The treasure of Spaarnberg

Abstract

For reasons of security and the valuable nature of the collection, the library of the Amsterdam botanic garden, the Hortus botanicus, was moved to Amsterdam University Library in I983. Initially unfamiliar with the history of the Hortus library, but surprised at the number of magnificent early nineteenth-century illustrated works in it - a great many of them in exquisite bindings - the author investigated its genesis and subsequent development. His research led to the discovery that these books originally formed part of the collection of the Spaarnberg country estate near Santpoort, assembled in the first half of the nineteenth century by the immensely rich Amsterdam banker Adriaan van der Hoop (I778-I854). At his house on Amsterdam's Keizersgracht, where he spent the winter months, van der Hoop also assembled a choice collection of paintings by seventeenth-century Dutch masters. In the summer he lived on his country estate, where in his heated greenhouses and orangery he was able to indulge his passion for botany by building up an impressive collection of exotic plants. The age in which van der Hoop lived is regarded as the blossoming of botanic book illustration, and in this area too he could afford the very best: priceless works full of handsomely hand-coloured plates, published in small print runs and bound in fine bindings. Professional botanists from the botanical gardens of Amsterdam and Leiden were eager to visit Spaarnberg not only for its rare plants but also for the library of works that were beyond their own reach. Van der Hoop left his collection of paintings to the city of Amsterdam, where it ultimately found its way into the Rijksmuseum. Some of the works are representative of the peak of the golden age of Dutch painting. The library initially remained intact at Spaarnberg. In I924 one of van der Hoop's descendants gifted the botanical works to the Amsterdam Hortus botanicus, while the zoological works went to the library of the Royal Dutch Zoological Society, Matura Artis Magistra. That Spaarnberg's library has survived intact is due mainly to Theo J. Stomps (I885-I973), professor of botany and director of the botanic garden in Amsterdam, who ensured that the historical collection was preserved in a special bookcase kept separate from the garden's working library.