The Standard Galleries - Holland Part 6

=Crowe's Opinion of Ostade's Style.=--"There is less of the style of Hals in Adriaen Ostade than in Brouwer, but a great likeness to Brouwer in Ostade's early works. During the first years of his career, Ostade displayed the same tendency to exaggeration and frolic as his comrade. He had humor and boisterous spirits, but he is to be distinguished from his rival by a more general use of the principles of light and shade, and especially by a greater concentration of light on a small surface in contrast with a broad expanse of gloom. The key of his harmonies remains for a time in the scale of grays. But his treatment is dry and careful, and in this style he shuns no difficulties of detail, representing cottages inside and out, with the vine leaves covering the poorness of the outer side, and nothing inside to deck the patch-work of rafters and thatch, or tumble-down chimneys and ladder staircases, that make up the sordid interior of the Dutch rustic of those days. His men and women, attuned to these needy surroundings, are invariably dressed in the poorest clothes. The hard life and privations of the race are impressed on their shapes and faces, their shoes and hats, worn at heel and battered to softness, as if they had descended from generation to generation, so that the boy of ten seems to wear the cast-off things of his sire and grandsire. It was not easy to get poetry out of such materials. But the greatness of Ostade lies in the fact that he often caught the poetic side of the life of the peasant cla.s.s, in spite of its ugliness and stunted form and misshapen features. He did so by giving their vulgar sports, their quarrels, even their quieter moods of enjoyment, the magic light of the sungleam, and by clothing the wreck of cottages with gay vegetation."[14]

=Ostade the Greatest Dutch Painter of Peasant Life in his Day.=--Adriaen van Ostade is rightly regarded as the greatest of the Dutch painters of the seventeenth century who represented the peasant life of that day. In song and dance, weddings and _kermesses_, at bowling, love-making, and drinking, Ostade always was an observer of country folk, although he himself was a townsman, and held a rather exalted position in the world.

His second wife seems to have raised him into a very high social cla.s.s of Amsterdam families, as numerous records of executions of wills, which the painter must have signed in Amsterdam, inform us. To some extent, his peasants involuntarily progress parallel with the force of his own life. In his earliest pictures, when Ostade was still a modest artist, his peasants are also still quite peasant-like; in his tavern-scenes things are still very lively. Later, when the painter became closely related to refined and well-to-do patricians, his peasants also became more prosperous and polite; in a word, more decorous. Unfortunately, his painting also became somewhat more polished and smooth, so that the early pictures, and particularly those of the middle period, more strongly delight the heart of an artist than the cool, smooth works of the later period. Ostade is eminent in his coloring, chiaroscuro, and composition: he knows how to arrange his groups in the most spontaneous and natural manner; and truly artistic is his method of illumination, for which, knowingly or unknowingly, he has to thank Rembrandt. In his earliest pictures, which have a somewhat cold tone grading into gray, reminding us of his teacher Hals (from 1631 to 1640), there still remains some local color. The subjects, mostly peasants in poor homes or in the tavern, are energetically conceived. Bode rightly says:

"Instead of the pleasant humor and the poetry of the prosperous middle cla.s.s which are common to the later pictures, these earlier works display an effort for characterizing according to life and movement; a keen humor in the spirit of Hals and Brouwer; and, particularly, a characteristic inquiry into the separate individualities, such as the lifelike representation of an expressive scene, the feasting, round dances, and fighting of his jovial peasant folk."

=Bredius on the increasing Brightness of his Pictures.=--"He died in 1685. Before 1640 his chiaroscuro was already finer, and between 1640 and 1655 (his flowering-time) many of his pictures show no traces of Rembrandt's influence. The tone of his works was quite different and approaches a warm brown; the chiaroscuro, as, for instance, in his well-known Painter's Studio in Amsterdam; and later, very closely repeated (Dresden, 1663), attains the highest degree of freedom; then his pictures become somewhat slowly cooler, the tone gets constantly grayer, but the drawing always remains strikingly correct, the grouping natural, and the pictures become brighter, smoother, and more polished. In the meantime Ostade had become a finer, more respectable gentleman. Well on in years, he could leave this life without worry, and was buried at Haarlem by his admirers and pupils on May 2, 1685."

=Ter Borch's Freedom from Grossness.=--Ter Borch (1617-81) is excellent as a portrait-painter, but still greater as a painter of _genre_ subjects. He depicts with admirable truth the life of the wealthy and cultured cla.s.ses of his time, and his work is free from any touch of the grossness which finds so large a place in Dutch art. His figures are well drawn and expressive in att.i.tude; his coloring is clear and rich, but his best skill lies in his unequalled rendering of textiles in draperies.

=The Elegance of his Sitters.=--Ter Borch was not only an excellent painter of Conversations, he was, indeed, the creator of his _genre_.

With a little less wit and a little less taste, perhaps, than Metsu, he charms you with his family concerts, his _tete-a-tete_ lovers, his light afternoon repasts, and in selecting for heroes the most elegant cavaliers of the world in which he lived. His pretty pages with great puffed sleeves striped with velvet, and those blond ladies with transparent complexions, plump hands, and round waists, const.i.tute a type that no artist has so well represented as Ter Borch. Before depicting these delightful and familiar scenes, he first learned to imitate all that could add to the charm of these pictures of private life,--silken draperies, Turkish rugs, leather, ermine, velvet, and satin,--more particularly satin, and _white_ satin above all else. The most striking example we shall see at the Rijks, in the picture called Paternal Advice, known also as the _Robe de Satin_.

=Resemblance between his Paintings and those of Metsu.=--There is so much resemblance between Gerard Ter Borch (or Terburg) and Metsu that at first it is hard to distinguish them. Their subjects are much the same; for instead of painting scenes of low life--inns with carousing peasants, etc.--both turn with sympathy to high life; _sujets de mode_ is the name given to their works in which satins, velvets, silks, and lace, rich robes and mantles, elegant hangings, and table-carpets figure so largely.

=The Difference between Ter Borch and Metsu.=--The difference between Ter Borch and Metsu is defined by Blanc, who says it is the difference between _bonhomie_ and _finesse_; the one is naive and gracious, the other ingenious and piquant. Both, however, are charming in the way they introduce us into a house and show us some little comedy that is being played by the unconscious lovers, family group, or party of friends.

Like Metsu, Ter Borch is particularly fond of making music a motive of his pictures. A timid love often expresses itself to the notes of a mandolin or lute; sometimes we surprise a musical party singing and playing instruments; a lady composing music or trying a new piece for the first time, while her gallant and richly dressed lover stands by her side. Sometimes we see a young lady quite alone in jacket of puce-colored velvet plucking her lute, which rests on her satin skirt.

Sometimes again the conversation takes place in front of a clavecin, where the lady's hands are painted in correct position, though she pauses to hear what her lover has to say, while her spaniel sleeps on the foot-warmer.

=Ter Borch's Conversations characterized.=--"Pretty little dramas,"

Blanc calls these Conversations of Ter Borch, "dramas without action or noise, which excite the thought only, and whose intrigue consists only in a clasp of the hand, the lowering of an eyelid, or the exchange of a glance and a smile." He also calls attention to the type of woman represented by Ter Borch, Van Mieris, and Metsu, all of whom have high foreheads on which a few little curls wander, like those made fashionable at this period by Ninon de Lenclos, and known as "_boucles a la Ninon_."

=The Women of Ter Borch's Pictures.=--The women of Ter Borch's pictures are like Rousseau's pen-portrait of Madame de Warens, who

"had an air caressing and tender, a very gentle glance, ash-colored hair of uncommon beauty, which she arranged in a very _neglige_ style that produced a piquant effect. She was small and a little thick in the waist; but it would be impossible to find a more beautiful head or a lovelier bust, hands, and arms."

Dr. Bredius, who calls attention to Ter Borch's position in the hall of fame as singular in the fact that he has never been a.s.sailed by critics, nor, on the other hand, sufficiently appreciated, says:

"Without striking originality, without any commanding dramatic quality, without humor, and without any startling light effects, Ter Borch is yet ent.i.tled to the name of the first _genre_ painter of Holland,--indeed, of all schools,--merely by his perfect talent and fulfilment as an artist. Rightly is Ter Borch called the most eminent painter of the Dutch school. Not only does he paint high society almost exclusively, but he does it in a distinguished style. The pose of his figures, the composition of his picture, the fine color, the admirable drawing, all breathe an elegance which is not met with elsewhere in the Dutch school. Thereby, he is the one and only master of his subject. What he paints is always completed to the highest degree. We never find in him a trace of effort. What he does must be so and not otherwise. We look for humor in him in vain; but n.o.bility we always find, and not least in his likenesses, which, notwithstanding their small dimensions, are 'the last word of a portrait.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: TER BORCH The Despatch]

=Description of The Despatch.=--The Despatch, dated 1655, belongs to his second period. On a low chair beside a table on which stand a decanter and beaker, an officer is sitting with his wife or sweetheart. She is sitting on the floor reclining against his knee. Both are young. He holds the despatch in his hand and she looks somewhat distressed. In front of them stands the trumpeter, who, it appears, has brought the message. The officer is fully dressed, and on the table beside him lie his weapons.

=His own Likeness, painted by Himself.=--The other picture of Ter Borch's in this gallery is his own likeness, painted by himself about 1660. He is dressed entirely in black and stands out strongly against a gray background. He wears a large wig, the curls of which shade his rather melancholy face, distinguished by a long nose and grayish moustache. It was probably painted while Ter Borch was a burgomaster of Deventer.

=Caspar Netscher's Family Group.=--Much in the same style as Ter Borch's Conversations is Netscher's Family Group. Caspar Netscher (1639-84) was a pupil of Ter Borch, and this is one of the best works of his best period. The painter, in a red slashed jacket, is accompanying on his lute his daughter, who is singing, and whose timidity is well expressed.

She wears a dress of white satin and has feathers in her hair. On the other side of the table covered with a Persian carpet, and in the half light, sits Netscher's wife. On the back of the arm-chair in which Netscher is sitting is his signature and the date 1665. Netscher is also represented by two portraits--Mr. and Mrs. Van Waalwijk.

=Few Examples of Metsu.=--Metsu, like many other Dutch masters, is poorly represented in the great public galleries of his own country.

While The Hague Gallery has but three and the Rijks only four, the Louvre, for example, has eight and Dresden six.

Those who have seen pictures by Metsu (1630-67), Ter Borch, or Caspar Netscher, will have a better knowledge of the customs and costumes of the upper cla.s.ses at the period of the Stadtholders, their faces, their polished manners, their interiors, and even their thoughts, than if they had read many books of travel, whole volumes of geography, description, and history.

=The Rich Dutchman as painted by Metsu.=--As he appears in the pictures of Gabriel Metsu, the rich Dutchman is domesticated, methodical, and well regulated in his life. His house is the universe for him. In this cherished and well-arranged abode, he concentrates as many joys as the ancient kings of Asia a.s.sembled in the palaces of Susa or Ecbatana. His country's and his own ships have "ploughed the sea from end to end, penetrating to j.a.pan for porcelain and amber, and bringing back from Goa pepper and ginger." From the ends of the earth have come to him all things that could charm his family life and distract the melancholy that the sad nature of the North and its long winters inspire. Asia has sent to him her muslins, spices, and diamonds; the polar ice has furnished him with the furs that edge the velvet robes which his wife and his eldest daughter wear indoors. The birds, insects, sh.e.l.ls, and mineral specimens of the most distant climes fill his cabinet, carefully arranged under gla.s.s. In his gardens flourish rare plants, the choicest flowers and bulbs cultivated by himself or under his own eyes. His furniture, of exquisite taste and workmanship, carefully looked after and incessantly cleaned, does not suffer by the changes of fashion; it is transmitted from father to son, and lasts for generations. His alcove bed is supported by ebony columns and closed in with green damask curtains. Hanging from the ceiling, a candelabrum of gilt bronze spreads its branches twisted into elegant volutes. The floors are waxed till they are a pleasure to the eye, the windows are polished, the door-k.n.o.b is shining, the furniture gleams like a mirror, and yet the daylight falling through lightly tinted taffeta curtains sheds over all these objects only a soft, moderate, and harmonious radiance.

=How Metsu depicts the Manners of the Dutch.=--"The manners of Holland, as well as its material physiognomy in civil life, its interiors, its furniture, the decoration and luxury of its apartments, are all written down in Metsu's pictures with charming clearness, which is all the more pleasing since this merit seems to be involuntary in the painter. After two hundred years, his work may serve for the complete reconst.i.tution of a well-to-do interior as it was composed in the seventeenth century by the climate of the country, the character of its inhabitants, and the historic circ.u.mstances in the midst of which the Dutch merchants, the masters of the commerce of the world, then lived.

"By Metsu's favor we are able to penetrate into those interiors which are so jealously closed to strangers. Most often it is by a window that serves as a frame for his picture that Metsu gives us access to the boudoirs of fashionable ladies, and makes us take them by surprise, sometimes in velvet _deshabille_ writing their secrets; sometimes finishing their toilette in view of a hoped-for visit; and sometimes breathing over the keys of their clavecin the sighs of their hearts and the thoughts they do not express."

=His Carefulness in selecting Details.=--"Metsu rarely paints an interior without introducing the pet spaniel of the period, which often contributes much to our comprehension of the scene by the character of its att.i.tude.

"There are some Dutch masters who unintelligently acc.u.mulate innumerable details everywhere. They make a picture of manners the pretext for a ridiculous display of furniture, crystal, l.u.s.tres, _chinoisarie_ and curiosities of every kind; their interiors resemble bazaars. Metsu puts beside his subjects only those details necessary to make the intrigue clear, and to explain the conversation.

=His Treatment of Still Life.=--"However great may have been his talent for painting still life, he never allowed himself to be carried away, like so many others, by that vulgar pleasure; but, on the other hand, what finish! what a precious touch! And then how he loves to give full value to the beauties of local color, or to shade a Turkey carpet, or to grade down the lights on gold and silver vases. What pleasure he takes in the Bohemian gla.s.ses and the transparent liquors that half fill them! The gla.s.ses in his pictures have great importance, for the life of a retired Dutchman is spent in continual smoking and drinking; but in Metsu we no longer see the Pantagruelesque gla.s.ses of several stages that Van Ostade's peasants always have in their hands; these are fine and more discrete gla.s.ses, of elegant form, tall and oblong gla.s.ses in which the Haarlem beer froths; gla.s.ses cut and fashioned in twenty different ways, octagon gla.s.ses each facet of which ends with a curve and which cut the light with their sharp edges, or gla.s.ses the calyx of which forms a reversed cone on a heron's claw, or elongates into a swan's neck, and finishes like a trumpet; lastly, the gla.s.ses of the grandparents, sometimes of an imperishable thickness and solidity, sometimes as delicate, light, and thin as an onion skin."[15]

=Favorite Subjects.=--Metsu is fond of representing the patricians of his day and their womankind either in pleasant entertainment, or, more frequently, in individual figures engaged in quiet work. A picture of this cla.s.s is The Amateur Musicians. The lady on the left is very quietly playing her instrument with the same sense of repose that is expressed by the lady who seems to be writing down the notes. Only on the face of the elegant gentleman standing behind her chair is painted a merry, almost roguish, smile.

[Ill.u.s.tration: METSU The Amateur Musicians]

=The Elegance of Metsu's Figures.=--The figures are drawn with certainty; the artistic handling of the subject is remarkable; and a fine feeling for color is shown in the selection of the tones. In Metsu's figures we notice an elegance and a n.o.bility which are not found elsewhere except in Ter Borch.

=The Influence of other Artists on Metsu.=--It is strange that the earliest works of Metsu, which are the most broadly painted ones, show little of Dou's influence, which is always so unmistakable in his pupils, so that Bode believes he finds in them the working of Hals's influence; and, in fact, the large pictures of Metsu's early period are painted with a broad brush in Hals's gray tones. When Metsu removed to Amsterdam, he fell more under Rembrandt's influence, and the beautiful chiaroscuro of his later works incontestably proves this.

=His Miscellaneous Works.=--Metsu's Biblical and allegorial pictures are the least important of his works. Besides The Amateur Musicians, signed by Metsu, the Mauritshuis possesses a fine Portrait of a Huntsman dated 1661, and a great academical, constrained allegory of Justice Protecting the Widow and Orphan, a picture that was found in the vestibule of a house in Leyden in 1667. It was painted in 1655.

Crowe, who does not believe that this "rough and frosty composition" is the work of Metsu, says:

"What Metsu undertook and carried out from the first with surprising success was the low life of the market and tavern, contrasted with wonderful versatility by incidents of high life and the drawing-room.

In each of these spheres he combined humor with expression, a keen appreciation of nature, with feeling and breadth, with delicacy of touch, unsurpa.s.sed by any of his contemporaries. In no single instance do the artistic lessons of Rembrandt appear to have been lost on him.

The same principles of light and shade which had marked his school work in The Woman Taken in Adultery[16] were applied to subjects of quite a different kind. A group in a drawing-room, a series of groups in the market-place, a single figure in the gloom of a tavern or parlor, was treated with the utmost felicity by fit concentration and gradation of light; a warm flush of tone pervaded every part, and, with that, the study of texture in stuffs was carried as far as it had been by Terburg, or Dou, if not with the finish or the _brio_ of De Hooch. Metsu's pictures are all in such admirable keeping and so warm and harmonious in his middle, or so cool and harmonious in his closing time, that they always make a pleasing impression. They are more subtle in modulation than Dou's, more spirited and forcible in touch than Terburg's; and, if Terburg may of right claim to have first painted the true satin robe, he never painted it more softly or with more judgment as to color than Metsu."

One of the best pictures of Metsu's middle period is The Market Place of Amsterdam, in the Louvre.

=Two Fine Portraits by F. van Mieris.=--Frans van Mieris (1635-81) reached the highest rung of art in his portraits, of which The Hague Gallery possesses two fine examples. One is of Florentius Schuyl, Professor of Medicine and Botany in the University of Leyden, painted in 1666, and a still more important picture of the painter himself and his wife. He has made a charming _genre_ picture of it, which Sir Joshua Reynolds admired, not knowing who the characters were. The artist shows himself standing and pulling the ear of the beautiful little dog which his wife holds in her lap, while, to protect her pet, she gently wards off her smiling husband with her right hand. The little dog's mother is trying to spring into the lady's lap in order to take care of her offspring. Both the drawing and modelling here are masterly, and endow the scene with such charm that this work must be p.r.o.nounced one of the best by his brush. The tablecloth and the lute lying upon it are beautifully painted.

=Description of Soap Bubbles.=--Sir Joshua also noticed the picture of Soap Bubbles dated 1663, representing a boy at an open and vine-framed window, blowing bubbles that are exquisitely painted and show beautiful reflections and prismatic colors. His red hat with white plumes is lying on the window-sill, near a bottle containing a sprig of heliotrope, and above hangs a cage. Behind the child in the half-light stands a young woman with a dog in her arms. On the window-frame is written the date in Roman numerals. Willem van Mieris often imitated this composition of his father's, who frequently repeated it himself.

=Pictures by Van Mieris Full of Refinement.=--Van Mieris takes us into an elegant world, although he himself was fond of low life, a heavy drinker and the companion of Jan Steen. He was the son of a goldsmith and diamond-setter of Leyden, who wanted him to follow his business. He was naturally influenced by his earliest surroundings, and in his father's shop became familiar with the dress and manners of people of distinction. His eye was also fascinated by the sheen of jewelry and stained gla.s.s. Houbraken writes:

"Seeing his talent for painting his father placed him with Abraham Torenvliet, a famous gla.s.s painter and a good draughtsman. From him he pa.s.sed to the school of Gerrit Dou, where in a short time he eclipsed every one and gained the affection of the master, who loved to call him 'the prince of his pupils.' At the end of a few years, his father sent him to the historical painter Abraham van Tempel; but he did not remain long with him, for his natural taste would allow him to follow no other manner than that of Gerrit Dou,--a manner extremely finished, demanding attention and excessive care."

=His Love of Elegant Accessories.=--Houbraken calls Metsu a painter of _sujets de mode_. This term applies also to Frans van Mieris; for certainly with him costumes, materials, and accessories play an important part. If his people were less attractive one might imagine that they were only a pretext for showing off the velvet jackets, satin skirts, and rich furs. Very often Van Mieris shows us a s.p.a.cious and magnificently decorated hall, in the background of which a richly dressed lady and her lover are walking; again he allows us to peep into a charmingly furnished room where a lady in white satin is playing the lute to entertain her guest, a handsome cavalier in black velvet; or we surprise a lady as she is about to drink a gla.s.s of wine which a page offers her on a silver salver. At other times we find a group of ladies and gentlemen about to enjoy a light repast; or see a table invitingly spread with luscious fruit in rich silver dishes; or watch a lady feed her parrot. Sometimes the pet monkey is discerned behind the looped-back curtains of taffetas. Frans van Mieris seldom chose panels above 12 by 15 inches in size. He never ventured to design life-sized figures.

=The Kind of Subjects he treated Best.=--"Characteristic of his art in its minute proportions is a shiny brightness and metallic polish. The subjects which he treated best are those in which he ill.u.s.trated the habits or actions of the wealthier cla.s.ses; but he sometimes succeeded in homely incidents and in portraits, and not unfrequently he ventured on allegory. He repeatedly painted the satin skirt which Terburg brought into fashion, and he often rivalled him in the faithful rendering of rich and highly colored woven tissues. But he remained below Terburg and Metsu, because he had not their delicate perception of harmony, or their charming mellowness of touch and tint; and he fell below Gerard Dou, because he was hard and had not his feeling for effect by concentrated light and shade. In the form of his composition, which sometimes represents the framework of a window enlivened with greenery, and adorned with bas-reliefs, within which figures are seen to the waist, his model is certainly Gerard Dou."

=His Lack of Humor.=--"It has been said that he possessed some of the humor of Jan Steen, who was his friend, but the only approach to humor in any of his works is the quaint att.i.tude and look of a tinker in a picture at Dresden, who glances knowingly at a worn copper kettle which a maid asks him to mend.... If there be a difference between his earlier and later work, it is that the former was clearer and more delicate in flesh, whilst the latter was often darker and more livid in the shadows."[17]

Blanc says:

"Among so many Dutch painters who copy nature it is very pleasant to find one who deigns to select his models, and who, preferring grace to ugliness, would rather paint beautifully women elegantly dressed than _magots_. Strange, indeed! He loved distinction, yet lived in a tavern; he loved luxury, and was soon ruined; and, in spite of a life devoid of dignity, Van Mieris always kept a love of beauty and elegance, as is shown in his delicate faces, fine complexions, beautiful hands, grace of att.i.tude, taste in costume and furniture, and choice of splendid materials."

=Willem van Mieris.=--The Grocer's Shop, by his son and pupil, Willem van Mieris (1662-1747), signed and dated 1717, also hangs in The Hague Gallery. In extreme finish and minuteness of painting, this picture would not disgrace Mieris the Elder or Gerrit Dou.

=Its Wealth of Still Life.=--You see only two figures, a young boy who is buying and a young woman who is selling; but these figures are of no more importance than the foods of all kinds exposed in the shop, on the sill of the window, and outside. The lower part of the window is decorated with a bas-relief, representing Cupids playing with a bird.

This bas-relief is half hidden by a superb piece of tapestry, on which the painter has placed a basket of dried fruits. Great bags of grain, peas, and beans, and everything that is sold by the bushel are exposed on the pavement of the street, with a bucket and some tubs filled with olives, sardines, and anchovies. On the wall hang a basket and a bird-cage, and a magnificent damask curtain with large flowers falls in graceful folds from an outside ring. Among the innumerable details of the shop you note a little rat gnawing at the grains which have fallen through a hole in one of the sacks.

The pendant to this picture hangs in the Louvre, where it is called _Marchande de Volailles_.