Cornelis van Noorde

Though primarily known as a topographer and landscapist, the Haarlem draughtsman Cornelis van Noorde was also very interested in the depiction of animals, especially exotic ones. The artist’s sketchbook, in the Haarlem Archives, include sketches of various animals and fish, including hyenas, lions, rhinoceros and bears, and the catalogue of the sale of his estate specifically mentions drawings of chameleons, elephants, camels and other exotic creatures.¹ It seems very likely that the present drawing, made from life in 1774, and also the drawing of chameleons from the Van den Broek collection, offered now in the concurrent online sale of Old Master and British Works on Paper, are the very works referred to in the 1796 sale catalogue. The artist’s drawing of a camel was formerly in the Van Regteren Altena collection.²

In the 18^th century, the most likely place where Van Noorde and other artists might have seen such exotic creatures, other than at travelling fairs, was in a permanent menagerie that had been set up around 1675 behind the Blauw Jan tavern, on Amsterdam’s Kloveniersburgwal.³ For more than a century, this was the only fixed location in Holland where living exotic animals could be seen, or purchased for private menageries. 

As we know from the well-explored story of the Asian elephant Hansken, drawn by Rembrandt in 1637 and paraded throughout Europe from 1633 until 1655⁴, live elephants were a great rarity in 17^th-century Europe, and they were hardly more common in Van Noorde’s time. The celebrity animal of the mid-18^th century was, though, undoubtedly the rhinoceros known as Miss Clara (c.1738-1758), subject of the recent exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

1.  B. Sliggers, Het schetsboek van Cornelis van Noorde, Haarlem 1982, pp.139-154

2.  Sold Amsterdam, Christie’s, 13 May 2015, in lot 32 (b)

3.  Sliggers, op. cit., p.139

4. M.R. Abbing, Rembrandt’s Elephant. Following in Hansken’s Footsteps, Amstelveen 2021, with accompanying exhibition, Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis