The Standard Galleries - Holland Part 4

=Love of Nature seen in his Earlier Works.=--"In these works we see the youthful painter turning exclusively to Nature: a clump of bushes on a dune; a glimpse of the 'Haarlemer Hout'; a grove of trees on the sh.o.r.e, he paints exactly as he saw them. But how he saw them! In these early pictures his color is brighter, his manner of painting thicker and stronger than in his later works. Instead of the beautiful clouds for which Ruisdael was so famous, we often see the sky still painted in a more antique manner, with striped clouds in the style of his uncle Salomon.

=His Growth toward Composition.=--"Gradually his subjects become more 'composed,' but in the best sense of the word. Only occasionally does he wander away, as, for instance, in the Dresden Jewish Cemetery, which lay in the neighborhood of Amsterdam, but which he set in a fanciful landscape unknown to himself. He had quite another intention in the picture before us: the View of Haarlem from Overveen, with its bleaching-green in the foreground. Above it a beautifully clouded sky with the floating clouds casting their shadows here and there over the broad landscape. Amsterdam owns a similar picture; the Berlin Gallery another; the Ritter de Steurs in Maestricht, a fourth; and there are still others in private collections in England and Paris. Each of these pictures has a new excellence,--Nature glorified through an artistic eye and immortalized with the practised hand of an artist.

What mastery there is in the representation of the broad, broad s.p.a.ce!"

=His Carefulness of Detail.=--"Nevertheless Ruisdael does not neglect the detail of his landscapes. We need only notice in him the tree-characteristics--how carefully he handles every kind of foliage in accordance with the forms of its leaves and branches; but with him the whole is never subordinated to the details. When he paints the sea--he does not paint it often--he does it better and more artistically than any other painter. What a mighty effect his great marine in Berlin produces! The real air from the sea seems to blow upon us. Views of the seash.o.r.e by him are even rarer. The Hague picture shows us a beautiful view of a sea and sky happily illuminated without the dark, melancholy tone which so often dwells in his works, and which we would consider as a reflection of his own sad moods. Who can it be that painted the fine figures in this picture? Perhaps it was Eglon van der Neer."

=Vermeer's View of Delft.=--Vermeer of Delft (1632-75) was a pupil of Karel Fabricius (whom we shall meet in the Rijks), who was a pupil of Rembrandt. One of the most important and beautiful pictures in The Hague Gallery is Vermeer's View of Delft. On an appreciative eye and receptive mood it leaves a tenacious impression which will never be forgotten.

Until about thirty years ago, Vermeer of Delft was hardly thought of, although in his own day his pictures were highly prized and sought after, and later his work received great praise from Sir Joshua Reynolds. It was the French critic Burger (Th.o.r.e), who rehabilitated this great artist.

Bredius exclaims:

"How this picture shines out from the others around it like a stream of light out of dark clouds!

"All the light which the artist saw fall upon his town, he has succeeded in concentrating at once in this picture, the broad, masterful, sure painting, the luminous colors, the clear sky which arches over the town, all excite our highest admiration."

A drawing said to be a sketch for this picture is in the Stadel Inst.i.tute of Frankfort. The picture which brought 200 florins in 1698 was sold for 2,900 gulden at the Stinstra sale in 1822. (See Frontispiece.)

=A Painter of Light and Sun.=--The beautiful picture of Diana and her Nymphs, which was bought as a Maes in Paris in 1876 for 4,725 gulden, is now attributed by some people to this master, and by others to Vermeer of Utrecht.

Lemke says:

"Vermeer was a painter of the light and sun school; and this was his chief study--to catch and hold fast the moment. What Frans Hals did for physiognomy, grasping the flying moment in an incomparable manner with winks, smiles, leers, gesticulations, etc., and fixing it in paint, that Vermeer, as a landscape-painter, delighted to do for the sunshine. He shows its rays streaming into a room or the play of light and shadow when the light with the moving air falls through heavy foliage against a bright house and paints it with rays of light and shade. Unlike the moment of Rembrandt and Ruisdael, which is fixed for all eternity, with Vermeer the moment vibrates in the light. The shadows lose their sharp outlines, and the fine brush-work suggests the living change and play of the light. Rembrandt paints light in darkness and lets it glow in the dark, or streaming into it, or in a broad flood of brilliance; but Vermeer prefers to set darkness or twilight against the light. For interiors, Vermeer has another palette and mode of painting than for the outdoor pictures. When he selects the moment for this, where the scene consists of trees, houses, water, etc., it would seem that the artist wanted to make us blink, as if we were looking at the sun."

=Vermeer's Portrait of a Girl.=--Vermeer did not confine himself to landscape. In 1903, The Hague Gallery acquired by bequest a remarkable portrait by this master, the portrait of a girl wearing a buff coat, a blue and cream turban, and magnificent pearl earrings, on which are "concentrated," says the enthusiastic Frank Rinder,

"those dreams of gray, which are Vermeer's. Although in this portrait, with its liquid spots of light, we at once apprehend the presence of Vermeer, with his nostalgia for the interpretation of a beauty visioned inwardly rather than seen with the eye, the picture pa.s.sed through the auction rooms at The Hague in 1878, fetching only 230 florins. It was bequeathed in 1903 to the Mauritshuis by M. des Tombes."

"In his laying on of paint he was distinguished," says Frank Rinder, "even among his technically well-equipped contemporaries; by virtue of his isolated vision, he is of all the Little Dutchmen the one inimitable weaver of spells."

=Jan Wijnants's Love for the Dunes.=--Jan Wijnants (1615-80) has two pictures in the Mauritshuis, Clearing in the Forest (1659) and Road through the Dunes (1675). Wijnants, the Haarlemite, loved his dunes, and when he lived for years in Amsterdam (probably he died there), he painted them even more frequently,--every little hill, with its sandy rises and with little stunted trees, and those roads marked with deep wagon-ruts, almost always bright and illumined with warm sunshine. How had he observed them? How did he always know how to discover the paintable spot? Frankly, his fancy sometimes made the hills somewhat higher than we really find them at Haarlem; indeed, sometimes, he created landscapes with so poetic a flight, or we might say he sometimes composed them to such an extent that in truth we might seek them in vain in Holland; as, for instance, the great pictures in the Munich museum.

We are, therefore, forced to conclude that he had seen Claude Lorraine's pictures, and wanted to paint somewhat in the same spirit. In Haarlem he was painted by Wouwermans, and as a fine little cavalier.

=His Pictures enlivened by other Artists.=--When he settled down in Amsterdam in 1660, the always ready Adriaen van de Velde often a.s.sisted him by enlivening his landscapes with charming little figures. He had no idea that at present a Wijnants would be so much more highly valued on account of his little figures than it would be without them. Lingelbach undertook this work later, straining after Van de Velde but not reaching him. In his early pictures, Wijnants is somewhat labored; but by and by he acquires that sureness of painting which must have become ever easier to him because he almost always painted the same subjects and the same style of landscape. In his last pictures he was quite broad and decorative in style, but less convincing. One picture with fine little figures by Lingelbach bears the date 1675. In his Clearing in the Forest (1659) he has depicted his favorite subjects: the old oaks mutilated by the storm and partly stripped of their bark; the fallen trunk of a tree and large, handsome plants, whose leaves pour raindrops over the blades of gra.s.s that have pushed their way up between them. Van de Velde has added to this lovely landscape a distant farm, cattle walking along the road, and a pond crossed by a rustic bridge. "With such simple objects," exclaims Blanc, "Wijnants and his pupil have produced a masterpiece, expressing a poetry that few could perhaps explain, but which every well-organized man can feel."

=Neglect of Dutch Scenery by Dutch Artists.=--Wijnants, like Van Goyen, is not only an excellent painter but chief of a school. Until their time the artists of the Netherlands hunted for scenery outside of their country; for instance, Memling and Saftleven chose the borders of the Rhine; others, like Savery, liked to wander in the Tyrol; others, like Paul Bril, visited the Alps; others, like Everdingen, went to Norway to get inspiration from pine forests and foaming cascades; and a.s.selijn, Berghem, Jan Both, Moucheron, and Pynacker sought the sunny clime of cla.s.sic Italy. Into the "Italian landscapes," which they either brought home or finished from memory when they returned, they frequently introduced among the cla.s.sic ruins and sunlit verdure the cattle and peasants of their own country.

=Wijnants the Leader of a new School.=--Wijnants was one of the first to take pleasure in his own country. In the environs of Haarlem, his native town, he saw much that would make pictures of charm; so, while other painters were roaming in foreign lands, he took walks in the neighboring meadows and followed the paths that led to the dunes, noticing everything on the way,--the tufts of gra.s.s, the shrubs, the moss-covered stones, the trees, the roads, the hillocks, the flowers, and taking note of the reflections of light on the bark of the trees, the lichens growing on the stump of a tree, the common bugloss, burdock, and thistle, and the swarming insects. Wijnants was the first to show that poetry was to be found in the lonely walk that led to the sea.

=His Influence on other Artists.=--Nature seems to have been his chief master; but he soon became the master of others. Adriaen van de Velde, for instance, feeling his vocation for landscape, entered his studio in Haarlem. It is said that one day his wife said to him, "Wijnants, this child is your pupil to-day, but one day he will be your master." Instead of being jealous, the painter never ceased to boast of his pupil's talent, and even allowed him to contribute the figures in many of his landscapes,--for Wijnants could paint only earth, trees, and sky. A great number of the figures in Wijnants's pictures, therefore, are the work of Adriaen van de Velde, who always introduces them modestly and in such a way that they render the landscape even more attractive. Philips Wouwermans and Lingelbach also were employed by Wijnants to add figures to his pictures, and a few times Adriaen van Ostade aided him, also Gael, Sch.e.l.linkx (who painted the dunes very well himself), Jan Wouwermans, Nicholas de Helt Stockade, the painter of battles, and Wyntranck, the clever painter of farmyard animals.

=Dutch Landscape-Painters who followed Wijnants.=--Wijnants was, as has been said, one of the creators of the Dutch landscape, one of the first to imitate Nature in her humbler expression, finding beauty in common things. After him came such landscape-artists as Philips Wouwermans, Adriaen van de Velde, Daniel Sch.e.l.linkx, Isaac Ostade, Karel Dujardin, Paul Potter, and in some respects the great Ruisdael.

=Van de Velde's Favorite Subjects.=--Adriaen van de Velde (1635-72) was a painter of animals, figures, interiors (rarely religious and historical subjects). He is worthily represented in The Hague Gallery by two pictures: a Dutch Roadstead and a Landscape with Cattle. Van de Velde is also responsible for the figures in the pictures of Van der Hagen (No. 47), Van der Heyde (No. 53), and Wijnants (No. 212), in this gallery. Bode says:

=Impressionism and Naturalism.=--"Adriaen van de Velde is one of the few artists by whom landscape and figures composed in a masterly manner are both felt and thought out harmoniously. He stands so close to our modern impression as does scarcely another of his day, being so simple in his motives and going so straight to nature, that he knows how to reveal the intimate connection between the outside world and our own feeling. A real painter of moods, he excels in awakening in us dark and gloomy feelings; his shadowy forest-glimpses on summer days, with herdsmen reclining beside their panting cattle in obvious rest.

His bright mornings with the hunting-parties called together to the halloo, with the gentlemen and n.o.bles promenading on the walks near their equipages, ring fresh and gay in the heart of the spectator; in his homelike evening-feeling with the sound of the returning cattle, he affects us with the feeling of happy departure and well-earned rest."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A. VAN DE VELDE A Dutch Roadstead]

=His Helpfulness to other Artists.=--The strong feeling in the figures, and, particularly, the lifelike color of the landscape, is so individual that almost all the landscape-painters of his home--Amsterdam--made use of his a.s.sistance in peopling their landscapes,--Wijnants, Ruisdael, Hobbema, Hackaert, F. R. de Moucheron, Ph. de Koninck, Verboom, and, above all, Jan van der Heyde, have made excessive use of his services and ability. Even with these artists, who were so foreign to each other in style, the figures that he introduced are so fine that the force of the landscape in both feeling and artistic effect is strengthened in the highest degree; indeed, many of these pictures have attained a higher fame solely through these contributions by the hand of Adriaen van de Velde.

=His Skill as a Colorist.=--"The paintings of this artist have an additional attraction in their rich and harmonious coloring, the fineness of the tone, and the peculiar tender manipulation of the pigments, which have such a soothing artistic effect.

"Some pictures painted in his last years have suffered by the sinking in and change of color (notably the increase of blue in the green leaf.a.ge), by which some of their effect has been lost. The Landscape with Cattle has not sunk in; but it has, nevertheless, lost some of its original color in the green of the trees. The idyllic landscape with its joyous, bright sunlight and its peaceful animal life, is a good specimen of this style of Van de Velde's work. The picture is signed 'A. V. Velde, 1663.'"[5]

=His Sea Pieces.=--The second picture of this artist in this gallery, A Dutch Strand (1665) with numerous figures, is more important. Two similar views of the seash.o.r.e by him are at Ca.s.sel and in the Six collection; and all these examples show that great and simple representation of the sea, in which he is also remarkable for his fine poetic feeling, equalling that in similar works by his brother Willem.

=Wouwermans's Delight in painting Horses.=--Philips Wouwermans's (1619-68) half century of life was industriously spent in producing about eight hundred pictures. Although his preference for the representation of the horse is evident in almost all his works, there is great variety in the treatment. Wouwermans is at the same time a striking landscape-painter. In many of his pictures the landscape is astonishingly often foreign and sometimes even Italian in subject, and the figures are merely lay-figures. The Country Riding-School plainly exhibits the artist's delight in horses. How beautifully painted are the grays on the right! He draws a brown horse so often that it must have been in particular favor. Some of his pictures must certainly have cost the painter a great deal of time, especially when numerous figures occur in them; as, for instance, in his horse-fairs and battle pictures.

=The Fruits of his Great Industry.=--It would appear that Wouwermans was well paid, for he was able to give his daughter, who married the flower-painter, De Fromantiou, a handsome dower,--Houbraken says 20,000 gulden! He was buried with pomp in Haarlem, on May 23, 1668, having bequeathed to his widow, who was destined not to survive him two years, a very good estate; and to us such a treasury of his art that we can enjoy it all over the world, in almost every important public and private collection.

=The Variety and Abundance of his Works.=--Whether he shows us the horse wildly rearing in the battle or quietly watering at the river, or being trained by an expert hand, or returning home to a well-cared-for stall after a long ride, we always admire again the rich variety of the master, who, an eminent horseman of knowledge and enthusiasm, never wearies us as such. Many of his pictures are a true reproduction of the farm life, or of the warfare of his day; and, on that account, have, moreover, a historical value. Dresden alone possesses sixty-two, and St.

Petersburg fifty, of his pictures. The Hague Gallery has to be content with nine. These are a Battle; the Hunt with Falcon; Arrival and Departure from an Inn; A Country House; The Hay-Wagon; the Hunters'

Halt, a charming example of his earliest period; A Landscape with Horses; and a Camp. In all these the horse plays an important part.

=Description of The Hay-Wagon.=--The Hay-Wagon is a popular work representing a large ca.n.a.l and a large hay-wagon drawn by two horses, and a man on horseback with a woman behind him on a pillion; farther away are seen men loading boats with the hay. In the foreground on the right are a woman with a little boy, a chariot drawn by a horse which is led by a peasant.

[Ill.u.s.tration: P. WOUWERMANS The Hay Wain]

=The Arrival at an Inn.=--The beautiful Arrival at an Inn represents an inn and a barn. On the one side a coach is arriving, and on the left a mounted lady and cavalier. Others are getting booted and spurred and saddling mettlesome steeds prefatory for departure. In the left foreground, a dwarf, a charlatan, and a monkey, eating a simple meal, regardless of the bustle around them, give a touch of the life of the travelling mountebank. A handsome castle closes the view on the left.

[Ill.u.s.tration: P. WOUWERMANS The Arrival at the Inn]

=Crowe's Appreciation of Wouwermans.=--"Wouwermans's authentic works are distinguished by great spirit and animation, and are infinitely varied and full of incident, though dealing recurrently with cavalry battle pieces, military encampments, scenes of cavalcades, and hunting and hawking parties. He is equally excellent in his vivacious treatment of figures, in his skilful animal painting, and in his admirable and appropriate introduction of landscape backgrounds. Three different styles have been observed as characteristic of the various periods of his art. His earlier works are marked by the prevalence of a foxy brown coloring, and by a tendency to an angular form in the draughtsmanship; the productions of his middle period have greater purity and brilliancy, and his latest and greatest pictures possess more of force and breadth, and are full of a delicate silvery gray tone."[6]

=Reynolds on Wouwermans's Three Different Manners.=--On his visit to the Royal Collection in 1781, Sir Joshua Reynolds was greatly impressed with the pictures of this artist, and said:

"Here are many of the best works of Wouwermans whose pictures are well worthy the attention and close examination of a painter. One of the most remarkable of them is known by the name of The Hay-Cart; another, in which there is a coach and horses, is equally excellent. There are three pictures hanging close together in his three different manners: his middle manner is by much the best; the first and last have not that liquid softness which characterizes his best works. Besides his great skill in coloring, his horses are correctly drawn, very spirited, of a beautiful form, and always in unison with their ground.

Upon the whole, he is one of the few painters whose excellence in his way is such as leaves nothing to be wished for."

Johannes Lingelbach (1623-74), a native of Frankfort-on-the-Main, settled in Amsterdam on his return from Italy. He was frequently employed by Wijnants to insert figures and animals in his landscapes. He was a successful imitator of Wouwermans.

=Crowe's Estimate of Lingelbach's Powers.=--"Lingelbach's coloring, as was almost always the case with Wijnants's, and also with Wouwermans's in his latest manner, is characterized by a cool and often delicate silvery tone, which with him sometimes degenerates into coldness and want of harmony. In his flesh, especially, a cold red tone often prevails, added to which, neither in clearness nor impasto, does he equal the above-named masters. He ranks, however, high for skill in composition, good drawing, careful execution, to which is sometimes added a happy vein of humor. He may be studied under all his different aspects in the galleries of the Louvre, The Hague, and Amsterdam. Of the four pictures by him in the gallery of The Hague, the Italian Seaport, dated 1670, is remarkable for a power and warmth quite unusual in this painter."[7]

=Examples showing the Variety of Lingelbach's Style.=--The variety of his style is well exhibited in The Hague Gallery by four pictures of different dates. These are the Italian Seaport, with large figures, signed and dated 1670; the Departure of Charles II. from Scheveningen for England in 1660, a very rich, luminous, and fine work; a small Cavalry March, in which the little figures are beautifully executed and are thoroughly original; and a Landscape with a Hay-Wagon, much in the manner of Philips Wouwermans.

=Weakness of the Mauritshuis in Marines.=--The Mauritshuis is weak in marines: two by Willem van de Velde; three by Backhuysen, two by Abraham Storck, a view of the Amstel at Amsterdam by Torenburg (1737-86), a few Italian Seaports, and a few Beaches at Scheveningen painted by the landscape artists are all that the gallery owns.

=Excellence of W. van de Velde's Marines.=--Willem van de Velde (1633-1707) stands very high in the ranks of the marine painters of the seventeenth century. In the last years of that century we have artists like Simon de Vlieger, Jan van de Capelle, Hendrik Dubbels, and Abraham van Beyerex (in his rare marines); but Van de Velde is a master in his sphere, especially when he represents the calm sea under bright sunlight.

In his View on the Y we obtain enjoyment from the fine aerial perspective, the correct drawing of the ships, and the numerous little figures. The accuracy of the detail does not detract from the wonderful composition, the play of the sunlight on sail and water, and the beautiful sky, lightly flecked with clouds. Probably, the gaily decorated ship on the left is the yacht of the Princes of Orange; the boat which is being rowed away from it is bringing important visitors to sh.o.r.e, while the trumpeter on the ship loudly announces their departure.

Although not of the very first rank, this picture belongs to the best work of the master's middle period.

The other picture, of exactly the same size, is also identical in subject and treatment. Both are small. The other picture owned in the Mauritshuis is the Capture of the Royal Prince (June 18, 1666).

=His Greatness as a Marine Painter.=--"There is no question that Willem van de Velde the younger is the greatest marine painter of the whole Dutch school. His untiring study of nature of which his numerous sepia drawings are the best evidence, his perfect knowledge of lineal and aerial perspective and the incomparable technical process which he inherited from his school,--all these qualifications enabled him to represent the great element under every form, whether that of the raging storm, the gentlest crisping wind, or of the profoundest calm, with the utmost truth of form and color. Nor are his skies, with their transparent ether and light and airy clouds, less ent.i.tled to admiration than his seas; the surface of which he diversified, with the purest feeling for the picturesque, by various vessels, near and distant, which are drawn with a knowledge that extends to every rope.

Finally his various lightnings create the most charming effect of light and shade. With this combination of qualities, so calculated to please a seafaring nation, it is no wonder that he should have become the most popular painter with the Dutch and English."[8]