People around Philippe Smit

Born in Amsterdam on 28 June 1880, Anton Zelling worked as a journalist from 1907 to 1925 for Hofstad and Utrechts Dagblad. Married to Léonie Lowositz, he had five children from this union.

A man of great culture, he knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and spoke several languages. A talented pianist with a passion for theology, he published in 1918 a two-part work devoted to Claude Debussy and Modest Mussorgsky.¹ From 1925, he became known for his translations of several of Swedenborg’s works from Latin into Dutch, and for publishing numerous articles analyzing Swedenborgian doctrine in the magazine De Hemelsche Leer between 1930 and 1938.

A polyglot and lover of French culture, he translated the poems of Mallarmé into Dutch. Like Philippe Smit, he was interested in the poetic and musical work of Maurice Rollinat, to whom he devoted a study in 1958 in Bulletin des Amis de Maurice Rollinat².

His Swedenborgian beliefs led him in 1937 to participate, alongside Theodore Pitcairn, in the creation of the Lord’s New Church and then to establish its international structure in 1947. He remained an honorary member of the “Swedenborg Society” in The Hague until his death in 1978.

According to his son's testimony, the two men met in The Hague in 1914, an encounter that marked the beginning of a lasting relationship. Zelling wrote a long and glowing review of the painter’s first exhibition, held in Amsterdam in April 1916,³ and supported the young artist during part of the period between 1914 and 1925.⁴ During their many meetings, Zelling would sit at the piano and they would discuss art, poetry and religion.⁵
At the beginning of the 1920s, Smit executed a pastel – known from an old photograph – showing his friend at the piano. For reasons unknown, the pastel was cut, and only the part showing the pianist's face and upper torso remains.⁶ Bound by the same love of music, the writings of Mallarmé and Rollinat, and the same Swedenborgian faith, their friendship never wavered.

1. Claude Debussy. Moussorgski, 's-Gravenhage: Van Eck, 1918. The first part carries the dedication “à Philippe Smit”, the second “à Mme B. U.-H.” (Berendina Urban-Hubscher). These two dedications are telling: Zelling symbolically links Debussy and Mussorgsky — two very different composers but, in his eyes, both innovators and bearers of a new aesthetic — to two figures close to him, Philippe Smit and Berendina Urban. They testify to the intellectual and emotional closeness that bound Zelling to the painter and his immediate circle.
2. “La Musique de Rollinat”, Aux amis de Maurice Rollinat, édition Laboureur & Cie: Châteauroux, 1958, p. 17-20.
3. See Zelling 1916 and 1916 Larensche Kunsthandel.
4. Typed note by Anastase Zelling, son of Anton Zelling, on a loose leaf, dated 13 July 1991, with handwritten annotations by an unidentified hand (Glencairn archives).
5. “When in Laren/ Anton Zelling a[n]/ intimate friend/ came nearly every/ week end to/ the house, where/ he played the/ piano nearly all/ day long, and late/ into/ the night/ Interspersed/ with conversation/ concerning/ music and art/ and frequently/ also religion. […]” (Theodore Pitcairn, notes on loose leaves, p. II and III, n.d., LNC archives).
6. See [PS 206].