Pronk, Cornelis (1691-1759)

Dutch painter and draughtsman, born in Amsterdam he learnt to paint from Jan van Houten and Arnold Boonen. Starting as a copyist of the 17th-century Dutch masters and as a portrait painter he continued to draw and paint self-portraits throughout his life.

Initially working in Alkmaar he later settled in Amsterdam where he became a member of the Guild of St Luke and developed into the most important topographical draughtsman of the first half of the 18th century. He toured the country to gather subjects, occasionally crossing the border, as he did in 1729 to make drawings around Cleve and Cologne.

Four of his sketchbooks from this period (1723-32) are in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam. Together with Jan de Beyer and Abraham de Haen the younger (1707-48), he drew subjects for topographical atlases such as Het verheerlykt Nederland ('The glorified Netherlands'; Amsterdam, 1745-74), which were then engraved by Hendrik Spilman. The Atlas of Zeeland (Amsterdam, 1760) also contains Pronks work.

From 1700 onwards Chinese porcelain with Western decorations, so-called Chine de commande, became highly in demand. This was made to order by private Western traders. The Dutch East India Company, (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC), which had started to actively purchase porcelain in Canton after 1728, also wanted to get in on this specific trade. In 1734, as an experiment, the Dutch East India Company board, the Heren XVII, commissioned the Amsterdam artist Cornelis Pronk (1691-1759) to create what they hoped would be popular designs for services and other porcelains.

Pronks chinoiserie drawings were sent to VOC headquarters in Batavia (later Java) and then on to Canton in 1736; two survive today in the Rijksmuseum.

The designs were a depiction of a Chinese lady at the waterside with a female servant holding an umbrella, which is now known as La Dame au Parasol. Besides La Dame au Parasol Pronk also drew The Four Doctors, The Arbour and The Hand Washing.

While there is a general consensus that the second and fourth designs sent to China were The Four Doctors and The Arbour, the third one may have been either The Hand-Washing or The Archer. All of these titles have been assigned over time by students of art and the collecting community.

They are illustrated and discussed in Jörg's 1980 book, and examples can also be seen online at the Rijksmuseum website. A number of other attributed Pronk designs on Chinese porcelain objects appear regularly on the art market. Although they lack documentation, they do point to the continued popularity and influence of Pronk's work and are therefore regularly ascribed to this group of Chine de commande production.

Sometimes the descriptions mention 'from the design workshop of Cornelis Pronk', but in reality we do not know for certain if there was such a thing or whether prints were being made on the side for other paying clients.

Pronk was required to make drawings for both the decorative schemes as well as the exact shape of the various pieces. The assortment of wares would include dinner services, tea services, vases (urns or cisterns) with basins, and mantlepiece sets – to be decorated in three different colour ranges: blue and white, 'enamelled', i.e. decorated with enamel colours; and 'coloured and gold', which was interpreted as the so-called Chinese Imari palette of blue, iron-red and gold.

Multiple copies of the designs had to be made: one for the Company, two sets for the authorities in Batavia, with one copy to be sent to the Chinese merchants for the artists in China (or Japan) and one for checking the quality of the finished wares. Pronk was paid a salary of 1200 guilders a year and it was understood he would work exclusively for the Company. According to records, in the three and a half years in which he was under contract

He supplied designs on four occasions. Besides the most popular and most commonly found Pronk design, the Parasol Ladies, he also created three others, although without his signature nor a precise documentary description, the identification of the third one remains uncertain.

In their book, Masterpieces of Chinese Export Porcelain from the Mottahedeh Collection in the Virginia Museum, authors David Howard and John Ayers express their opinion that Pronk 'most certainly produced a greater number of designs than he has so far been credited with'.

These Pronk influenced, or Pronk style patterns include:

(1) The Palmette or Plume
(2) Parrot on a Perch,
(3) Pekinese dog (Leaping Dog, sometimes called a Spaniel) or Pekinese and the Parrot,
(4) The Trumpeter (Musicians),
(5) The Potentate,
(6) a Maria Sibylla Merian design,
(7) The Phoenix,
(8) The Torch-Bearer, and in some cases,
(9) The Archer.

Pronk Porcelain we are aware of was made in three versions: in Imari, in overglaze famille rose style enamels and in underglaze blue of which the underglaze blue versions are by far the most rare. The porcelain was well received in the Netherlands however the production costs in China proved to be too high which soon caused the Dutch Ears India Company to cease the commissioning of this type of porcelain.

Porcelain based on these drawings appears to have been made both in China and in Japan.

It appears as simplified versions of Pronk designs was also made, possibly later, and on private initiatives.

Literature: William R. Sargant, 'Cornelis Pronk and His Influence', in Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics from the Peabody Essex Museum (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 275-279.
Christiaan J. A. Jörg, Pronk Porselein, porcelain after designs by Cornelis Pronk (Groningen, Netherlands: Groninger Museum, 1980), the English-Dutch catalogue of an exhibition held at the Groninger Museum, Groningen, and the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.
David Howard and John Ayers, Masterpieces of Chinese Export Porcelain from the Mottahedeh Collection in the Virginia Museum, Sotheby Parke Bernet Publications by Philip Wilson Publishers Limited, London, 1980, p. 24.

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