Remigius van Leemput

• 1. Introduction

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  Remigius van Leemput was known in England simply as 'Remee', a shortened version of his Flemish name that London patrons found easier to say. He built his career less on painting from his own imagination than on copying other artists' work with unusual precision. That precision made him a fixture of the London art trade for the rest of his life.

  He also became a buyer when a king's own art collection was broken up and sold off. Later, he fought a legal battle over one of the works he had acquired. What made a Flemish tradesman this indispensable to England's portrait painters, and how far did his ambitions as a collector actually reach?

• 2. Guild Beginnings

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  Remigius van Leemput was baptized in Antwerp on the 18th of December 1607, in the city where he would learn his trade as a painter. He entered the local Guild of Saint Luke as a pupil. His apprenticeship ran in the guild year from the 18th of September 1618 to the 18th of September 1619. His master was a painter named Frans van Lanckvelt the Elder. Van Lanckvelt was a relatively obscure figure himself, though he also trained the painters Theodoor Rombouts and Peeter Sion. A decade later, van Leemput was admitted as a master in his own right. That happened in the guild year running from the 18th of September 1628 to the 18th of September 1629.

  On the 2nd of March 1630, van Leemput married Anna van Bavelgem in Antwerp. The couple had at least three children. Their son Johannes Remigius, known in Italy as Giovanni Remigio, was born around 1638 to 1640. He later worked as a copyist in Rome and died there in 1695. A second son, Anton, known as Antonio, was born around 1642 and worked as a painter in Rome until he died in 1667. Their daughter Mary also became a painter; she married Thomas, son of the Serjeant-Painter Robert Streeter.

  Van Leemput is believed to have moved to London around 1632. Some accounts speculate that he followed Anthony van Dyck to England that same year. In London, he would find his defining professional partnership waiting, alongside a fellow Antwerp guild master already working in the city.

• 3. Van Dyck's Circle

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  In London, Remigius van Leemput teamed up with a fellow Flemish painter named George Geldorp. Both men had trained as masters in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke. Both became close associates of Anthony van Dyck during his final years in London. Geldorp appears to have handled the commercial side of the partnership, assisting van Dyck with selling copies of his work and with frames. Van Leemput, by contrast, seems to have concentrated on producing the copies themselves, working in both full-size and reduced versions of van Dyck's portraits. He appears to have been the most prolific copyist of van Dyck's work.

  King Charles I commissioned a copy of van Dyck's portrait of himself, Henrietta Maria, and their two eldest children, Prince Charles and Princess Mary. The commission reached van Leemput through the king's Lord Chamberlain, Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke. Van Leemput later also copied the work of other painters, including Peter Lely.

  Van Leemput reportedly claimed he could copy Peter Lely's work better than Lely could himself. He may also have worked as an assistant to Lely at some point, though the record is not conclusive. After the death of his first wife, van Leemput remarried in London on an unrecorded date. His second wife was Anna Maria Geldorp, daughter of his old associate George Geldorp. That closeness to the court's leading painters would soon put him in position to buy directly from a king's own collection.

• 4. A King's Collection Dispersed

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  Van Leemput built a prominent position in London's art world, working as an art dealer and a major collector of paintings and drawings. Charles I of England was executed in 1649, and his art collection was broken up and sold off soon afterward to help settle his debts. Van Leemput was an active buyer at the sale. Over a period of six months, he acquired 35 paintings and sculptures from the former royal collection. They included works by Titian, Giorgione, Correggio and Andrea del Sarto.

  Among his acquisitions was the famous equestrian portrait of Charles I with M. de St Antoine, painted by van Dyck. Van Leemput tried to sell the painting in Antwerp, asking 1,500 guineas, but found no buyer at that price. It is possible that the picture he tried to sell was in fact a copy he had painted himself. After the Restoration in 1660, the equestrian portrait was still in his possession. It was recovered from him for Charles II through legal proceedings.

  Remigius van Leemput died in London on the 4th of November 1675, at the age of 67. He was buried on the 9th of November 1675 at St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden. His own extensive collection of artworks was sold at Somerset House on the 14th of May 1677. What exactly changed hands at that 1677 sale went unrecorded, but van Leemput's own copies had already found more lasting homes elsewhere.

• 5. Beauties And A Lost Mural

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  Remigius van Leemput is remembered for his own original work as well as for small-scale copies after van Dyck, Lely, and others. Among these copies is a series of 14 bust-length portraits known as the 'Beauties.' The portraits were based on often full-length originals by van Dyck, Lely, and Samuel Cooper. The panels ranged in size from 23 to 39 centimetres by 18 to 31 centimetres. Inventories placed the series in the Bathing Room at Windsor Castle in 1710, 1720, and 1733. The paintings stayed at Windsor throughout the 18th century. Thirteen of them reappeared in the Queen's Bedchamber between 1790 and 1819, and they remain in the Royal Collection today. Van Leemput also copied Lely's double portrait of Henry Hyde, Viscount Cornbury, and Theodosia, Viscountess Cornbury.

  In 1667, Charles II commissioned van Leemput to paint a small copy of a wall painting by Hans Holbein the Younger at the Palace of Whitehall in London. The mural depicted Henry VII, Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII, and Jane Seymour. Van Leemput received a fee of £150 for the copy. He painted a second copy of the same mural in 1669, now held at Petworth House in Petworth, West Sussex.

  Holbein's original wall painting was destroyed by fire in 1698, after a maid left her washing to dry in front of an open fire. Van Leemput's two small copies are the only surviving records of Holbein's entire composition. Holbein's own preparatory cartoon for the left half of the scene survives separately, held today at the National Portrait Gallery in London.