Dutch Art Nouveau and Book Design, 1892–1903 (review)

This is the first English edition of a book initially published by the author in 1973, which then appeared in a second supplemented edition in two volumes with colour illustrations in 2003. For readers who do not have a mastery of Dutch the publication makes available to a larger audience a volume that is the unchallenged standard work on the subject known in the Netherlands as Nieuwe Kunst. As such it is enormously welcome, as it reveals the richness of the subject in an elegant and constantly rewarding manner. Even more to be noted is just how many books relevant to the movement appeared within a relatively short time span of just eleven years. The strength of such a book can be marred in its rendition into another language but here the work has been entrusted to David Roger who has made the book, although demanding (as he admits), yet always readable and clear.

The scope of the volume is crystallized by the translator's preface when he states that 'The book describes in detail the origins and development of the movement, influenced by a number of figures in the Netherlands and abroad, including Walter Crane, William Morris, Shannon and Ricketts on the one hand and Viollet-le-Duc and the Dutch architect P. J. H. Cuypers (1827–1921) on the other'. Much of the book is taken up with lengthy discussions of material rationalism and an almost obsessive interest in nature-based motifs shown by so many of the designers involved. For some readers these arguments, while invariably valuable and perceptive, can make parts of the narrative seem a little dense and indigestible. For others though, these remarks will prove essential to an understanding of what was going on during these productive years, not least because the illustrations provide so welcome a visual support to the dialectic.

The 'New Nature-Based Decoration', as Braches terms it, seems to have begun almost without much prior warning in 1892. Yet he explains that there were in truth two movements that appear to have kick-started such startling developments in books and book design. First came initiatives led by artists, notably Derkinderen, Diepenbrock, and Roland Hulst, who belonged to a circle of writers and artists who launched a literary renaissance in the Netherlands in around 1885, known as the 'Eighties Movement'. Among this group is a name that bibliophiles and print enthusiasts on this side of the Channel will undoubtedly have heard of — Jan Toorop (1858–1928). He was much influenced as an artist by the Symbolists, notably Ensor and Redon. He visited London in the late 1880s and came into contact with both William Morris and Burne-Jones. At this time he was in tune with their socialist tendencies. There was also a second and equally significant group that aided the burgeoning of this kind of book design and this emanated from the Museum Schools, which had been set up at the beginning of the 1880s to promote the teaching of drawing and the revival of the applied arts.

The rise of material rationalism in the Netherlands in 1892 seems to have been inspired, perhaps a little surprisingly, by Walter Crane rather than any other Arts and Crafts movement artist. Braches explains that this came about as 'a consequence of the relative isolation in which Nieuwe Kunst began to develop'. Crane became known in the Low Countries via Brussels since two important exhibitions took place in Belgium — at Les Vingt in March 1891 in Brussels and at the Association pour L'Art in Antwerp the following year.

In 1894 Roland Hulst came to England to bring himself up to date with developments in book design and this visit coincided with a decline in admiration for Crane amongst the Dutch avant-garde. This change in events occurred, somewhat paradoxically, as his reputation with the general public in the Netherlands was in the ascendant. It was not only Hulst who held such views...