Biography

1863	Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht is born on 24 October in Zeist on the ‘Pavia’ estate as the second son of Matthieu Christiaan Hendrik Knight Pauw van Wieldrecht, Lord of Wieldrecht (1816–1895), and Aletta Cornelia Anna Voombergh (1828–1913). Henry has one older brother, Maarten Iman (1860–1913), and two sisters, Agnes Henriëtte (‘An’, 1858–1925) and Adriana Johanna (‘Jen’ or ‘Jenny’, 1865–1936).
1868	Henry’s portrait is painted by the renowned painter Johann Georg Schwartze, as are his parents, brother, and sisters.
1872–‘78	According to an annotation in the journal of his brother Maarten, Henry attends boarding school in Noordwijk (Schreuders Institute), which he experiences as a ‘long-term imprisonment’.
1873–‘79	Henry van Wieldrecht takes a number of trips together with his family: to Germany (August 1873, August 1874, and August to September 1879) and Switzerland (August to September 1877). All four trips have been preserved in Henry’s own travel journals. One can assume the family travelled abroad on holiday on a yearly basis.
1881	In September of this year, Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht enters law school in Utrecht. He lives in a rented room at Achter Sint Pieter F 340 (renumbered as No. 2 in 1891).
1887	On 23 December, Pauw van Wieldrecht receives his Bachelor of Laws degree.
1888	According to the civil registry of Zeist, Pauw van Wieldrecht is officially registered in Utrecht as of 30 April.
1889	Pauw van Wieldrecht travels to the Isle of Wight.
1895–‘96	Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht’s father dies in 1895. In the following year, he inherits the fiefdom (‘ambachtsheerlijkheid’) Heesbeen, ‘with all rights to tithe etc. associated with it’, the equivalent of Dfl. 3,750.
	Pauw van Wieldrecht travels to Scotland. According to the Zeist population register, as of 29 November he is registered at the country house ‘Pavia’ (arriving from Utrecht). At a certain point, Pauw van Wieldrecht moves to the ‘Norwegian House’ on the premises of the estate.
1896–‘99	Pauw van Wieldrecht travels to France, Corsica, and probably also Norway. According to his brother’s daily journal, Henry becomes romantically involved with Agnes Henriëtte Labouchère in 1896. She is his first cousin, specifically, the daughter of his mother’s sister, Henriëtte Maria Jacoba Labouchère-Voombergh, who lives at Slot Zeist. In 1899, Maarten records the end of the courtship in his journal.
1897	Henry participates in the Nationale Tentoonstelling van Nijverheid en Kunst (‘National Exhibition of Industry and Art’) in Dordrecht. He becomes a member of the ‘Ridderschap van Utrecht’ (‘Knighthood of Utrecht’).
1898	Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht is a member of the honorary guard at the inauguration of Queen Wilhelmina in Amsterdam. He travels with Jacob Willem des Tombe to Finland and Russia.
1899	Pauw van Wieldrecht leaves law school without obtaining his doctorate. He travels to Norway and Berlin.
1900	Pauw van Wieldrecht travels to Norway.
1901	Pauw van Wieldrecht takes a trip to Iceland (August) and Norway. His account of his travels in Iceland has been preserved.
1902	Henry travels to Spain and probably also Norway.
1903	On 29 January in Amersfoort, Pauw van Wieldrecht weds Johanna Elisabeth Boissevain (Amsterdam, July 1874–10 April 1959, The Hague), daughter of Mijnhard Johannes Boissevain (1845–1917) and Johanna Juliana Hock (1846–1909). The couple takes a honeymoon trip to Italy, Austria, and Germany. According to the Zeist population register, Henry registers in Driebergen on 11 July and moves into the country house ‘De Wildbaan’.
	Pauw van Wieldrecht’s first daughter, Johanna Alexandra, is born on 12 November.
1905	On 7 March, Pauw van Wieldrecht’s second daughter is born, Agnes Renée.
1906	On 22 May, Pauw van Wieldrecht’s third daughter is born, Irène Héloïse. Pauw van Wieldrecht takes a trip to Norway.
1907–‘09	As of 17 June 1907, Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht is registered in the Zeist civil registry, along with his wife and children. From 24 June 1909, a butler, a governess (Maude Mary Brookes), and three servants are registered here as well.
	On 18 October 1907, Pauw van Wieldrecht’s fourth daughter is born, Adriana Johanna Thelma.
1908	Pauw van Wieldrecht is a jury member of the ‘Nationale Fotografie-Wedstrijd’ (‘National Photography Competition’).
1910	Pauw van Wieldrecht’s fifth daughter, Dorothea Anna, is born on 10 September in Bosch en Duin (municipality of Zeist).
1912	On 2 June of this year, Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht dies in Bosch en Duin. According to the ‘memorandum of succession’, he leaves behind a capital amounting to Dfl. 49,876.69. In November, his widow and children move to the United Kingdom, together with the butler and governess.
1923–‘59	On 5 September 1923, Pauw van Wieldrecht’s widow marries LL.M. Willem Henri Johan Blanckenhagen (1876–1950) in Lausanne, Switzerland. She dies in 1959.
2007	The heirs of the Pauw van Wieldrecht family donate photographs, glass lantern plate slides, and travel journals of Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht to the Rijksmuseum.

Discussion

Jonkheer Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht was born in 1863 on the country estate ‘Pavia’, near the town of Zeist. As a child he was called ‘Heintje’, and later, ‘Henk’. At the time of Henry’s birth, his father, Matthieu Christiaan Hendrik Knight Pauw van Wieldrecht, was the chamberlain of King William III ‘in extraordinary service’, after having been a diplomat in Stuttgart, Madrid and Vienna, and a chamberlain ‘in ordinary service’. Later, in 1873, he became a member of the Hoge Raad van Adel (‘High Council of Nobles’). By Royal Decree No. 100 of 22 October 1847, Matthieu Pauw van Wieldrecht was ‘elevated to the Dutch nobility with the title of knight’, along with his two surviving brothers. From this time forward, the three brothers referred to themselves as ‘Pauw van Wieldrecht’. With the death of Matthieu Christiaan Hendrik in 1895, the title of knight was transferred to Henry’s brother, Maarten Iman Pauw van Wieldrecht, who was two years his senior. Henry inherited the tile of ‘Lord of Heesbeen’.

The Pauw van Wieldrechts belonged to the Delft branch of the Pauw family, which boasted connections to a thirteenth-century founding father. Through their background and affluence, the family belonged to the top layer of society in Zeist. With the death of Maarten’s only son, Reinier Pauw van Wieldrecht, in 1939, the male line of the family died out.

Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht never had a career in the truest sense. As there was no need for him to work for a living, he was able to spend most of his time travelling, hunting, and taking photographs—three activities that went exceedingly well together. Particularly after his father died in 1895, Henry was a man of considerable financial means, with an inheritance in excess of Dfl. 740,000 (consisting primarily of stock shares). The title of ‘Lord of Heesbeen’, which he had also inherited, provided him with an income, specifically the ‘right to tithe’. This in no way alters the fact that—unlike his brother—Henry’s name is not listed in ‘those most highly assessed in our Nations’ direct taxes’, published annually in the Staatscourant (the official newspaper of the Dutch state).

In 1881, Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht entered law school in Utrecht, receiving his Bachelor of Laws degree in 1887. In 1899, however, his brother Maarten regretfully records in his journal that Henry quit his studies without obtaining his doctorate. Henry had moved back to Zeist in 1895, the year in which his father died. He lived at the ‘Norwegian house’, which his father had commissioned to be built nearby the manor Pavia. It is highly likely that a butler (Jacob Jansen) and a maid (Jansje van der Neest) were also living at this address starting in 1898.

During his years as a law student, Henry was a board member in various clubs and committees of the ‘Corps’ (a university fraternity), including the Commissie voor het Scherm- en Gymnastiekgezelschap Olympia (‘Committee for Fencing and Gymnastics Club Olympia’), two clubs for ‘gezellig verkeer’ (for ‘social interaction’)—T.U.B. and Amicitiae Sacrum—and the IJsclub (‘Ice Club’). In 1886, he took part in the masquerade ball to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the University of Utrecht. In 1886, he was a member of the committee that organised the festivities surrounding Princess Wilhelmina’s birthday in Zeist. In 1898, he was a member of the honour guard for her inauguration as queen in Amsterdam. One year prior to this, Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht had been accepted into the ‘Utrechtse Ridderschap’ (‘Utrecht Knighthood’), an association of nobles that after 1850 no longer played any role in the public administration of the Netherlands.

Few other ‘feats of arms’ are known after Henry stopped with his studies in 1899. In 1908, he was a jury member for the Nationale Fotografie-Wedstrijd (‘National Photography Competition’), organised by the Vereeniging tot Verfraaiing van de Gemeente Zeist en tot Bevordering van het Vreemdelingenverkeer (‘Association for the Beautification of the Municipality Zeist and for the Promotion of Tourist Traffic’). Other jury members included the secretary of the AFV (Amateur Fotografen Vereniging, ‘Amateur Photographers Association’) A. van Dijk, the Zeist painter H.W. Jansen, J.R.A. Schouten and Johan Huijsen.

Apart from these activities, it appears that Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht was particularly devoted to his private hobbies, which not only included hunting, travel, and photography, but also weightlifting, biking, running, and—as seen in several surviving photos—tennis and skating. In addition, Henry’s surviving travel journals for the years 1873, 1874, 1877, and 1879 indicate his favourite pastime in his youth was certain to have been fishing.

In Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht’s circles, such life fulfilment was by no means out of the ordinary. Henry’s own father had been a diplomat for approximately ten years, but after fulfilling this function—according to his great-granddaughter Agnies Pauw van Wieldrecht in her book Grootmama, mogen wij kluiven? (‘Grandmama, May We Gnaw?’)—he never achieved anything else, though he was known to have had numerous hobbies. According to reports, he apparently spent ‘his entire life walking around in slippers’. By contrast, Henry’s brother, Maarten, served in various functions throughout his life, including that of king’s chamberlain, as a member of the Zeist city council, as a member of the Provincial States, and as mayor of Leersum.

Virtually nothing is known about Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht, apart from summary information to be found in the Nederland’s Adelsboek (‘Netherlands Nobles Book’, also known as the ‘little red books’) and in the aforementioned book of Agnies Pauw van Wieldrecht. The photos that Henry took are therefore the most important source about (how he lived) his life. They depict his activities, home, family, relatives and acquaintances.

In an album (probably now incomplete) that includes his earliest dated photos (1888–1889), there are shots of several country estates: Hydepark, Hoog Beek en Royen, Beek en Royen, De Oorsprong, and Kloetinge. With the exception of the hunting lodge in Kloetinge, all of these houses photographed and frequented by Pauw van Wieldrecht were located near one another. They were also in the vicinity of the manor in which he was born (Pavia) and the house in which he would later reside (De Wildbaan).

The album depicts the circles in which Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht moved. He was part of a tight social group, in part linked to each other through marriage—the ‘noble belt’ of the Utrecht ‘Heuvelrug’ (‘Hill Ridge’). Virtually all of the families with which he associated had recently been inducted into the noble class and lived in country houses that were mainly built in the nineteenth century. The same applied to Pauw van Wieldrecht himself: his father and uncles had acquired the title of knight in 1847; Pavia and De Wildbaan were built in the 1850s. In short, he was therefore a member of the ‘young nobility).

The album with Henry’s earliest photos as well includes a number of shots taken in the room where he lived as a student, as well as the room of Jan Willem des Tombe (with whom he travelled to Finland and Russia in 1898). Also found in this album are photos of the room(s) occupied by Henry’s sister, Jenny, on the Mauritskade in The Hague and of ‘Dijnselburg’ in/at Huis ter Heide, where Maarten was living at the time.

Henry began taking photos during his student years. He is likely to have learned photography from his father: found among the photos he left behind are two stereo photos with the annotation ‘Papa phot’ written on the reverse side. They were taken in 1869 or 1873. In the travel journals that have survived—1873, 1874, 1877, and 1879—there is still no mention of Henry taking photos himself, only references to the purchasing of photos and a portrait photo of himself taken by a photographer in Bonn, Germany. The earliest sign of Henry’s interest in photography dates from 1882, in the form of his own signature placed in P.J. Hollman’s Handboek voor beoefenaars der photographie (‘Manual for Practitioners of Photography’), which was published in 1859 by J.C.A. Sulpke in Amsterdam. This particular copy is currently preserved at the Rijksmuseum and originates from the library of the collector Bert Hartkamp. At this time, Henry was not quite yet twenty years of age.

The oldest of Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht’s photos that have been preserved date from 1888. These are found in the aforementioned album, as well as in an album with photos that he took in and around Kloetinge in the years 1888–1908. This latter album is held in a private collection; the other is preserved in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The last dated photos that he took are from 1910, two years prior to his death. Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht’s activity as an amateur photographer therefore coincides with the tremendous boom in amateur photography that took place in those decades. When he was awarded a silver medal for his fifteen ‘landscapes, groups and interiors’ at the Nationale Tentoonstelling van Nijverheid en Kunst (‘National Exhibition of Industry and Art’, Dordrecht 1897), Ignatius Bispinck observed in Lux: ‘The Norwegian landscapes of Jhr. Pauw van Wieldrecht are very pretty: this amateur as well belongs to the serious ever-progressing photographers [‘lichtbeeldenaars’], who deserve our esteem.’ The Utrechtsch Nieuwsblad spoke of ‘nice views of Spitsbergen, the Italian border, Corsica, Norway, etc.’

Bispinck’s use of the words ‘serious ever-progressing photographers’ suggests that Pauw van Wieldrecht was counted among those photographers who took their hobby very seriously, wishing to elevate photography and standing up to the low quality of many professional photographers and the lack of any pretention on the part of many amateurs. One must wonder, however, to what degree Pauw van Wieldrecht was really involved in the amateur photography ‘scene’. The exhibition in Dordrecht is possibly the only time that Pauw van Wieldrecht participated in such an event. There is no record of him having been a member of an amateur photographers association, nor is there evidence to suggest that he ever devoted energy to the ‘good cause’ in any other form. Henry is likely to have been someone that followed his own path and who photographed exclusively for his own pleasure. Because of his social background and his choice of subjects, Pauw van Wieldrecht was far removed from the ‘average’ amateur photographer, who was typically from the upper middle class. Henry was more representative of the type ‘gentleman photographer’, a phenomenon that was rarely encountered in the Netherlands. He has more in common with Alexandrine Tinne (1835–1869), who was likewise very wealthy and possessed a similar repertoire that included portraits, travel photos, as well as cityscapes of the city where she lived, The Hague.

Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht photographed chiefly during his travels and hunting parties, and in his immediate personal surroundings, i.e. relatives, friends, acquaintances, and family. It appears that he only took shots of the things that interested him. Hunting was one of his passions, as affirmed by various photos. With this subject, he limited himself to group portraits that showed wild animals shot that day neatly lined up in rows and laid at the feet of the participants in the hunting party (the ‘tableau’). On the reverse of two of these group portrait photos, today found in the Snouckaert van Schauburg family archive, an unknown person has noted very matter-of-factly: ‘Zeisterbosch, 3 November 1899. Shot: 1 hare, 1 woodcock, 98 rabbits, 3 cats, of which I: 1 woodcock, 22 rabbits’; and ‘Hunting party of 26 Nov. 1906 in the Zeisterbosch. 38 Rabbits 2 woodcocks 1 miscellaneous [,] I: 6 rabbits, 1 woodcock.’

As far as can be gathered from the photos that have survived, Henry did not take any photographs during the hunt itself. This would hardly have been feasible with the camera he used, which was undoubtedly neither small nor light. In one photo, he has clearly staged a hunting scene, showing his brother shooting at a wild boar, which in turn appears to attack in retaliation. There is no doubt the boar was stuffed, perhaps originating from his own home. The photos that Henry took at his country house ‘De Wildbaan’, where he moved following his marriage in 1903, show that he was surrounded by dozens, if not hundreds, of hunting trophies: antlers, a stuffed fox, a moose’s head, deer, a Eurasian curlew shot in the vicinity of Kloetinge, etc. Only one of these trophies is likely to have survived to the present-day: the stuffed polar bear that Henry shot in August on Frans Joseph Land (near Spitsbergen), which now stands in the home of a family member in the vicinity of Steenwijk. In that year, Maarten observed in his daily journal: ‘My brother Henry takes a big trip to the high north in the summer, has the fortune of shooting a polar bear there, as well as other wild animals including four moose.’ When Henry returned one year later from a trip to Iceland, Maarten wrote: ‘Those hunting trips are becoming an extravagant fascination.’

Not only have Pauw van Wieldrecht’s photos from this trip in 1901 survived, but also the travel journal that he wrote. It is the only travel diary from this period that he photographed; the others date from the years 1873 to 1879. It is also the only detailed source with respect to Henry’s life and his trials and tribulations. We encounter a laconic man who accepted circumstances as they happened. During the trip up, he became engaged in a conversation with a British group that eventually invited him to join them. ‘As I was all on my own and had know idea where to go, I accepted.’ For sixteen days, they travelled by horse across the island, accompanied by four guides and forming a ‘caravan of thirty-six animals’, of which eight were for Henry, his guide, and his luggage. As opposed to many other travellers, he had apparently done little advanced preparation. He described the hardships experienced during this trip, however, in a tone that was matter-of-fact and with a sense of irony. Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht, who had never slept in a tent before and had expected to spend the night in farmhouses along the way, had taken insufficient measures to protect himself against the cold. The tent he was assigned was so small that he was unable to close it, so that his ‘toes had no problems with the warmth at night’. He put on as many clothes as he could ‘to stay somewhat warm at night. My pince-nez was the only thing I removed.’ In his travel journal, Henry mentions a ‘large camera’ for glass plate negatives (used in combination with a tripod) and a ‘Bull’s-Eye’, a hand-held camera for roll film. It was this camera that he used the most. His equipment also included guns, even though one was sent back to Reykjavik at the outset of the journey: ‘The chance that we’ll run into reindeer in those regions, where we think we’ll be heading, has been reduced to zero.’ He managed to shoot various animals, including a swan, which he had stuffed by a taxidermist in Edinburgh during his return trip. It later functioned as a fire screen standing in Henry’s sitting room ‘as one of my hunting trophies’.

In 1903, Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht married Johanna Elisabeth (‘Sissy’) Boissevain, who was eleven years his junior. This did not stop him from taking several extended trips. Plaquettes attached to wild animals mounted on the walls of De Wildbaan affirm that he travelled to Norway in September 1905, while photos indicate he had also travelled there in 1906. During the young couple’s honeymoon trip to Italy, Austria, and Germany in 1903, Henry purchased photographs, but hardly took any photos himself.

Between 1903 and 1910, Henry and his wife had five daughters, all who figure in many of his photos. They were considered to be beauties. One family member in The Hague wrote: ‘When the Pauw [girls] walked along the Boulevard [of Scheveningen] wearing their straw hats and in their red blazers, traffic stopped and everyone turned around.’ Also featured in Henry’s photos are his wife, his mother, his brother Maarten, and their children, personnel and (assistant) nannies. When considered along with the many photos of his home, De Wildbaan, and the photos that he took during his travels, then there is every indication that, in his later years, he turned to his own family life as his main photographic subject.

Among the photo albums donated to the Rijksmuseum by his descendants in 2007, there is one album entirely devoted to the country house De Wildbaan in Driebergen, where Pauw van Wieldrecht resided together with his family between 1903 and 1907. This house was commissioned to be built by the Amsterdam merchant George Luden in the late 1850s. It was designed by H.J. van den Brink, with J.D. Zocher Jr. responsible for the design of the park around it. One of the rooms in the house was used by Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht to finish his photos. The two photographs of this specific room show items such as a projector, a contact printing frame, plate holders, trays, a small rack for negatives, bottles of chemicals, and numerous photos on the wall.

Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht is certain to have taken several thousand shots in the twenty to thirty years that he photographed. This is at least the conclusion that can be made when observing the calligraphed numbers that he recorded on the reverse side of many of his photos. The highest number is 3815, a photo he took of his new-born daughter with her nanny in November 1910. The numbers are probably in reference to negatives, which would indicate annual production on a modest scale. This does not alter the fact that Henry took photos on a frequent basis.

In a letter of 1899 addressed to Jan Willem des Tombe from Berlin, he wrote that the weather there was poor: ‘I still took various photos, as [I do] almost everywhere by the way.’ The care with which he composed his shots, and their condensed—though occasionally also somewhat static and detached—character, suggest that he was a conscientious photographer. Many of his photos are stilled shots of people involved in their (day-to-day) activities. Henry’s presence in a number of group portraits is easily explained by his use of a delayed action shutter. In a group portrait that he took in 1888–’89 of his brother, Marie Pauw (who is likely to have been Maarten’s wife, Marie Repelaer), and his sister, Jenny, he is clearly shown holding the bulb of a delayed action shutter. The format of his camera required a well-considered working approach. There are few snapshot-like photos. Only the photos that he took of his trip to Finland and Russia in 1898 seem to have been taken more hastily and are lacking the compositional balance found in so many of his other photos.

Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht made his prints with great care: this impression is reinforced not only by the numbering and dating (in calligraphic writing), but also by their technical quality. His sense of accuracy is also evident in his surviving travel journals, where even the room numbers of the hotels where he stayed are regularly recorded.

Shortly after Henry died, his widow and her five children, butler and governess moved to the United Kingdom. She probably returned to the Netherlands quite soon and remarried in 1923. As Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht died fairly young and his photos were disseminated primarily in private circles only, his photos are scarcely known. There is also little information concerning the man himself. In 1999, the Rijksmuseum acquired one of Henry Pauw van Wieldrecht’s albums (of his 1889 trip to the Isle of Wight). In 2007, the museum received all of the remaining photos, glass lantern plate slides, and travel journals in the form of a donation made by the family.

Documentation