Portrait of a Woman by Frans Hals. This significant portrait, albeit of a person whose identity is unknown, is the highlight of the Michaelis Collection. It introduces a note of realism to the portraiture on view here. Her ruddy face and simple outfit – with not a shred of flattery between them – are hallmarks of the painter’s later style.
Aje at the Old Town House states: ‘This building was erected in 1755 as a Burger Watch House, and was used in succession by the Burger Senate and Municipality of Cape Town until 1905. It was given by the city of Cape Town to the Union Government by whom it was restored under the direction of JM Solomon Architect, to house the Michaelis Collection. And there you have it in a nutshell: a synopsis of the fortunes of an old and venerable Cape Town structure.
Although you might not see it now, there was a time when Greenmarket Square was dominated by South Africa’s oldest civic structure. Its baroque facade, attributed to Matthias Lotter, has hardly changed since it was built, but the interior was, over the years, chopped up into a series of rabbit hutches for civic use, particularly in the days prior to the construction of the ‘new City Hall on the Grand Parade. Joseph Michael Solomon, a brilliant young architect from Herbert Baker’s firm, was appointed to refurbish the Old Town House to house the fabulous collection of 17th-century Old Master Dutch and Flemish paintings that Lady Phillips, who played a leading role in projects aimed at cultivating and preserving the local artistic heritage, had persuaded Sir Max Michaelis to donate to the Union of South Africa in 1914.
The Cape Times in September 1916 described how ‘under the fostering care of Mr. Solomon the barnlike shell, cumbered with mean rooms and stairways, disfigured with boarded ceilings, and littered with unsightly partitions, was transformed into an architectural gem Not much of the original 18th-century interior had survived and Solomon, in bringing it back to life, didn’t strive to reproduce a period interior either. This is a personal fantasy, albeit one which is the result of considerable research in the galleries and vestibules of genuine 17th-century Dutch guildhalls. In some ways, it is thought that this conversion into an art museum paralleled that of the Mauritshuis in The Hague and, in a way, the Old Town House with the Michaelis Collection can be considered Cape Town’s equivalent of the Mauritshuis. In his Catalogue of the Michaelis Collection, Professor D Bax praises Solomon as an artist: ‘Out of heterogeneous elements he created a harmonious whole in admirable taste, and with such skill that it actually seems pervaded by the spirit of the past. ’
The new gallery was opened in 1916 and today it features paintings by Dutch masters including Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael and Jacob Adriaensz Backer. This gift was interpreted as a nation-building gesture in South Africa at that time. Paintings by artists representative of the Golden Age of Dutch culture, given by a British donor, seemed appropriate given that South Africa had then recently become a single new nation with the passing of the Act of Union in 1910. This Act fused the former British colonies of the Cape and Natal with the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State into a single entity. A collection of works by the artistic forebears of the Afrikaners, assembled with British money and showing a distinctively English taste in Dutch art, was deemed highly symbolic of political reconciliation and cultural unity at the time, a mere decade or so after the end of the Anglo-Boer War.
The Michaelis Collection remains an open collection and works have been added to it over the decades since it was established. Lady Michaelis gave many additional works after Sir Max Michaelis’s death in 1932. The collection has also been expanded by the addition of works on paper, notably etchings by Rembrandt and many other artists. The last acquisition of a major painting was in 1982. With the formation of Iziko Museums, many of the Dutch and Flemish works in the collection of the South African National Gallery are often showcased here.
The architect JM Solomon modelled the staircase on a 17th-century one in the Mauritshuis, a small palace in The Hague in the Netherlands, which was adapted in the 19th century to serve as a museum for paintings. Solomon’s domed ceiling is a representation of a southern celestial hemisphere.
Interior of the Grote Kerk at Bergen-op-Zoom, by Gerard Houckgeest. One of three church interiors in the collection, it’s full of everyday realism. A Roman Catholic church converted for Protestant use, it dates from the years 1443-c.1530.
In one of the smaller rooms on the first floor, the black and white floor tiles and the terracotta tile-laid fireplace could have come straight from a 17th-century Dutch room, or a Vermeer painting. Was Solomon inspired by something he saw on his travels?
Practically nothing was left of the original interior of the old Burgher Watch House when Solomon set to work on it. For the Frans Hals Gallery, on the first floor, he derived a design from a number of sources in Holland, England and France. The system of bearer and cross-beams in the ceiling, for example, where corbels support the bearer beams, is found in Holland in early 17th-century halls. The parquet floor blocks were sawn from loft beams from the original building.
A chunky linen cupboard, from the 17th century, dominates a room on the first floor. Dutch blue-on-white pictorial tiles, which alternate with white tiles in the skirting, depict landscapes. They date from the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Solomon took the blue-on-white Dutch tiles of the fireplace in the Print Room from an old house in Kalk Bay. Dating from the 18th century, they depict biblical scenes, giving also book, chapter and verse.
