime collection, covering Tyneside’s shipbuilding industry, innovations in maritime technology, and one of the best ship model collections in the country.

The display will also tell the story of the local men who served in Nelson’s navy – there were over 500 ‘Geordie’ sailors at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Sacred “talking drum” looted by France returned to Ivory Coast

Looting, Modern(ish)

A hundred and ten years after it was looted by French troops, the Djidji Ayokwe, a “talking drum” sacred to the Ébrié (Atchan) people of Ivory Coast has been welcomed home in a ceremony timed to coincide with country’s national independence day, August 7th.

On Friday, it was carried in a military parade through the Yopougon district of Abidjan, before continuing on to the village of Adjame, where it was made.

The black, white and red instrument was transported in a glass-fronted case on a large, decorated float and welcomed by Culture Minister Francoise Remarck, traditional leaders and hundreds of local residents.

A dozen people performed a libation ceremony, pouring a few drops of liquid onto the ground as an offering to their ancestors.

“A nation cannot develop if it doesn’t preserve its memory and promote its heritage,” said Adjame mayor Farikou Soumahoro.

He said he felt “deep emotion and great pride”.

“We want to see the drum with our own eyes so we can truly believe it belongs to us,” 69-year-old villager Jacqueline Akrebie told AFP.

Carved from hard native iroko wood, the Djidji Ayokwe is slit drum 3.3 meters (10’10”) long and weighing 430 kilos (948lb). It is not just a musical instrument, it was a culturally and religiously significant means of communication, hence “talking drum.” It could be heard from great distances, more than 10 miles away, and was used to warm of danger, as a clarion call to battle or to call people to important ceremonial invents. France declared Ivory Coast a French colony in 1893 and dispatched troops inland to establish outposts and French settlers. Native Ivorians were subjected to forced conscription for work in mines, on plantations and to serve in the military. Djidji Ayokwe was used to alert villagers that conscription forces were coming.

When France sent a punitive expedition to quash resistance in 1916, the drum was deliberately confiscated to assert colonial dominance over the Ébrié people. It was sent to France where it was absorbed into the national collection and placed on display at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris which was so overloaded with looted cultural artifacts from France’s colonial conquests that the Djidji Ayokwe was just one of many. It was moved to the Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac Museum in 2006.

The official handover between the Ivory Coast’s Minister of Culture, Françoise Remarck, and France’s Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, took place at the Quai Branly Museum in February. The drum was shipped to Abidjan in March, where it was welcomed by traditional Ebrie leaders and dancers but it was packed in a wooden crate. It was not actually seen in public until it made its grand ceremonial entrance on Friday.

UNESCO played a key role in the negotiations for the drum’s return, and has also put up $100,000 for its preservation and to spread the word about its return. Now that it has had its official welcoming ceremony, it will go on display at the Musée des Civilizations de Côte d’Ivoire in Abidjan which has been renovated specifically so it can properly accommodate this great cultural treasure.

Update: Double portrait of Victorian heiresses saved for the nation

Modern(ish)

The unique double portrait medallion of Victorian heiresses Florence and Alice Campbell sculpted by Henri-Joseph François, Baron De Triqueti, in 1857 has been acquired for the Buscot Park estate in Oxfordshire after an emergency export ban prevented it from leaving the country.

The sculpture was bought at auction in 2025 by a private buyer who applied for an export license. The UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport placed a temporary export bar on the piece, because it is the only double portrait in Triqueti’s oeuvre and of “outstanding significance to the study of Triqueti’s sources, work practices, patronage networks, and the commissioning of medallion portraits by English families.”

The export bar gave a UK institution until February 2026 to show the willingness and ability to raise the £280,000 necessary to reimburse the buyer and save the portrait for the nation. The Faringdon Collection Trust launched a fundraising campaign and were able to reach their goal, securing the portrait medallion of Florence and Alice Campbell for the permanent collection of Buscot Park.

Buscot Park is a perfect new home for the girls. Florence (the future subject of intense and repeated scandal) and Alice were the daughters of Australian gold trader and entrepreneur Robert Campbell who bought Buscot in 1859 and transformed it into a model agricultural estate. The 18th century Buscot Park was all but derelict when he bought it. He transformed it into one of the most highly industrialized farms in the country, building a massive reservoir fed by pumps on the Thames to create a massive irrigation system capable of watering its thousands of acres of farmland.

He grew sugar beets to make sugar that he then distilled into alcohol, something that had not been done before in England at a commercial scale. He built a railway to transport the harvest around the estate and a telegraph system to communicate instantly throughout the property instead of sending a guy on horseback.

Campbell had moved his family to England in 1852 and set to vigorous work climbing the social ladder. Triqueti was an enormously successful society sculptor, creating works for the highest echelons of British aristocracy, including Queen Victoria herself, so Campbell commissioned him to make the double portrait of his beloved daughters.

Florence was 12 years old when Triqueti made the portrait. Her little sister Alice was nine. Florence is on the left side with her hair gathered in a snood at the nape of her neck. Alice is on the right with her hair in pipe curls. They gave lovingly at each other and hold an urn with a growing lily. The medallion is bordered by an intricate floral wreath. The flowers symbolize purity, charity and their sisterly devotion.

Florence would marry at 19, separate, be widowed, have a very public affair with a married quack “doctor” old enough to be her grandfather, get an abortion, marry again, be widowed again, be accused of having poisoned him with antimony, become an alcoholic recluse and die at 33.

By then her father was gravely ill and his experiments in industrial agriculture at Buscot ended in bankruptcy. He sold the distillery and factories, and after his death in 1887, the entire estate was sold to financier Alexander Henderson, later the 1st Lord Faringdon. He was an avid collector of art, as was his heir Gavin Henderson, and the Faringdon Collection art decorates the interiors of Buscot today. Now the Campbell sisters have joined the masterpieces by Rembrandt and Reynolds.

Update: Baltic shipwreck champagne was destined for Tsar Alexander II

Modern(ish)

Meticulous research into the bottles of champagne found in a shipwreck discovered in the Baltic sea south of the Swedish island of Öland in July 2024, has uncovered that they were destined for the table of Tsar Alexander II.

The well-preserved remains of the 19th century ship were found 190 feet deep by technical divers from the Baltictech Association. The ship stayed upright when it sank to the seabed, and the cold waters of the Baltic were ideal storage conditions for dozens of glass wine bottles and stoneware Selters mineral water bottles.

An expert in historic pottery identified the stamp on the Selters bottles as the emblem of the German Duchy of Nassau which the company used on its labels between 1836 and 1866. The cork on one of the Champagne bottles bore the faint imprint of Louis Roederer Champagne House of Reims.

Baltictech returned to the wreck site for a follow-up dive in 2025. They recovered a ceramic plate of the British Davenport company which could be dated to 1856. Since the plates didn’t linger in inventory, the ship must have begun its ill-fated voyage in late 1856 or early 1857.

All of this information helped Baltictech researchers to identify the ship as one sent by Adolf, Duke of Nassau, to Tsar Alexander. It was laden with champagne, mineral water, wine leather hides and porcelain. The champagne was an official state gift for the Tsar, who had ascended the throne when the Baltic was under blockade by Britain during the Crimean War. When Russia signed a treaty that ended the war in 1856, the blockade was lifted and heads of state like the Duke of Nassau hastened to reestablish relations.

The team reached out to Louis Roederer to find out more about the bottles, perform chemical analyses of the liquid inside the bottle and advise them on recovering a few samples. As luck would have it, one of Roederer’s champagne experts, Peter Liem, is also an experienced technical diver, so he was able to go down to the wreck and point specific bottles to recover. One was tested in Sweden, and several sent to Louis Roederer Champagne House in Reims for analysis.

The champagne contains 110 grams of sugar per liter and 12% alcohol and it is not just still drinkable, according to Peter Liem, it is “glorious:”

[P]atinated, authoritative, and immeasurably complex, this wine is not only alive, but downright vibrant and delicious to drink. It’s reminiscent of shiitake, saffron, kombu, saddle leather, cigar box, roasted coffee, with a fervent vitality and piercing intensity like a great amontillado. We believe that it’s from the 1857 vintage, although we are continuing to try to verify this for certain: if so, it was on its way to Tsar Alexander II in St. Petersburg.

Baltictech has requested a permit for a third exploration of the wreck. They hope to locate the ship’s bell and to excavate deep into the lowest levels of the cargo hold, looking for objects mentioned in the ship’s manifest that have yet to be found.