The Standard Galleries - Holland Part 7

=W. van Mieris influenced by his Father and by G. de Lairesse.=--Willem van Mieris was a pupil of his father, and at first had no other ambition than to imitate his style and produce those charming Conversations in which rich furniture, shining chandeliers of bra.s.s or copper, j.a.panese porcelains, silken curtains, Turkish table-carpets, flowers, and elegantly dressed people make a somewhat restricted, although delightful, world. Willem, falling under the influence of Gerard de Lairesse, who was much in vogue in Holland, selected such subjects as a young lady playing on the clavecin, or making lace, or walking in the country in a lilac satin robe with large sleeves that reveal through their slashes a beautiful arm, and a straw hat ornamented with a sweeping plume. Becoming a shepherdess this attractive lady next sits in his pictures with bare feet, in the shade of an oak, and beside her Corydon talks of love.

=His Success with Mythical and Biblical Subjects.=--Next he turned his attention to subjects from fable, romance, and mythology; and Diana, Armida, Cleopatra, Bacchus, Jupiter, Tarquin, the Sabines, etc., fill his panels or copper plates, which were hardly larger than your hand.

Biblical and religious subjects occupied him for a time and then he again turned pagan. His success grew greater every day, and his Dutch patrons who loved scenes of familiar life demanded from Van Mieris pictures in the style of his famous father--those charming _genre_ pictures still being produced by Slingelandt, Van Tol, and other imitators of Gerrit Dou.

=A Window-frame his Favorite Setting.=--Like Gerrit Dou, Willem van Mieris selects a window-frame of stone, which he often decorates with graceful creepers or a bouquet of tulips or jonquils placed on the sill, or throws over it a bright piece of tapestry. From it a blond lady leans to flirt with the unseen pa.s.ser, a child blows bubbles, a portly dame waters her flowers; or the artist himself sits calmly by. When tired of this, Willem van Mieris takes us to his favorite shop.

=Arie de Vois.=--Among the portraits one must not fail to notice the picture of A Huntsman Holding a Partridge by Arie de Vois (1630-80).

This was originally in the collection of William V. and was bought for 1,210 florins. His pictures are so rare that we are not surprised that the Mauritshuis contains but one example. The Rijks is more fortunate in owning four by this delightful painter.

=Abraham de Pape's Style.=--Abraham de Pape (1625-66), supposed to have been a pupil of Gerrit Dou, is represented by An Old Woman Plucking a c.o.c.k, with a little boy kneeling beside her. It is a very good example of this master; and at the Gerrit Muller sale brought no less than 490 florins. Crowe says:

"This almost unknown artist is decidedly one of the best _genre_ painters of this time. He is true and speaking in action, animated in his heads, harmonious, and even in some of his pictures warm in coloring, and very careful and soft in execution."

=A. van der Werff's Biblical and Mythological Pictures.=--Adriaan van der Werff (1659-1722) occupied a peculiar position among Dutch painters.

While his contemporaries were devoting themselves to the study of nature and becoming realistic, he adhered to the pursuit of the ideal and produced pictures inspired by Biblical or mythological subjects,--pictures noted for their beauty and elegance, and moreover finished with wonderful smoothness of touch, which he had learned from his master Eglon van der Neer. His figures as a rule are small, and the flesh-tints are of an ivory tone. Van der Werff was so popular that it was impossible for him to execute all the commissions sent him. His greatest patron was the Elector Palatine John William; the pictures that Van der Werff painted for him are now in Munich, where this master may best be studied.

=Description of The Flight into Egypt.=--He is fairly well represented in the Rijks; but The Hague has only two of his works,--a Portrait of a Man, dated 1689, and The Flight into Egypt, dated 1710. This is only one foot six inches high and one foot two inches wide. The Virgin is in profile in a Prussian-blue mantle, accompanied by St. Joseph, who is leading an a.s.s. The road runs by the side of a brook, and the landscape is diversified with trees, ruins, and a portico. This picture was given by the artist to his daughter, who sold it to Mr. Schuijlenberg for 4,000 florins. At the Schuijlenberg sale at The Hague in 1765 it brought 6,500 florins.

=Reynolds on Van der Werff's Manner.=--This picture was much admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who saw it in the King's collection. In describing Van der Werff's manner he said:

"He has also the defect which is often found in Rembrandt,--that of making his light only a single spot. However, to do him justice his figures and heads are generally well drawn and his drapery is excellent; perhaps there are in his pictures as perfect examples of drapery as are to be found in any other painter's work whatever."

=Philip van Dijk and his pupil, Louis de Moni.=--To this group belongs Philip van Dijk (1680-1753), a pupil of Arnold Boonen, and an imitator of Van der Werff. Judith with the Head of Holofernes is a good example of his historical work; and two good _genre_ pictures, A Lady Playing the Guitar, and A Lady at her Toilet, show this artist in a happier mood, where he gives free play to his more delicate touch. His Bookkeeper also hangs in this gallery. His pupil, Louis de Moni, shows the decline of the school. An Old Woman and a Boy, in a window, the boy blowing soap bubbles, is dated 1742.

=Ochtervelt a follower of Metsu and of Pieter de Hooch.=--Jacob van Ochtervelt (?-1700), who occupies a first place among the second-rate painters of his day, was a follower of Metsu and also of Pieter de Hooch. The Fish Vender, representing a woman in a room where a man is offering her fish, in conception and careful finish recalls Metsu, while in lighting and combination of color it reminds one of Pieter de Hooch.

The general tone is warmer than most of Ochtervelt's pictures.

=Jan Steen's Favorite Subjects.=--One of the greatest of all the Dutch _genre_ painters is Jan Steen (1626-79), "the jolly landlord of Leyden."

As a draughtsman and colorist he takes high rank, and as a student of human nature he has been compared to Hogarth and Moliere. His pictures are studies of life and character, and are full of humor. He paints feasts and merry-makings, weddings, quacks, tavern-brawls, dentists, invalids, children at play, family parties, etc., with sympathy and joyousness.

=His Character-painting.=--As a character-painter, he is unapproachable.

n.o.body so well as he has understood all human pa.s.sions, all emotions--hilarious joy, deep-seated satisfaction, fear, grief, and _Weltschmerz_ with such mastery, and known how to represent them in the smallest possible s.p.a.ce.

=His Method of showing Background to Advantage.=--With regard to Jan Steen's interiors it is interesting to note that, like Ostade's, they are painted from an elevation, so that the figures in the background are not hidden by those in the foreground. Ordinarily he opens a window in the background to illuminate the distant figures and thus is formed an echo of the princ.i.p.al light. The number of utensils is less than with most painters of this cla.s.s, for Jan Steen had too much sense to multiply them uselessly. Like Metsu, he often painted little pictures on the walls of his interiors, and it is singular that these depict heroic landscapes, battle scenes, mythological subjects, etc., and never tavern or _genre_ scenes such as he himself painted.

=Refinement and Culture in his Pictures.=--Another thing to notice is that whether in houses of affluence or in common taverns his people do not drink grossly and from jugs, as in the taverns of Adriaen Brouwer.

Each one takes his place gracefully and naturally at the table or in the room; and the details of the furniture accord with the politeness of the people or the players. On the mantelpiece, for instance, stands a bronze figure of Love; a guitar hangs from one of the panels; and here hangs a fine landscape in an ebony frame. The collation consists of delicious fruits that rejoice the eyes; perhaps also open oysters, which glisten in the light like pearls; ripe grapes and beautiful peaches, whose furry skins are blushing like the cheeks of a young girl, and finally some lemons half peeled, the skin falling in a golden spiral. All this shows the influence of Van Mieris, who was a friend of Steen and who spent many hours in his tavern at Leyden.

=Reynolds's Appreciation of Jan Steen.=--Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was so delighted with the Steens he saw in Holland, wrote the following appreciative criticism of the artist:

"Jan Steen has a strong manly style of painting, which might become even the design of Raffaelle, and he has shown the greatest skill in composition and management of light and shadow as well as great truth in the expression and character of his figures."

=Jan Steen's Fondness for painting his own Family.=--Jan Steen was very fond of painting his own family; his wives, his aged parents, and his children provided him with varied models of a.s.sorted ages and sizes. He had six children by his wife Marguerite van Goyen, daughter of the painter; and when she died, he married a widow, named Mariette Herkulens, who had two. He has characterized the pleasures of all ages in his picture called The Family of Jan Steen, bearing the legend "_Soo de ouden songen pypen de jongen._" (As the old ones sing so will the young ones pipe.) This is particularly interesting, because the artist has painted himself between his wife Marguerite van Goyen and Mariette Herkulens, who was destined to be his second wife. They were both quite handsome, especially Marguerite. Mariette Herkulens was a meat vender.

=How he ridiculed the Physicians.=--Physicians were always b.u.t.t for Steen's caustic wit. It was a common practice in the seventeenth century to turn them into ridicule; and as Moliere brought them on the French stage, Jan Steen painted them with all their charlatanism and gravity and that severity of costume so studied for effect.

=Description of The Young Lady who is Ill.=--The Hague Gallery contains two of these,--one known as The Young Lady who is Ill (sometimes called The Doctor Feeling the Pulse of a Young Woman). In this picture a doctor dressed in black, with a pointed hat like that worn by Sagnarelle in the _Medecin malgre lui_, is seated at the bedside of a young and pretty girl with round arms and clear, pale complexion, who looks with interest at the potion that is being prepared according to the doctor's instructions. The latter pretends to be looking at the medicine which an elegant woman is bringing, but he is really looking at the beautiful throat of the blond and well-dressed Dutch lady, who lowers her eyes, charmed to let him gaze at her brilliant white neck, her little _retrousse_ nose, and her hair arranged _a la Ninon_, which is half covered with a sort of black cap. "If it were not for a little touch of malice and certain inconsistencies in the somewhat careless execution,"

Blanc says, "this picture might pa.s.s for a Van Mieris or a Metsu."

=Description of The Doctor's Visit.=--In The Doctor's Visit, a physician dressed in black, with pointed hat and holding his gloves in one hand, with the other is feeling the pulse of a young lady who is sitting near her bed in a _neglige_ costume. With a very knowing and solicitous manner the doctor seems to interrogate the throbs of the pulse; but while he seeks for the secret of the illness, the chamber-maid has found it out, as her glance indicates; and, that you may not be left in doubt, the painter has placed on the corner of the chimney a little statue of Love the Conqueror. In some of his pictures of this cla.s.s Steen adds the legend "_Wat baet hier medecyn--het is der minne pijn_" (Of what use is medicine here? Love is the trouble).

=Other Pictures by Jan Steen, in the Mauritshuis.=--In addition to those already mentioned, the Mauritshuis owns A Village Feast, a picture of his first period; the Dentist, who is extracting the tooth of a peasant; A Menagerie; and an Interior known as The Oyster Feast and Jan Steen's Tap-room.

=Description of Jan Steen's Tap-room.=--The latter is not an inn of the common or rustic type such as is seen in Ostade's or Brouwer's pictures, for the room is furnished in the best style of the period. In it we see about twenty figures in several groups. On the left, an old man is playing with a little child; near him a young girl is kneeling as she cooks the oysters; and in the centre an old man offers an oyster to a seated woman. Children are amusing themselves everywhere: here one is making a cat dance; another is holding a dog; another is carrying a jug and a basket of fruit. At the table on the right and a little back Jan Steen sits playing a lute, a young woman is listening to him, a fat companion with a gla.s.s of liquor in his hand is laughing; and in the background are groups of players and smokers. Above and in the foreground a large violet curtain is looped and casts its shadow over a part of the interior. This fine picture is only 2 feet 3 inches by 2 feet 8 inches.

=Description of A Menagerie.=--A Menagerie is nearly four feet square, and represents the courtyard of a country house--that of William III. at Honsholredijk, which is seen in the distance. Near the stone terrace, beneath the steps of which is a pool, a peac.o.c.k sits on a branch of an old tree; ducks are swimming in the pool, and hens, turkeys, and pigeons are picking up grains in the courtyard. A little girl in a pale straw-colored dress and a white ap.r.o.n is sitting on the steps and giving a lamb milk out of a cup. A man, carrying a basket of eggs and a green pot, is laughing and talking with her. Another old farm-servant is also laughing as he regards his young mistress; another person, who carries a hen under his left arm and her brood of chickens in a basket, is one of those dumpy and deformed creatures that Jan Steen likes to paint. Burger considers the head of the man with the basket of eggs is one of the most wonderful heads that were ever painted by Jan Steen or any of the Dutch Little Masters.

=Troost, the Dutch Watteau or Hogarth.=--Cornelis Troost (1697-1750) was born at the close of the great period of Dutch art. The great painters were all dead. Dutch painting had lost its originality and native vigor.

Under these circ.u.mstances Troost made himself the painter of his period and of his country. Impelled by a witty and caustic humor, he thought to bring back in the eighteenth century what Jan Steen had ill.u.s.trated in the seventeenth. But, inferior in every way to that master, he saw contemporary society only on the stage or in books; and, instead of painting manners, customs, and absurdities of the middle cla.s.ses by observing them in nature, he painted them as they were represented on the stage. Almost all his heroes were characters of the comedy or the novel. Troost has been called the Dutch Watteau and the Dutch Hogarth.

His pictures may be cla.s.sified as follows: Conversations, Comic subjects, Portraits, and Military subjects. The first follow the style of Watteau; the second, Hogarth; and the last are reminiscent of Frans Hals.

=His Excellence in Drawing and Color.=--Excellence of drawing and richness of color distinguish all his works, which are also valuable for their accurate portrayal of the manners and customs, costume and furniture of his day. Troost worked in oil, pastel, and gouache with equal facility; and produced many excellent mezzotints and etchings.

=Blanc on Troost's Style.=--"What we admire in him to-day is the talent of the painter properly so-called, the art of enlightening and grouping his figures and placing them on the stage, the brush-work, the selection and quality of the tones,--in other words, order, chiaroscuro, color, and touch. A man of wit, he shines in composition; although adroitly calculated, his own humor always appears spontaneous and natural. Troost never introduces useless personages nor superfluous ornaments into his pictures. He clearly sets forth what he wants to show; and, contrary to the habits of the other masters of his nation who take pleasure in the acc.u.mulation of accessories, he only puts into his interiors necessary furniture and significant utensils; and in his open-air Conversations the surroundings are not overloaded with detail, but simple and agreeable, being calculated to achieve the idea of the picture, so admirably are they connected with the action of the figures. Troost and Terburg, of all the Dutch masters of _genre_, are the ones who best understood the concentration of the interest of a picture, and what is called the repose of the composition."[18]

=A Picture Ill.u.s.trative of the Concentration of its Interest.=--"On looking over his pictures in the little room devoted to his work in the Mauritshuis, we find more than one example of this intelligent sobriety. Take for instance _L'Amour mal a.s.sorte_. Here we have an old man declaring his love to a young widow. He has thrown on the floor his cane, hat, and gloves; and, in his senile ardor, he clasps the facilely chaste Susanna. What a pretty interior! A Slingelandt, a Gerard Dou, or a Mieris would have multiplied here the details of domestic comfort; here there is not a detail, not a single piece of furniture too much; but yet there is nothing lacking that should be there,--neither the clock, the canary in its cage, the portrait of the deceased husband whose place the guest desires to fill, nor the flower-vase with its full-blown rose, like the charmer whom the admirer wants to gather."

=Pictures of Love and Intrigue.=--"Again we have The Deceived Tutor, a scene antic.i.p.ated from 'The Barber of Seville.' Here we see coming down the street a maiden led prisoner by her tutor, a jealous bear clothed all in black. While she occupies his attention with a sweet smile, her little hand receives the kiss of a lover whom chance has led that way. Other scenes of similar intrigue treated in this light vein are The Lover in Disguise and The Lover Artist. The scenes are taken from the comedies and vaudevilles of Langendijk, Lingelbach, a.s.selijn, Van der Hoeven, Van Paffenrode, and D. Buysero."

=The Dispute of the Astronomers.=--"A picture that does not deal with love and intrigue, but is full of a different kind of humor is The Dispute of the Astronomers, from a comedy by P. Langendijk, in which two astronomers in the heat of their discussion on the systems of Copernicus and Ptolemy make use of the plates and bottles on the supper table to ill.u.s.trate the sun and the planets. Another interesting pastel is one depicting the old Dutch custom of a band of men and children singing hymns before the doors of the village on Twelfth Night, carrying a huge paper star, lighted within."

=Hondecoeter, Painter of Living Birds.=--The great Melchior d'Hondecoeter (1636-95) began his career with marines; but it was not long before he acquired celebrity as a painter of birds only, which he represented not exclusively like Fyt, after a day's shooting, or as stock in a poulterer's shop, but as living beings with pa.s.sions of joy and fear and anger. Though without Fyt's brilliant tone and high finish, his birds are always full of action. William III. employed him to paint his menagerie at Loo, and this picture shows that he could overcome the difficulty of painting India's cattle, elephants, and gazelles.

Hondecoeter's best pictures have remained in Holland, and The Hague and Amsterdam galleries possess his most interesting canvases. The four at the Mauritshuis are: Geese and Ducks, Hens and Ducks, The Menagerie of William III. at Loo, and The Jackdaw Stripped of his Borrowed Feathers.

All these are worthy of study, although Hondecoeter's most celebrated picture, The Floating Feather, hangs in the Rijks.

Blanc says:

"In one of these the artist has amused himself with making his usual heroes play a scene of human comedy; and, as a professional fabulist would have imagined it, he has shown a jackdaw stripped of the borrowed plumes with which he had adorned himself in his vanity. This is a very fine picture, although it has somewhat blackened in certain parts. Hondecoeter seems to us to have been happier in another canvas in which he has grouped various birds. It seems as if on this occasion he wanted to prove what prodigies he was capable of in the touch of divers plumages; and the effect he has obtained is, in truth, astonishing. We could not find the equivalent of this lightness of touch and of this coloring either in Gryff[19] or in the two Weenixes, or in any of the masters who have tried to paint birds, with the possible exception of Giacomo Victor."[20]

=His Preparation for Bird-painting.=--"It is true that before having succeeded so well in the representation of the bird, Hondecoeter made a long study, not only of its external form, but of its habits, customs, and manner of life. His studio had been turned into a menagerie, or, rather, a game preserve. He had paid particular attention to the education of a handsome c.o.c.k, which seemed to comprehend every word and gesture of his master; and who, at the slightest sign, came near the easel and posed, often in very fatiguing att.i.tudes, for hours."

=Hondecoeter's Skill in painting Farmyard Scenes.=--"In painting, Melchior d'Hondecoeter was a very able man without leaving the poultry yard, and was satisfied with painting on the spot either the b.l.o.o.d.y dramas or the peaceful scenes of the farmyard--the hen teaching her chickens to scratch for grubs, the duck giving her little ones their first swimming lesson, the superb c.o.c.k keeping watch over his seraglio, the peac.o.c.k spreading his magnificent tail, and those memorable combats in which for a fine-plumaged Helen, two rivals spur one another while awaiting the hawk's talons. He painted 'the crested gentry' and knew how to interest us in them by means of picturesque truth, rustic grace, color, and spirit.

"Melchior, after the death of his father, found an excellent guide in his uncle, J. B. Weenix, and followed his manner till his death in 1660 without servility."[21]

Burger says:

=His Pictures of Bird Families.=--"No one has painted better than he c.o.c.ks and hens, ducks and drakes, and particularly little chicks and ducklings. He has understood such families as the Italians have the mystical Holy Family; he has expressed the motherhood of the hen as Raphael has the motherhood of the Madonna. In fact, the subject is more naturally treated because it has less sublimity. Hondecoeter gives us here a mother-hen, who could face the Madonna of the Chair.

She bends over with solicitude, with outspread wings, beneath which peep the excited heads of the little chickens; while on her back is perched the privileged _bambino_: she does not dare move, the good mother!"

A picture of c.o.c.k and Hens by his father, Gijsbert d'Hondecoeter (1604-53), was acquired in 1876. He was the teacher of his more talented son, who also studied with his uncle, Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-60), no pictures of whom are owned by the Mauritshuis.

=Jan Weenix's Tasteful Compositions.=--Two pictures of Jan Weenix (1640-1719) hang in this gallery and are good examples. One is The Dead Swan, the other is Game. Though Weenix painted portraits, landscapes, and even seaports, his chief works represent dead animals, the size of life. Peac.o.c.ks, pheasants, partridges, geese, and most frequently swans, figure in his pictures. Sometimes, too, he introduces a living dog and paints it in the most spirited manner. Weenix had great taste in composition and arranged his models (more often dead than living) around the base of a handsome vase or urn in a beautiful park.

=Reynolds and Blanc on Jan Weenix's Paintings.=--"What excellence in coloring and handling is to be found in the dead game of Weenix!"

exclaimed Sir Joshua Reynolds, who declared that he saw no less than twenty dead swans by this painter during his walks through the Holland galleries. "In his works of small dimensions," says Blanc, "his execution is delicate and caressing; but it is broad and accentuated in his decorative paintings. At his best he was the equal of his father, which is no small praise."

=Jan David de Heem, the Greatest of the Group of Fruit and Flower Painters.=--First in this group comes Jan David de Heem (1606-03 or 04), the pupil of his father, David de Heem, and not only the first to develop the art of fruit-painting, but the greatest master of the cla.s.s that the school produced. In the beautiful arrangement of his subjects he has been compared to Giovanni da Udine. He is also a great colorist; some of his early works approach Rembrandt in their golden tone.