The Dutch Fagel family assembled an important collection of paintings, medals, books, prints, and small luxury objects at their home in The Hague. Several men in the family served as Greffiers, or chief political advisors to the Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. They displayed their collections throughout their home as well as in a gallery ending in a richly decorated pavilion overlooking the Stadholder’s palace and gardens. With the Batavian Revolution of 1781–1785, the family was forced to leave their home and sell their collections. Objects found individual buyers in a series of auctions. Today, they are held by diverse institutions throughout Europe, the UK, and North America. The family home was substantially altered, and the precious interior furnishings transferred elsewhere in The Hague. The gallery that once housed the library was demolished, leaving only the pavilion, known as the Fagel Dome. The project A Portal to the Fagel Collection is dedicated to understanding the relationship between the collection and the family home in the eighteenth-century.
A Portal to the Fagel Collection developed in conversation with the ongoing library project Unlocking the Fagel Collection. The latter project is dedicated to cataloguing and researching the Fagel library, which consists of over 30,000 volumes of books, maps, and pamphlets, and was purchased by the College in 1802. A Portal to the Fagel Collection places the library in its original visual, material, and architectural context. Merging traditional tools of historical inquiry, including study of architectural drawings and building fragments; inventories; sale records; and visitors’ accounts, with new digital tools to create interactive virtual environments, A Portal to the Fagel Collection will reunite the Fagel collections in a digital reconstruction of the original display space. The interactive digital platform will create a hinge between the books in the Fagel library and the broader architectural and visual contexts of the collections. It will be both a tool for uncovering relationships between objects and space in the Fagel home and a means of disseminating the research of this project to scholars and the public.
THE BOOKS AS EVIDENCE OF COLLECTING PRACTICES
The library is the keystone of this project. It is most often interpreted as a repository of knowledge and a tool of cultural diplomacy. Our research suggests that the family also used the library as an aid in acquiring, interpreting, and displaying collections. A Portal to the Fagel Collection reveals the central role of the library in shaping the family collections and artistic patronage. For example, detailed inventories of the most famous galleries in Europe, including the royal painting gallery at Sanssouci (Description des tableaux de la galerie royale et du cabinet des Sans Souci [1771, Fag.K.7.10]), suggest how books guided the family’s acquisition of pictures intended for a gallery of the highest quality. Other books, such as Jean Baptiste Descamps’ Lives of Flemish, German, and Dutch Painters (La vie des peintres Flamands, Allemands et Hollandois, avec des portraits, une indication de leurs principaux ouvrages [1753–1763, Fag. K. 6. 15–18]), position the Fagel family as important collectors in a broader European context by including descriptions of their holdings.
Image of one of the above-mentioned texts (lives of painters with Fagel page)
BOOKS AS SOURCES OF INSPIRATION
While some titles in the Fagel Library can be associated with the building and documentation of the family collections, others point to the design and decoration of the home. The Fagel library includes significant holdings in French architectural titles, which helped to disseminate the popular French style in the Dutch Republic. Some of the best known examples, including a manual on the layout and design of domestic spaces by Augustin-Charles D’Avilier (Cours d’Architecture [1699, Fag.K.6.32]), or on the design of country homes (De la distribution des maisons de plaisance et de la décoration des édifices en general [1683, Fag.L.4.12–13]), by Francois Blondel, would have provided important information to François Fagel the Elder (1659–1746) and his architect as they designed and built the family home. The Fagels clearly took inspiration from Le cabinet de la Bibliotheque de Sainte Genevieve, (1692, Fag. K.2.36) for the design of their gallery-style library and looked to the painted ceilings of La petite Galerie du Louvre (1695, Fag.K.1.16) as a model for their library dome.
Le cabinet de la Bibliotheque de Sainte Genevieve: divisé en deux parties... 1692 Fag.K.2.36
WHAT IS NEXT? DIGITAL REUNIFICATION
We are in the process of building an interactive digital environment where users will be able to experience the diversity and richness of the Fagel collections in something like their original setting. The model will emphasize the dynamic relationship between the library, art and interior furnishings, and architecture. Users will access the model through QR codes displayed next to objects with Fagel provenance at partner collections around the world. For example, many of the original mantle pieces can now be seen at the Museum Escher, not far from the original Fagel home.
Original Fagel fireplace, now at the Museum Escher, The Hague
Considering the notable absence of traditional archival sources describing the building and renovation of the family home, the library provides critical insight into the design and construction of the space. For example, a 1752 French treatise on interior design helps us estimate the installation dates for fireplaces in a certain style in the Fagel home.
Charles Étienne Briseux, Traité du beau essentiel dans les arts (Paris: 1752), Fag.K.4.55, Fag.K.4.56
We also plan to use QR codes to engage visitors to the restaurant, pub, and hotel now occupying the original family home. Therefore, visitors to libraries, museums, and public spaces connected through the project will have an opportunity to learn about the interconnected visual and material world of a remarkable home in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic.