Václav Hollar, Bohemian

The following biography of Hollar was written by one of his contemporaries, John Aubrey (1626–1697). I take my text here from the two-volume edition of Aubrey’s Brief Lives by Andrew Clark (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), i:407–8.

Another of Aubrey’s modern editors, Oliver Lawson Dick, gives the following introductory biography of Hollar: “Engraver. He lived in Frankfort, Cologne and Antwerp and had difficulty enough to subsist, until Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, brought him to England. Teacher of drawing to the Prince of Wales 1640. He fought in the ranks for the King, but was captured by Parliament and escaped to Antwerp. In 1652 he returned to England. He was appointed His Majesty’s Designer in 1660. Before the introduction of photography, picture painting and engraving were important professions, and Hollar charged fourpence an hour for his work, of which 2733 examples are enumerated. Besides making copies of famous paintings and illustrating books, Hollar executed a fine map of London after the Fire, illustrated the coronation of Charles II and engraved a series of pictures of women’s costumes, which have proved invaluable to historians.”

“Winceslaus Hollar, natus Pragae 23 Julii, st[ilo] v[etere], 1607, about 8 A.M.

“Winceslaus Hollar, Bohemus, was borne at Prague.

“His father was a Knight of the Empire: which is by lettres patent under the imperiall seale (as our baronets). I have seen it: the seale is bigger then the broad seale of England: in the middle is the imperiall coate; and round about it are the coates of the Princes Electors. His father was a Protestant, and either for keeping a conventicle, or being taken at one, forfeited his estate, and was ruined by the Roman Catholiques.

“He told me that when he was a schoole-boy he tooke a delight in draweing of mapps; which draughts he kept, and they were pretty. He was designed by his father to have been a lawyer, and was putt to that profession, when his father’s troubles, together with the warres, forced him to leave his countrey. So that what he did for his delight and recreation only when a boy, proved to be his livelyhood when a man.

“I thinke he stayd sometime in Lowe Germany, then he came into England, wher he was very kindly entertained by that great patron of painters and draughts-men [Thomas Howard] Lord High Marshall, earl of Arundell and Surrey, where he spent his time in draweing and copying rarities, which he did etch (i.e. eate with aqua fortis in copper plates). When the Lord Marshall went ambassador to the Emperor of Germany to Vienna, he travelld with much grandeur; and among others, Mr. Hollar went with him (very well clad) to take viewes, landskapes, buildings, etc. remarqueable in their journey, which wee see now at the print shopps.

“He hath donne the most in that way that ever anyone did, insomuch that I have heard Mr. John Evelyn, R.S.S., say that at sixpence a print his labour would come to . . . . . li. (quaere J[ohn] E[velyn]). He was very short-sighted, and did worke so curiously that the curiosity of his worke is not to be judged without a magnifying-glasse. When he tooke his landskaps, he, then, had a glasse to helpe his sight.

“At Arundel-house he maried with my ladie’s wayting woman, Mrs. . . . Tracy, by whom he haz a daughter, that was one of the greatest beauties I have seen; his son by her dyed in the plague, an ingeniose youth, drew delicately.

“When the civil warres brake-out, the Lord Marshall had leave to goe beyond sea. Mr. Hollar went into the Lowe-Countries, where he stayed till about 1649.

“I remember he told me that when he first came into England, (which was a serene time of peace) that the people, both poore and rich, did looke cheerfully, but at his returne, he found the countenances of the people all changed, melancholy, spightfull, as if bewitched.

“I have sayd before that his father was ruined upon the account of the Protestant religion. Winceslaus dyed a Catholique, of which religion, I suppose, he might be ever since he came to Arundel-howse.

“He was a very friendly good-natured man as could be, but shiftlesse as to the world, and dyed not rich. He maried a second wife, 1665, by whom he has severall children. He dyed on our Ladie-day (25 Martii), 1677, and is buried in St. Margaret’s church-yard at Westminster neer the north west corner of the tower. Had he lived till the 13th of July following, he had been just 70 yeares old.”

Biography

After his family was ruined by the Sack of Prague in the Thirty Years' War, the young Hollar, who had been destined for the law, determined to become an artist. The earliest of his works that have come down to us are dated 1625 and 1626; they are small plates, and one of them is a copy of a "Virgin and Child" by Dürer, whose influence upon Hollar's work was always great. In 1627 he moved to the region around Stuttgart; before moving to Straßburg, and then, in 1633, to Cologne.

It was in 1636 that he attracted the notice of the famous nobleman and art collector Thomas, earl of Arundel, then on an embassy to the imperial court. Employed as a draftsman he travelled with Arundel to Vienna and Prague, and finally in 1637 returned with him to England where he was to remain for many years. Though he lived in the household of Lord Arundel, he seems not to have worked exclusively for him, but to have begun selling works to publishers, which was afterwards his primary means of distribution.

During his first year in England he created "View of Greenwich," for Stent, the print-seller. Nearly 3 feet (0.9 m) long, he received thirty shillings for the plate, a small fraction of its present value. Afterwards he fixed the price of his work at fourpence an hour, and measured his time by a sand-glass. He continued to produce works prolifically throughout the English Civil War, but it adversely affected his income. Lord Arundel left England in 1642, and Hollar passed into the service of the duke of York, taking with him a wife and two children.

During the period of the unrest of the Civil Wars he worked in Antwerp, where he produced many of his most renowned works, including views, his "muffs" and "shells". In 1652 he returned to London, and lived for a time with Faithorne the engraver near Temple Bar.

During the following years many books were published which he illustrated: Ogilby's Virgil and Homer, Stapylton's Juvenal, and Dugdale's Warwickshire, St Paul's and Monasticon (part i.). His income fell as book-sellers continued to decline his work, and the Court did not purchase his works following The Restoration. During this time he lost his young son, also reputed to have artistic ability, to the Black Death.

After the Great Fire of London he produced some of his famous "Views of London"; and it may have been the success of these plates which induced the king to send him, in 1668, to Tangier, to draw the town and forts. During his return to England a desperate and successful engagement was fought by his ship, the "Mary Rose," under Captain John Kempthorne, against seven Algerine men-of-war,--a battle which Hollar etched for Ogilby's Africa.

He lived eight years after his return, still working for the booksellers, and continuing to produce well-regarded works until his death, for example a large plate of Edinburgh dated 1670. He died in extreme poverty, his last recorded words being a request to the bailiffs that they would not carry away the bed on which he was dying.