Anton Henstenburgh was the son of Hoorn pastry baker and watercolorist Herman Henstenburgh (1667-1726). Together with his father and the latter’s teacher Johannes Bronkhorst (1648-1727), Anton was one of an illustrious trio of natural history artists active in prosperous Hoorn, whose distinctive insect drawings defined the genre in Holland during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

A baker by trade and self-taught draftsman by leisure, Bronkhorst had set up shop in 1670 in Hoorn, the northern port city of the Dutch East India Company. Ships docked in Hoorn’s harbor brought countless curiosities from around the globe, including natural history specimens, favored by the local artists. According to his biographer Johan van Gool, Herman Henstenburgh excelled at copying watercolors by Pieter Holstein, which were so good that his parents allowed him in 1683 to study with Bronkhorst.

Herman’s five children all married into the elite upper class of Hoorn, but only Anton followed his father’s footsteps as an artist and pastry chef. In 1709, Herman bought a house for 700 guilders on Hoorn’s main street. The garden housed a big kitchen, in which Henstenburgh created his pastries. In addition to his work as a pastry baker, he also worked as a chef for wealthy clients, creating meat pies for parties and renting out tablecloths: seemingly the predecessor of a modern-day caterer.

On 8 December 1722, Herman’s estate appointed three guardians to his three minor daughters, who were to inherit the tablecloths, while his son Anton were to receive his hobby, consisting of drawings, prints, models, sketches, paints, etc. (‘de liefhebberij bestaande in tekeningen, prenten, modellen, schetsen, verwen etc:’), as well as the house. As per Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, Anton also cleaned and restored paintings in the local Sint Pietershof in 1742.[1] Hofstede de Groot classified some of his drawings as Surinamese insects, although it is unlikely Anton visited Surinam.

Anton’s oeuvre was virtually unknown until a group of 135 drawings of birds, butterflies, insects and flowers, including the present Four butterflies and three moths, appeared at auction in 1972, as part of the famous van Pallandt sale. This collection, with artists like Maria Sybilla Merian and her daughter Johanna Herolt, was formed by the Middelburg connoisseur Pieter van den Brande (167(?)-1718), and passed down his family, remarkably intact, until sold by Van den Brande’s descendant Baron van Pallandt. Anton’s nineteen sheets included in the sale, reminiscent of his father Herman, were signed with a similar monogram but clearly composed of the initials AH.[2]

According to Van Gool, Henstenburgh used pigments of superior quality and his watercolors look more like paintings as a result. First, he would draw contours with pencil and then apply mixed pigments to parchment. His experiments with pigments and transparent layers of egg white and oil paint resulted in watercolors with sophisticated depths. Often commissioned, his drawings entered important collections in the Netherlands and abroad. Around 1650, the first cabinets of curiosity were introduced in the Netherlands with taxidermy birds, prepared butterflies, shells, minerals and fossils. By the end of the seventeenth century, and especially in the early eighteenth century, many collectors commissioned artists to paint their naturalia.

These watercolors were kept in portfolios, used to show to visitors. Agnes Block’s country estate Vijverhof aan de Vecht showcased exotic birds and plants as well as prepared butterflies of which she commissioned drawings by different artists, including Merian, Bronkhorst, and Henstenburgh. In 1700, at least three drawings by Henstenburgh were in the collection of Cosimo III de Medici (1642-1723), who had visited the Netherlands twice. An early drawing made by Anton at age eleven is in Braunschweig’s Kupferstichkabinett, part of a large group of twenty-six drawings by Henstenburgh from the collection of Duchess Elisabeth Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1683-1767).[3]

[1] R.K.D. Excerpts no. 222174

[2] Charles Dumas & Robert-Jan te Rijdt, Kleur en Raffinement, Tekeningen uit de Unicorno collectie, exh.cat., Amsterdam/Dordrecht, 1994-1995, pp. 90-91, under no. 38

[3] http://kk.haum-bs.de/?id=z-05385