JEAN-BAPTISTE PERRONEAU (1715-1783)

Portrait of Gerard Meerman (c.1761)

Pastel on paper 88 x 68 cm

Museo Meermanno-Westreenianum, The Hague

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In the 1750s, two of the best portrait painters of the XVIIIth century; Jean-Baptiste Perroneau and the Swiss Jean-Etienne Liotard came to the Netherlands in the hope of finding a clientele. Liotard arrived in 1756, two years after Perroneau. They were both to remain in the country for several years.

Perroneau’s strength lay in his virtually unrivalled talent for capturing an elegant yet unaffected pose, his sense of colour and his skill in reproducing the lavish garments in which his clients took pride. Perroneau produced more than forty portraits in the Netherlands, in both, pastels and oils, and though he never managed to obtain a commission from the highest circles, the court of the Stadholders, he was nevertheless one of the most successful portraitists working in the Netherlands.

Gerard Meerman (1722-1771) a prominent lawyer, book collector and diplomat from The Hague, was also known for his books on typography and the history of Law.

Gerard Meerman experienced his finest hour in 1764. That is when this wealthy Rotterdam legal scholar bought the almost complete collection of manuscripts from the defunct Jesuit College in Paris. The famous collection contained hundreds of medieval Greek and Latin manuscripts. Only when the sale had already been concluded did the French crown take action and have it seized. A settlement was subsequently reached. The manuscripts would be allowed to be transported to Rotterdam if Meerman would give the king 37 of them, in return Louis XV would grant Meerman the order of St. Michael.

Gerard Meerman had already started collecting books at the age of twenty. Initially mainly in the field of Roman law; he later broadened his collecting area. He focused in particular on the purchase of medieval manuscripts and products of the earliest printing press. Diplomatic missions to England were used to conduct research in all kinds of libraries there, and he acquired countless rare works at auctions and from dealers at home and abroad. For example, in 1755 he bought from the estate of the Enkhuizen preacher Thade Muil the manuscript of Jacob van Maerlant’s Rhyming Bible, completed in 1332 – now one of the masterpieces of the Museum Meermanno. Here we are not only looking into the bewigged face of a great book collector, painted around 1761 by Jean Baptist Perronneau, but also at someone who thoroughly studied the books he bought. For example, in 1765 Gerard Meerman published an extensive study on the invention and early history of printing, the “Origines typographicae” where he presented his countryman, Laurens Janszoon Coster (1370-1440) as the inventor of the printing press

Perroneau has portrayed him from the middle up, turned slightly to the left and with his right hand tucked into his fur-trimmed jacket. Mr. Meerman looks very pleased with himself.