Promenades of an Impressionist Part 13

The wonderful Rijks Museum is the representative home of old Dutch art. The Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery excel it in variety, but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The Syndics and The Night Watch are worth a wilderness of other painters' work. The Night Watch has been removed from the old room, where it used to hang, facing the large Van der Heist, Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is only in temporary quarters; the gallery destined for it is being completed.

We were permitted to peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in one gallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De Stallmeesters. Better lighted than in its old quarters, The Night Watch now shows more clearly the tooth of time. It is muddy and dark in the background, and the cracks of the canvas are ill-concealed by the heavy coating of varnish. If all the faults of this magnificent work are more plainly revealed its excellences are magnified. How there could have been any dispute as to the lighting is incredible. The new catalogue, the appendices of which are brought down to 1908, frankly describes the picture thus:

"The Night Watch, or the Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and of Lieutenant van Ruytenburg. The corps is represented in broad daylight, leaving the Doele of the Arquebusiers. At their head, standing in the foreground about the centre, are the Captain and his Lieutenant conversing. The former wears a dark dress, the latter a yellow costume with a white sash, causing a brilliant effect of light. Near the Captain, also standing out in full light, is a little girl, a dead white c.o.c.k hanging from her waistband."

Then follow the names of the other personages in this strange scene.

A commonplace happening is transfigured by the magic of a seer into a significant moment arrested in eternity. Rembrandt is a window looking out upon eternity. It was quite like the logical minded Frenchman, Eugene Fromentin, himself an admirable painter, to pick this canvas full of flaws. The composition is, true enough, troubled and confused.

The draughtsmanship leaves much to be desired; hands are carelessly painted, the grouping haphazard, without symmetry, the general rhythm full of syncopations, cross accents, and perverse pauses--empty s.p.a.ces, transitions not accounted for. And yet this painting without personal charm--it is almost impersonal--grips your soul. It is not alone the emotional quality of the paint. There are greater colourists than Rembrandt, who, strictly speaking, worked in monochrome, modelling with light. No, not the paint alone, not the mystery of the envelope, not the magnetic gaze of the many eyes, but all combined makes an a.s.sault upon nerves and imagination. You feel that Captain Cocq is a prosaic personage and is much too tall in proportion to the spry little dandy Lieutenant at his side. Invested with some strange attribute by the genius of the painter, this Dutchman becomes the protagonist in a soundless symphony of light and shadow. The waves that emanate from the canvas suffuse your senses but do not soothe or satisfy. The modern nervous intensity, missing absolutely in Hals and his substantial humans, is present in Rembrandt. We say "modern" as a sop to our vanity, but we are the "ancients," and there is no mode of thought, no mood that has not been experienced and expressed by our ancestors. Rembrandt is unlike any other Dutch painter--Hals, Vermeer, Teniers, Van der Heist--what have these in common with the miller's son? But he is as Dutch as any of them. A genius is only attached to his age through his faults, said a wise man. Rembrandt is as universal as Beethoven, a Dutchman by descent, as Bach, a Hungarian by descent, as Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. But we must go to Leonardo da Vinci if we wish to find a brother soul to Rembrandt's.

There is a second child back of that iridescent and enigmatic girl with the dead fowl. And the dog that barks as Jan Van Koort ruffles his drum, what a spectre dog! No, the mystery of The Night Watch is insoluble, because it is the dream of a poet. Its light is morning light, yet it is the mystic light of Rembrandt, never seen on sea or land. In The Syndics, that group of six linen-drapers, Rembrandt shows with what supreme ease he can beat Hals at the game of make-believe actuality. Now, according to the accustomed order of development, The Night Watch should have followed The Syndics. But it preceded it by two decades, and the later work contains far better painting and a sharper presentment of the real. The Night Watch is Rembrandt's Ninth symphony; but composed before his Fifth, The Syndics. One figure in this latter picture has always fascinated us. It is of the man, Volkert Janz, according to Professor J. Six, who stoops over, his hand poised on a book. Rembrandt has seldom painted with more sensitiveness eyes, subtle corners of the mouth, and intimate expression. This syndic is evidently superior to his fellows, solid, sensible Dutch men of affairs.

There is a landscape, purchased in 1900, a stone bridge, lighted by rays darting through heavy storm clouds. It is the Rembrandt of the etchings. Lovely is the portrait of a young lady of rank, though the Elizabeth Bas, in another gallery, will always be the masterpiece in portraiture if for nothing else but the hands. The Jewish Bride is bulky in its enchantments, the phosph.o.r.escent gleams of the apparel the chief attraction. The Toilet is heavy Rembrandt; while the anatomical lecture is repulsive. But the disembowelled corpse is more corpse-like than the queerly foreshortened dead body in the picture on anatomy at The Hague. The warrior's head, supposed to be a portrait of his father, is an ancient copy and a capital one. Old dame Elizabeth Bas, with her coif, ruff, and folded hands, holding a handkerchief, is a picture you return to each day of your stay.

Hals at Amsterdam is interesting. There is the so-called portrait of the painter and his wife, two full-length figures; the Jolly Toper, half-length figure, large black hat, in the left hand a gla.s.s; and the insolent lute-player, a copy, said to be by Dirck Hals, the original in the possession of Baron Gustave Rothschild at Paris. And a fine copy it is.

The three Vermeers are of his later enamelled period. One is a young woman reading a letter; she is seen in profile, standing near a table, and is dressed in a white skirt and blue loose jacket. The Letter shows us in the centre of a paved room a seated lady, lute in hand.

She has been interrupted in her playing by a servant bringing a letter. To the right a tapestry curtain has been looped up to give a view of the scene. The new Vermeer--purchased from the Six gallery in 1908--is now called The Cook; it was formerly known as The Milkmaid. A stoutly built servant is standing behind a table covered with a green cloth, on which are displayed a basket of bread, a jug of Na.s.sau earthenware, and a stone pot into which she is pouring milk from a can. The figure, painted almost full length, stands out against the white wall and is dressed in a lemon-coloured jacket, a red-brown petticoat, a dark-blue ap.r.o.n turned back, and a white cap on the head.

The light falls on the scene through a window to the left, above the table.

This masterpiece is in one of the cabinet galleries. It displays more breadth than the Lady Reading a Letter, and its colouring is absolutely magical. The De Hoochs are of prime quality. Greater art is the windmill and moonlit scene of Hobbema, as great a favourite as his Mill, though both must give the precedence to the Alley of Middleharnais in the Royal Academy, London. But where to begin, where to end in this high carnival of over three thousand pictures! The ticketed favourites, starred Baedeker fashion, sometimes lag behind their reputation. The great Van der Helst--and a prime portraitist he is, as may be seen over and over again--is The Company of Captain Bicker, a vast canvas. When you forget Hals and Rembrandt it is not difficult to conjure up admiration for this work. The N. Maes Spinner is very characteristic. Cuyp and Van Goyen are here; the latter's view of Dordrecht is celebrated. So is the Floating Feather of Hondecoester, a finely depicted pelican. The feather is the least part of the picture. a.s.selijn's angry swan is an excellent companion piece.

We wish that we could describe the Jan Steens, the Dous, the Mierises, and other sterling Dutch painters. There is the gallery of Dutch and Flemish primitives about which a volume might be written; their emaciated music appeals. In expressiveness the later men did not excel them. The newest acquisition, not mentioned in the catalogue supplements, is the work of an unknown seventeenth-century master, possibly Spanish, though the figures, background, and accessories are Dutch. Two old men, their heads bowed, sit at table. Across their knees are napkins. The white is from a Spanish palette. A youth attired in dark habiliments, his back turned to the spectators, is pouring out wine or water. The canvas is large, the execution flowing; perhaps it portrays the disciples at Emmaus.

The portraits of Nicholas Ha.s.selaer and his wife Geertruyt van Erp, by Hals, in one of the cabinets, are painted with such consummate artistry that you gasp. The thin paint, every stroke of which sings out, sets you to thinking of John Sargent and how he has caught the trick of brush-work--at a slower tempo. But not even Sargent could have produced the collar and cuffs. A Whistler, a full-length, in another gallery, looks like an unsubstantial wraith by comparison. Two weeks' daily attendance at this excellently planned collection did no more than fix the position of the exhibits in the mind. There is a goodly gathering of such names as Israels, Mesdag, Blommers, and others at the Rijks, but the display of modern Dutch pictures at the Munic.i.p.al Museum is more representative. The greatest Josef Israels we ever saw in the style is his Jew sitting in the doorway of a house, a most eloquent testimony to Israels' powers of seizing the "race" and the individual. Old David Bles is here, and Blommers, De Bock, Bosboom, Valkenburg, Alma-Tadema, Ary Scheffer--of Dutch descent--Roelofs, Mesdag, Mauve, Jakob Maris, Jongkind, and some of the Frenchmen, Rousseau, Millet, Dupre, and others. The Six gallery is not so accessible as it was some years ago. No doubt its Rembrandts and Vermeers will eventually find their way into the Rijks Museum.

II

Who was Herri met de Bles? Nearly all the large European galleries contain specimens of his work and in the majority of cases the pictures are queried. That fatal (?) which, since curators are more erudite and conscientious, is appearing more frequently than in former years, sets one to musing over the mutability of pictorial fortunes.

Also, it awakens suspicions as to the genuineness of paint.

Restorations, another fatal word, is usually a euphemism for overpainting. Between varnish and retouching it is difficult to tell where the old master leaves off and the "restorer" begins. Bles, for example, as seen in the Rijks Museum, is a fascinating subject to the student; but are we really looking at his work? The solitary picture of his here, Paradise, is so well preserved that it might have been painted a year ago. (It is an attribution.) Yet this painter is supposed to have been born at Bouvignes, 1480, and to have died at Liege, 1521. He was nicknamed Herri, for Hendrick, met de Bles, because he had a tuft of white in his hair (a forerunner of Whistler).

The French called him Henri a la Houppe; the Italians "Civetta"--because of the tiny owl he always introduced into his work.

He was a landscapist, and produced religious and popular scenes. Bles has had many works saddled upon him by unknown imitators of Metsu, Joost van Kleef, Lucas, and Durer--who worked at Antwerp between 1520 and 1550. Thierry Vellert was also an imitator. In the old Pinakothek, Munich, there is a Henricus Blesius, which is said to be a counterfeit, and others are in Karlsruhe, Milan, Brussels, and at the Prado.

The circular picture in the Rijks shows us in various episodes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden from the Creation until the Fall. Around the edge are signs of the zodiac. The colour is rich, the figures delicate. The story is clearly told and is not unlike a "continuous performance." You see Adam asleep and over him stoops the Almighty; then Eve is shown. The apple scandal and the angel with the flaming sword are portrayed with a vivid line that recalls the miniaturist. A rare painter.

Roeland Savery is an artist whose name, we confess, was not known to us until we saw his work in the Rijks. The rich _pate_ and bouquet-like quality of his colour recall Monticelli. His compositions are composed, like Monticelli's, but much more spirited than the latter. A stag hunt, a poet crowned at the feast of animals, Elijah fed by the ravens, and the fable of the stag among the cows prove the man's versatility. He was born about 1576 and died at Utrecht, 1639. A pupil of his father, he first worked in Courtrai. The Bronzino Judith holding the head of Holophernes is a copy, the original hanging in the Pitti Palace. At Vienna there is a replica. Among the Bols (Cornelis, 1613-66) the portraits of Roelof Meulenaer and his wife, Maria Rey, attract because of their vitality and liberalism. Then we come across the oft-engraved Paternal Advice, by Gerard ter Borch (1617-81). Who doesn't remember that young lady dressed in white satin and standing with her back to you? The man in officer's uniform, admonishing her, is seated next to a woman drinking from a wine-gla.s.s. The texture of the dress and the artfully depicted gla.s.s are the delight of amateurs.

As a composition it is not remarkable. The man is much too young to be the father of the blond-haired lady, and if the other one is her mother, both parents must have retained their youth. The portrait of Helena van der Schalcke is that of a quaint Dutch child standing; a serious little body carrying a basket on her right arm like a good housewife. It is a capital Ter Borch. Two beautiful Albert Cuyps are painted on the two sides of a copper panel. On one side two merchants stand at a wharf; on the other two men sit sampling wine in a cellar.

The colour is singularly luminous.

Let us pa.s.s quickly the Schalckens and Gerard Dous. Dou's self-portrait is familiar. He leans out of a window and smokes a clay pipe. The candle-light pictures always attract an audience. Govert Flinck (1615-60, pupil of Rembrandt) is a painter who, if he lived to-day, would be a popular portraitist. Wherever you go you see his handiwork, not in the least inspired, but honest, skilful, and genial.

Look at the head of the tax-collector Johannes Wittenbogaert, covered with a black cap. So excellent is it that it has been attributed to Rembrandt. Boland, we believe, engraved it as genuine Rembrandt.

Gerard van Honthorst's Happy Musician is another picture of prime quality, and a subject dear to Hals. Hoogstratten's Sick Lady is an anecdote. The young woman does not seem very ill, but the doctor gravely holds up a bottle of medicine and you feel the dread moment is at hand. How to persuade the patient to swallow the dose? She is stubborn-looking. The Pieter de Hoochs are now in the same gallery with Rembrandt's Jewish Bride. These interiors, painted with a minute, hard finish, lack the charm and the colour quality of Vermeer. With sunlight Hooch is successful, but his figures do not move freely in an atmospheric envelope, as is the case with Vermeer's. The Small Country House is the favourite. In front of a house a well-dressed man and woman are seated at a table. She is squeezing lemon juice into a gla.s.s. Behind her a servant is carrying a gla.s.s of beer, and farther away a girl cleans pots and pans. The composition is the apotheosis of domestic comfort, conjugal peace, and gluttony. We like much more The Pantry, wherein a woman hands a jug to her little girl. The adjoining room, flooded with light, is real.

There is one Van der Helst we could not pa.s.s. It looks like the portrait of a corpulent woman, but is that of Gerard Bicker, bailiff of Muiden. A half-length figure turned to the left, the bailiff a well-fed pig, holds a pair of gloves in his right hand which he presses against his Gargantuan chest. His hair is long and curly. The fabrics are finely wrought. Holbein the younger is represented by the portrait of a young man. It is excellent, but doubtless a copy or an imitation. To view five Lucas van Leydens in one gallery is not an everyday event. His engravings are rare enough--that is, in good states; "ghosts" are aplenty--and his paintings rarer. Here they are chiefly portraits. Rachel Ruysch, the flower painter, has a superior in Judith Lyster, a pupil of Frans Hals. She was born at Haarlem, or Zaandam, about 1600, and died 1660. She married the painter Jan Molener. Her Jolly Toper faces the Hals of the same theme, in a cabinet, and reveals its artistic ancestry. Judith had the gift of reproducing surfaces. We need not return to the various Maeses; indeed, this is only a haphazard ramble among the less well-known pictures. Consider the heads of Van Mierevelt; those of Henrick Hooft, burgomaster of Amsterdam, of Jacob Cats, and of his wife Aegje Ha.s.selaer (1618-64). Her hair and lace collar are wonderfully set forth. Must we stop before Mabuse, or before the cattle piece of the Dutch school, seventeenth century? A Monticelli seems out of key here, and the subject is an unusual one for him, Christ With the Little Children. The Little Princess, by P. Moreelse, has the honour, after Rembrandt, of being the most frequently copied picture in the Rijks.

The theme is the magnet. A little girl, elaborately dressed, is seated. She strokes the head of a spaniel whose jewelled collar gives the impression of a dog with four eyes. In Vermeer's Young Woman Reading a Letter is a like confused pa.s.sage of painting, for the uninstructed spectator. She wears her hair over her ear, an ornament clasping the hair. At first view this is not clear, princ.i.p.ally because this fashion of wearing the hair is unusual in the eyes of a stranger.

Jan van Scorel was born at Schoorl, near Alkmaar, 1495. He studied under Jacob Cornelis at Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge at Utrecht. He died at Utrecht, 1562. When travelling in Germany he visited Durer at Nuremberg; resided for a time in Italy. The Italian influence is strong, particularly in his Mary Magdalen, which formerly hung in the town-hall of Haarlem. A replica is in the residence of the head-master of Eton College, England. Mary is shown seated, richly attired. She holds in her right hand a box of perfume, her left hand, beautifully painted, rests on her knee. Behind is a mountainous landscape, distinctly Italian, beside her a tree. The head is north Lombardian in character and colouring, the glance of the eyes enigmatic. A curiously winning composition, not without _morbidezza_.

Scorel has five other works in the Rijks. The Bathsheba is not a masterpiece. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is conventional, but the Harpsichord Player was sold at Paris as late as 1823 as a Bronzino.

Perhaps it is only attributed to Scorel. It is unlike his brush-work.

The Painting of a Vault, divided into nine sections, five of which represent the Last Judgment, is a curiosity. The portrait of Emperor Charles V. as Pharaoh is pointed out by the gallery attendant, who then retires and diplomatically coughs in the middle distance.

The Mancini (pupil of Morelli and W.H. Mesdag) is ent.i.tled Poor Thing.

A little girl stands in a miserable room; mice run over the floor. The colouring is rich. There are admirable Jakob Marises; but we wish to follow in the track of the old fellows. Adrian van Ostade's Baker is so popular that it is used for advertising purposes in Holland. The baker leans out of his door, the lower half closed, and blows a horn.

Palamedes evidently repainted the same picture many times. An interior with figures, seated and standing; same faces, poses, accessories.

Same valet pouring out wine; variants of this figure. A Merry Party is the usual t.i.tle. At The Hague in the Mauritshuis there is another such subject; also in Antwerp and Brussels. But a jolly painter. Steen and Teniers we may sidestep. Also the artificial though graceful Tischbein. There is a Winterhalter here, a mannered fashionable portrait painter (he painted the Empress Eugenie), and let us leave the t.i.tians to the experts. When you are in Holland look at the Dutch pictures. A De Vos painted topers and fishermen with gusto, and there is Vinckboons, who doted on scenes of violence. Fancy Vollon flowers in the midst of these old Dutchmen. The Frenchman had an extraordinary feeling for still-life, though more in the decorative Venetian manner than in Chardin's serene palette, or the literalism of Kalf.

Whistler's Effie Deans, presented by the Dowager Baroness R. van Lynden in 1900, is not one of that master's most successful efforts.

It is a whole-length figure painted in misty semi-tones, the feeling sentimental, un-Whistlerian, and, as we before remarked, wraith-like and lacking in substance when compared to Hals.

There is actually a Wouverman in which no white horse is to be discovered. On Van der Werff and the romantic landscapist Wynants we need not dwell. The miniatures, pastels, and framed drawings are of goodly array. Of the former, Samuel Cooper (portrait of Charles II.), John Hoskins, Peter Oliver, Isaac Oliver, Laurence Crosse, and others.

English, Dutch, and French may be found. The Liotard and Tischbein pastels are charming. In the supplements of the catalogue we find underscored a Descent from the Cross, an anonymous work of the Flemish school (fifteenth century, second half). The dead Christ is being lowered into the arms of his mother. It is evidently a copy from a lost original in the style of Rogier van der Weyden. There are such copies in Bruges and elsewhere. Another composition is labelled as an anonymous work of undetermined school. The Christ hangs on the cross, on His right are the Virgin Mary, the holy women and St. John; on His left jeering soldiers and scribes. On either side of the composition is the figure of a saint much larger in size than the other figures; St. Cosmus on the left, St. Damian on the right. The background is a hilly landscape. An authority ascribes the work to the Catalonian school, date about 1440. There were giants in those days. Antonello da Messina has the portrait of a young man. It is an attribution, yet not without some claim to authenticity. The Jan Provosts are mostly of close study, especially The Virgin Enthroned. A certain Pieter Dubordieu, who was living in Amsterdam in 1676 (born in Touraine), painted the portraits of a man and a woman, dated 1638. Vivid portraits. We must pa.s.s over the striking head of Hanneman, the Lucas Cranach (the elder), and the thousand other attractive pictures in this gallery. The Rijks Museum could be lived with for years and still remain an inexhaustible source of joy.

ART IN ANTWERP

After pa.s.sing Dordrecht on the way down to Antwerp the ca.n.a.ls and windmills begin to disappear. The country is as flat as Holland, but has lost its characteristic charm. It has become less symmetrical; there is disorder in the sky-line, more trees, the architecture is different. Dutch precision has vanished. The railway carriages are not clean, punctuality is avoided, the people seem less prosperous, few speak English, and as you near Antwerp the villas and roads tell you that you are in the dominion of the King of Belgium. But Antwerp is so distinctly Flemish that you forget that bustling modern Brussels is only thirty-six minutes away by the express--a fast train for once in this land of snail expresses. No doubt the best manner of approaching Antwerp is by the Scheldt on one of the big steamers that dock so comfortably along the river. However, a trip to the vast _promenoir_ that overlooks the river gives an excellent idea of this thriving port. The city--very much modernised during the past ten years--may easily be seen in a few days, setting aside the museums and churches.

The quay promenade brings you to the old Steen Castle, and the Town Hall with its _salle des marriages_, its mural paintings by the industrious Baron Leys--frigid in style and execution--will repay you for the trouble. The vestibules and galleries are noteworthy. We enjoyed the facades of the ancient guild houses on the market-place and watching the light play upon the old-time scarred front of the cathedral that stands in the Place Verte. Then there are the Zoological Garden, the Plantin Museum, the Theatre Flamand, the various monuments, and the spectacle of the busy, lively city for those who do not go to Antwerp for its art. You may even go to Hoboken, a little town in the suburbs not at all like the well-known Sunday resort in Jersey.

The Royal Museum is displayed in a large square. It is a handsome structure and the arrangement of the various galleries is simple. The Rubenses, thirty-odd in all, are the _piece de resistance_, and the Flemish and Dutch Primitives of rare beauty. Bruges is better for Memling, Brussels for Van der Weyden, Ghent for the Van Eycks, yet Antwerp can boast a goodly number of them all. She exceeds Brussels in her Rubenses for the larger altar pieces are here, just as at Amsterdam the Rembrandts, while not numerous, take precedence because of The Syndics and The Night Watch. The tumultuous, overwhelming Peter Paul is in his glory at Antwerp. You think of some cataclysm when facing these turbulent, thrilling canvases. If Raphael woos, Rubens stuns. In the company of Michel Angelo and Balzac or Richard Wagner he would be their equal for torrential energy and vibrating humanity. Not so profound as Buonarroti, not so versatile as Balzac, he is their peer in sheer savagery of execution. Setting aside the miles of pictures signed by him though painted by his pupils, he must have covered mult.i.tudes of canvas. Like men of his sort of genius, he ends by making your head buzz and your eyes burn; and then, the sameness of his style, the repet.i.tion of his wives and children's portraits, the apotheosis of the Rubens family! He portrayed Helena Fourment and Isabella Brandt in all stages of disarray and gowns. He put them together on the same canvas. He did not hesitate to show them to the world in all their opulent nudity. Their white skins, large eyes with wide gaze, their lovely children appear in religious and mythologic pictures at every turn you make in this museum. You become too familiar with them. You learn to know that one wife was slenderer than the other; you also realise that other days had other ways. t.i.tian painted the portrait of a n.o.ble dame quite naked and placed her husband, soberly attired, near by. No one criticised the taste of this performance. Manet, who was no t.i.tian, did the same trick and was voted wicked. He actually dared to show us Nana dressing in the presence of a gentleman who sat in the same room with his hat on.

The heavy-flanked Percheron horses are of the same order as the Rubens women. The Flemings are mighty feeders, mighty breeders, good-tempered, pleasure-loving folk. They don't work as hard as the Dutch, and they indulge in more feasting and holidays. The North seems austere and Protestant when compared with this Roman Catholic land.

Its sons of genius, such as Rubens and Van Dyck, painted pictures that do not reveal the deeper faith of the Primitives. No Christ or Mary of either Van Dyck or Rubens sounds the poignant note of the Netherlandish unknown mystic masters.

But what a banquet of beauty Rubens spreads for the eye! With him painting reached its apogee, and in him were the seeds of its decadence. He shattered the Florentine line; he, a tremendous s.p.a.ce-composer when he so wished, wielded his brush at times like a scene-painter on a debauch. The most shocking, the loveliest things happen on his canvases. Set the beautiful Education of the Virgin, in this gallery, beside such a work as Venus and Vulcan at Brussels, and you will see the scale in which he sported. Or the Virgin and Parrot, with a child Christ who might have posed as a youthful Adonis, and the Venus Frigida--both in Antwerp. A pagan was Rubens, for all his religion. We prefer the Christ Crucified between Two Thieves or the Christ on the Cross, the single figure, to the more famous Descent at the Cathedral. But what can be said that is new about Rubens or Van Dyck? In the latter may be noted the beginnings of deliquescence. He is a softened Rubens, a Rubens aristocratic. The portraits here are prime, those of the Bishop of Antwerp, Jean Malderus, and of the young girl with the two dogs. His various Christs are more piteous to behold than those of his master, Rubens. The feminine note is present, and without any of the realism which so shocks in the conceptions of the Primitives. Nevertheless we turn to his portraits or to the little boy standing at a table. There is the true key of Van Dyck. He met Rubens as a portraitist and took no odds of him.

Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve is a variation of the picture in the Brussels gallery. A Gossaert portrait catches the eye, the head and bust of a man; then you find yourself staring in wonderment at the Peter Breughels and Jerome Bosches with their malodorous fantastic versions of temptations of innumerable St. Anthonys. The air is thick with monsters, fish-headed and splay of foot. St. Anthony must have had the stomach of an ostrich and the nerves of a politician to endure such sights and sounds and witches. Such females! But Peter and his two sons are both painters of interest. There are better Teniers in Brussels, though Le Chanteur is admirable. Ostade's Smoker is a masterpiece. Only four Rembrandts, the portrait of a woman, according to Vosmaer and W. Burger that of his wife Saskia; a fisherman's boy, the Burgomaster, and the Old Jew. Dr. Bode thinks that the last two are by Nikolas Maes. The portrait of Eleazer Swalmius--the so-called Burgomaster Six--is finely painted as to head and beard. The Antwerp Museum paid two hundred thousand francs for the work. We must not forget mention of a David Teniers, a loan of Dr. Bredius, a still-life, a white dead goose superb in tone.

Of the two Frans Halses, the portrait of a Dutch gentleman is the better; the other was formerly known as the Strandlooper van Haarlem and shows the vigorous brush-work of the master. It is the head of a saucy fisher-boy, the colour scheme unusual for Hals. The Quentin Matsys pictures are strong; among others the portrait of Peter Gillis with his shrewd, strongly marked physiognomy. This is a Matsys town.

Every one looks at his old iron well beside the Cathedral and recalls the legend of the blacksmith, as every boy remembers here Hendrik Conscience and the Lion of Flanders. Van Reymerswael's The Tax Gatherers, sometimes called The Bankers or The Misers, hangs in the museum; that realistic picture with the so highly individualised heads, a favourite of the engravers, holds its own. Both the Boutses, Albrecht and Dirck, are shown in their Holy Families, and both are painters of ineffable grace and devotion.

Four Memlings of seductive beauty light the walls. One is a portrait of Nicol Spinelli. Christ and His Angels, the angels playing in praise of the Eternal and other angels playing various instruments.

The two Van Eycks, Huibrecht (Hubert) and Jan, are well represented.

The St. Barbara, by Jan, is repeated in the Bruges Museum The Donateur or Donor is a repet.i.tion of the original at Bruges. The Adoration of the Lamb is a copy of the original at Ghent. There is tender beauty in Jan's St. Barbara, and infinite motherly love expressed in his Holy Virgin. Hugo van der Goes's portrait of Thomas Portunari is a marvel of characterisation. Terburg has a mandolin player and Hobbema a mill scene. The Van Orleys are interesting, and also the Van Veens. Gerard David, a painter of exquisite touch and feeling, shows a Repose in Egypt. Lucas Cranach's L'Amour is one of his Virgins transposed to the mythological key. We have barely indicated the richness of this collection, in which, of course, Rubens plays first fiddle--rather the full orchestra. And with what sonority and luminosity!

At the Cathedral his three masterpieces draw their accustomed audiences with the usual guide lecturing in three languages, pointing out the whiteness of the cloth in the Descent and the anatomy in the Ascent. This latter work is always slighted by sightseers because Baedeker, or some one else, had p.r.o.nounced its composition "inferior"

to the Descent, but there are many more difficult problems involved in the Ascent. Its pattern is not so pleasing as the Descent, the subject is less appealing, and more sternly treated. There are more virile accents in the Ascent, though it would be idle to deny that in paint quality there is a falling off. Both pictures show the tooth of time and the ravages of the restorers. At St. Jacques, with its wonderfully carved pulpit, the St. George of Rubens hangs in a chapel. It has darkened much during the last twenty years. Also there is another Rubens family group with wives and other relatives. They thought well of themselves, the Rubens family, and little wonder.

The modern pictures at the museum are of varying interest--Braekeleer, s...o...b..erts, Verlat, Scheffer, Cabanel, David (J.L.), Wiertz, Wauters, Wappers, some elegant Alfred Stevenses, De Bock the landscapist, Clays, Van Beers, Meunier, Breton, Bouguereau, and a lot of nondescript lumber. In the s.p.a.cious approach there is one of Constantin Meunier's famous figures. You rejoice that he followed Rodin's advice and gave up the brush for the chisel. As a painter he was not more than mediocre.

The four Van der Weydens in the gallery of Primitives are not all of equal merit. The Annunciation is the most striking. The early master of Memling is distinguished by a sweetness in composition and softness in colouring. Mention must be made of the De Vos pictures by the Cornelis, Martin, and Simon. A portrait of Abraham Grapheus by the first-named is one of the most striking in the museum, and the self-portrait of the latter, smiling, is brilliant. Rombouts is a sort of Adrian Brouwer; his Cavaliers Playing at Cards recalls Caravaggio.

Daniel Mytens's portrait of a lady is Rubenesque.

And all that choir of elevated souls unknown to us by name, merely called after the city they inhabited, such as the Master of Bray, or by some odd device or monogram--what cannot be written of this small army which praised the Lord, His mother and the saints in form and colour, on missals, illuminated ma.n.u.scripts, or on panels! The Antwerp Museum has its share of Anonymous, that master of whom it has been said that "he" was probably the master of the masters. Antwerp is a city of many charms, with its St. Jacques, St. Andres (and its carved pulpit), St. Paul and the Cathedral, and its preservation of the Flemish spirit and Flemish customs; but for us its museum was all in all.