%;• ^v. K/^7^ ''l-iZ^^-^^i^^ .^ 7^y2^^M Ur JS^'^ /f^Z- OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS i'nRTRAIT (tK A WOMAN," IIV KKM HRANDT. Lou\ la:, i-AKis. OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS ENGRAVED BY . . TIMOTHY COLE WITH CRITICAL NOTES BY JOHN C. VAN DYKE AND COMMENTS BY THE ENGRAVER H p°,Py':iglit,.l893. ■J%4, and 1895, by '■■' 'tHE.'t'E'NTORY CO. The DeVinne Press. PREFACE THE publication of this volume requires few words of explana- tion. That it contains, in permanent form, thirty wood-en- gravings by Timothy Cole, after the masterpieces of Dutch and Flemish art, is, in itself sufficient reason for the book's exis- tence. These engravings have been produced in the same man- ner, and with the same skill and care, that characterized Mr. Cole's earlier engravings after the old Italian masters. Indeed, it was the success of the Italian work that led to his undertaking the pres- ent series. Directly after completing his work in Italy, Mr. Cole was asked by the managers of The Century to go to Holland and undertake the translation of the great Dutchmen. In 1S92 he removed from Italy to Amsterdam, where he remained for a year, engraving the pictures chosen for reproduction from the Holland galleries. He then went back to Paris, where he has remained up to the present time, working from the Dutch and Flemish pictures in the Louvre and elsewhere. In every instance Mr. Cole has produced his engraving with the original picture before him, the photograph being thrown upon the block and its insufficiencies or inequalities being corrected by con- sulting the original. In this way absolute fidelity to the original has been obtained, not only in line and in modeling, but in giving the exact values of colors under light and under shadow. In deter- mining the truth of a form, a light, or a tone, Mr. Cole's long ex- perience has made him an expert, and though passing from Italy to Holland, — a change from line to color, — he has easily adapted him- self to the new point of view, and has interpreted the new methods with the same artistic sympathy that marked his former work. If his engravings gave only faithful reproductions of the originals as ^ 962550 VI PREFACE seen by the average eye they would be welcome ; but when to this are added Mr. Cole's insight into the spirit of the originals, his observation of suggested meanings, his interpretation of vague, half-hidden tones, their value is greatly increased. There is another reason for the publication of these engravings, one held in view by the originators of the first series. It seems fitting and proper that a knowledge of Dutch art should be spread through the land by just such reproductions as these. People to- day, though they do not sneer at Dutch art, are far from estimating it at its true worth. They cherish ideals and academic formulas of the beautiful, and are only too prone to overlook that truth, char- acter, wholesome picturesqueness, and surprising skill for which Dutch art is famous. Even with those who profess a love for the Dutchmen, there is a tendency to elevate Dou above Hals and Potter above Cuyp. In brief, while people have been studying Greek and Italian art for years, the art of the Netherlands has been comparatively neglected, and to-day is not at all well understood, except by the few. The engravings of Mr. Cole, then, are oppor- tune, in that they furnish materials for study. In the absence of the originals, which for various reasons the majority of people will never see, nothing could be better designed to take their place than these admirable reproductions. The pictures from which the engravings have been made were selected with the aim of giving the work of the representative men in Dutch and Flemish art. It was necessary, on account of the great extent of the Netherlands art, that a period only should be given, and so the brilliant painting of the seventeenth century furnished the originals for the engravings. The text that accompanies them, and Mr. Cole's comments, are intended to explain this seven- teenth-century art. and to give some account of the history of the schools, and of the individual painters whose works are engraved. John C. Van Dyke. Rutgers College, 1895. CONTENTS PAGE A Note on Dutch Art i CHAPTER I Frans Hals 17 CHAPTER H Rembrandt , 29 CHAPTER HI Ferdinand Bol 45 CHAPTER IV Covert Flinck 53 CHAPTER V Nicolaes Maes 59 CHAPTER VI Bartholomeus van der Helst 6^ CHAPTER VII Gerard Dou Ti CHAPTER VIII Gerard Terburg 79 CHAPTER IX Gabriel Metsu 87 CHAPTER X Adriaan van Ostade 93 vll Vlll CONTENTS CHAPTER XI PACE Jan Steen loi CHAPTER Xn PiETER DE Hooch 109 CHAPTER Xni Jan ver Meer of Delft 115 CHAPTER XIV Jacob van Ruisdael 121 CHAPTER XV Meyndert Hobbema 131 CHAPTER XVI Paul Potter 137 CHAPTER XVII Aelbert Cuyp 14s A Note on Flemish Art 153 CHAPTER XVIII Peter Paul Rubens 163 CHAPTER XIX Anthony van Dyck 177 CHAPTER XX David Teniers, the Younger 189 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Rembrandt, Portrait of a Woman Frontispiece Louvre, Paris. FACING PAGE Hals, The Jester 17 Ryks Museum, Amsterdam. Hals, Banquet of the Officers of the Corps of the Arch- ers OF St. Andrew 20 Municipal Museum, Haarlem. Hals, The Jolly Man 24 Ryks Museum, Amsterdam. Rembrandt, The Night- Watch (Detail from central portion) . . 29 Ryks Museum, Amsterdam. Rembrandt, A Philosopher in Meditation 32 Louvre, Paris. Rembrandt, Supper at Emmaus (Detail of head of the Christ). . 36 Louvre, Paris. Rembrandt, The Supper at Emmaus 4° LouvTe, Paris. BoL, Portrait of a Man 48 Louvre, Paris. Flinck, Portrait of a Young Girl 54 Louvre, Paris. Maes, The Spinner 60 Ryks Museum, Amsterdam. Van der Helst, Portrait of Paul Potter 68 The Hague Museum. Dou, The Night-School 7^ Ryks Museum, Amsterdam. X LIST OF ILLUSTRATION'S FAQNG PAGE Terburg, The Lute Player 80 Cassel Gallery. Metsu, Un Militaire recevaxt uxe jeune Dame 88 Lou\Te, Paris. Ostade, The Fish Market 96 Lou\Te, Paris. Steex, The Feast of St. Nicholas 104 Ryks Museum, Amsterdam. De Hooch, The Buttery. no Ryks Museum, Amsterdam. Ver Meer of Delft, Portrait of a Lady 116 National Gallery, London. RuiSDAEL, The Thicket ' 124 Louvre, Paris. HoBBEMA, The Avenue, Middelharnis, Holland 132 National Gallery, London. Potter, The Young Bull 140 The Hague Museum. CuYP, Landscape 148 Lou\Te, Paris. Rubens, Helen Fourment and her Children 164 Loa^Te, Paris. Rubens, Chapeau de Faille 168 National Gallery, London. Rubens, Portrait of Jacqueline de Cordes 172 Brussels Museum. Van Dvck, Portrait of a Lady and her Daughter .... 178 Lou\Te, Paris. Van Dvck, The Madonna of the Donors 180 Louvre, Paris. Van Dvck, Portrait of Richardot and his Sox 182 Louvre, Paris. Teniers the Younger, Afternoon 190 Antwerp Museum. OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS A NOTE ON DUTCH ART IT is amusing, in looking over the histories of Dutch art, to find them all agreeing upon one point. The writers are willing to admit for themselves and the world at large that the Dutch painters were not idealists, and that they were "lacking in the sense of beauty." That profoundly empty individual, Louis XIV., was probably one of the first to discover this lack. To one of his classic descent and Olympian aspiration, to one who emulated Csesar and yet went to battle in a coach and six, the homely faces and humble scenes of Dutch life and art must have appeared very low and trivial. " Eloignez de moi ces magots! " The remark is so expres- sive that it should be preserved. To be sure it does not convey anything but Louis's disgust; yet by having his opinion of what displeased him, we can imagine what might be his preference in art. He liked the mock-heroic warriors of Lebrun, the flattering impersonations of Rigaud, the insipid gods and goddesses of Coy- pel. They reminded him of the classic glories of Greece and Rome. They were ideal, heroic, something to aspire to ; and doubtless during his life he more than once explained the mat- ter to his court by saying that his painters were possessed of "the sense of beauty." It depends altogether upon what is meant by " beauty," whether Louis and the art-writers are right in saying that the Dutch paint- ers lacked it. If they are following Winckelmann's conclusion, that "the essence of beauty is in shape" — and that is precisely what they are doing — then they are right if Winckelmann is right. There '•2 : -v. . '■ OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS is little "shape" in Dutch art. The brow of Jove, the straight Greek nose, the Cupid's-bow mouth, the Apollo form, do not ap- pear. The Dutch lacked them ; they did not know them except at second-hand, and they never truly cared for them. Were they then lacking in beauty, or were they merely lacking in the sym- metry and proportion of the classic type ? It has been many years since the classic arrogated to itself all the beauty of art. Winckel- mann has been followed without question into modern times; but now the narrowness of his view is becoming apparent. Beauty does consist in shape, form, symmetry, proportion, so far as these produce pleasurable sensations. But are pleasurable sensations aroused by shape, form, symmetry, proportion, only? Decidedly no. Beauty cannot be defined in an objective way, because it is produced not by one thing, but by many things. We can judge it only by its effect upon the emotions. Whatever emotionally moves one may be beautiful, whether it have symmetrical shape or not, and whether it can be squared with esthetic definitions or not. To modern eyes there is nothing so pleasing in pictorial or plastic art as the recognized fitness of things to designed ends. The Coleoni statue at Venice — what has it of symmetry or propor- tion ? Nothing. It has been sneered at by followers of Winck- elmann for years for that very reason ; yet Coleoni still rides in bronze to-day, perhaps the finest equestrian statue in all Europe. It lives, and will live, as great art because of the fitness to designed ends of both horse and rider. The horse is of a different breed from the light prancing horse of the Parthenon frieze. He carries a heavy mailed warrior instead of a naked Greek youth ; he is not meant for flight, but for pushing power. The warrior carries a short sword, not a lance ; he stubbornly fights, trusting to mail and shield to parry blows ; he does not trust to the dash here, the flight there, and everywhere adroitness, quickness, skill. The war- fare in Gothic Italy was different from the warfare in classic Greece. That which availed in Coleoni's time was power and weight. Now look at the statue, and see how well Verrocchio understood that ! How well fitted are horse and rider to their purpose! The pushing strength, the bulk, the mass, are all there. Could any armed force withstand them ? " How full of character ! " one exclaims. Pre- cisely so. It is that character which may be defined as fitness to a designed end, that makes the statue beautiful — makes it a great work of art. A NOTE ON DUTCH ART 3 From Venice one should go to Mantua and see the heads by Mantegna in the Gonzaga family group. The proportions of the Greek ideal are certainly not given here. The heads are far from the perfect oval. The foreheads are either too narrow or too broad, the noses are abnormally long, the mouths abnormally large, the jaws abnormally square. We should call them ugly people in the life. Yet how calm they look, how honest, how sincere, for all their lack of facial proportion ! They are the amalgamated faces of the East and the West — faces that show war and clash and tumult, faces that show diplomacy and cunning, faces that are beginning to light up with the intelligence of the Renaissance. They may be seen again on the medals of Vittore Pisano and the busts of Donatello, stern, silent, and severe. How full of char- acter they are ! How fitted are they to impersonate the man of rule in the fifteenth century ! And who shall say they do not stir the emotions to look at them ? And who shall say they are not beautiful ? When you are in Paris go to the Louvre, and see " The Gleaners," by Millet. The figures are popular, and yet they have no beauty of " shape " ; they are far removed from the classic. The faces are stolid and sadly bronzed, the forms are heavy to clumsiness, the graceful rhythm of the female figure is lost in gross muscular bulk, the hands and feet are coarse, almost misshapen. There is a lack of symmetry and proportion. Yet consider how this heavy figure, which counts best as a spot of color on the land- scape, was made heavy by this very toil. It has developed and adapted itself to the conditions under which it was compelled to exist. The coarse hand and foot have been produced by contact with the soil ; the bulk and girth of form have been brought about by bending, lifting, carrying, day by day and year by year; the bronzed skin has been caused by exposure to wind, rain, sun, and dust. Gradually the figure has accommodated itself to the circum- stances until at last we see again a fitness to a designed end. How perfectly they belong to the soil ! How perfectly with stubble, stacks, harvesters, and warm sky they belong to the landscape ! Chameleon-like, their very coloring seems complementary to the scene. And is not all this beautiful in spite of lack in classic sym- metry and proportion ? Certainly the world is now agreed in thinking so. And that which makes it beautiful is its sublime truth of character. Take these three peasant women from the scene, and 4 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS substitute three classic women by David, Ingres, or Cabanel, and the picture would appear absurd. And why, since these academi- cians would have symmetry and shape ? Because the character of the scene would be burlesqued, the fitness to a designed end would be destroyed. When one goes to Holland, to study the pictured portraits of that land and its people, he should take with him no classic or academic notions of art. He should forget all about the arts of Greece and Italy, and banish the dogmas of their commentators. He is going to a place where they were unknown, or at the least, disregarded. Latin prejudices in Amsterdam would be almost as much out of place as in Tokio. The error should not be made of judging Dutch pictures by classic rules. They are to be judged by their own rules. Instead of looking for the essence of beauty in shape, one should look for it in fitness and character. These people should be thought of in connection with their land. Cli- mate, soil, and sea, the necessities of their existence, made them what they were. A plain, honest, matter-of-fact race, fond of peace and quietude and homely joys, doing with patience whatever their hand found to do, they lived no Arcadian life of free, open-air en- joyment fitted to develop the imaginative in mind and the beautiful in form. The realities of life were overpowering. They fought the sea for freedom of foot, they fought the Church and the Span- iard for freedom of mind and of body. Their victories impoverished rather than enriched them. The land and the sea were left them to develop — a narrow, low-lying land of dikes and dunes and meadows, a misty and mournful sea, and a treacherous footpath of commerce. The commercial necessities of existence produced the seaports of Holland, the canals, the odd rambling streets, the quaint houses, the picturesque gables, eaves, and nooks, the tavern interiors with smoked rafters ; the agricultural conditions produced the meadow, the pond, the grazing cattle, the windmill, the strag- gling village. There was much material here to encourage local fancy and quaint picturesque conceits, but little to develop a far- reaching imagination. The home product of such surroundings could not be the poet, the orator, the philosopher, the great de- signer. Instead of these, commerce produced the merchant and the syndic, wars the cavalier and the civic guard, country life the burly peasant, and city life the burgher and the tavern brawler. There are orades from high to low in this Holland life, but the A NOTE ON DUTCH ART 5 type is substantially the same. Sturdy of mind and of body, the Dutchman is not elegant or refined. His physical training has never developed height or grace. He walks little, sits much, drinks largely, and becomes stout, heavy, red-faced. His mental training has made him keen, practical in business matters, devoted to gain- ing the physical comforts of life. He does not nurse visions in re- ligion, politics, poetry, or art. He calls for the common sense of things, and cares little for idealities. Obviously, as Fromentin has observed, there was nothing in art for such a people but to have its portrait painted. Dutch art is only a portrait of Holland and its people. Look, now, at the Dutch pictures, and see how truly and hon- estly this portrait has been painted. Take an extreme example — Ostade's " Fish-Market," engraved by Mr. Cole. Objection may be made to the subject, but it is not more ill-favored than the fish- markets of Venice ; objection may be made to the people, but they are very like Millet's peasants. The picture is a page in the biog- raphy of Holland. It tells of a source of wealth, of an occupation of many people, of streets and buildings and inhabitants in the market quarters. It is the character portrait of one class of people painted large. The crowded little square, the shove and push of hawkers, servants, fishwives, idle boys about the stalls, how truly they are all given ! And that man seated at the bench, with his coarse, slimy hands, red face, short squat figure, and heavy clothing, how well fitted and designed he is to sell fish ! He has handled them so long that he belongs to them, and knows nothing about other things. He even looks fishy in the face, and resembles fish in color, so that the transition from the one to the other is slight. Then that ail-askew shed of a house, with its dingy color, and that misty good-fishing-day sky ! How complete the whole picture, and how positively the character of the scene is struck off! This biog- rapher is no writer of fiction. He tells the truth, knowing full well what he has to say and saying it positively. Another phase of life is met with in "Junker Ramp and his Sweetheart," by Frans Hals. The young gallant in the tavern affecting the soldier, gorgeous in hat and plume, ruffs and doublet, carousinsf and sincrinor with his sweetheart cling-incr to him. The very action of the arm and hand holding the glass, the reel back- ward of the figure, the flush and the tightly-drawn skin of the laughing face, are all intensely told. That boisterous pair, how 6 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS well they typify a certain class of tavern habitues ! It may be thouorht, perhaps, that there are no other classes in Holland than these, that all the people are peasants, fishmongers, or tavern carousers ; but look once at Metsu's picture of an interior, with a young officer, and a young lady receiving him. Pleased, quiet, dignified, wearing her rich garments easily, she sits lightly holding a glass of wine in her hand ; while he standing, a little en- cumbered by his heavy boots and military accoutrements, bends gallantly forward, hat in hand, to greet her. At the back a boy — a refined yet boyish boy — holds a dish with fruit. The room is rich in furnishings, and shows the domicile of the higher classes. Here is another transcript from Dutch life. It is of the more refined order, and yet true, characteristic, biographical. These people are well fitted for their station in life, they bear their man- ners easily, they have always been accustomed to the drawing- room. They were born in society, and never had to struggle into it from without. The young woman's breeding shows in her hands and in her face ; the young man's ancestors were officers of the guard before him. Perhaps these ancestors laid aside the sword and pike in middle life to become wealthy merchants. One may fancy he sees their portraits at Amsterdam in the "Syndics of the Cloth Hall," by Rembrandt. Great types of the Dutch race, shrewd, earnest, full of character if a little gross in flesh from good living, they are grouped about a table covered with a gorgeous red cloth. They have been consulting about a matter of business ; the books are open before them. Some one enters, and they all look up. The portraits are caught at a glance. And what splen- did portraits they are! The physical presence alone — the blood, bone, and sinew — is imposing. And how steadfastly, unflinchingly they look out from the canvas ! There is no great spirituality about them ; they are merchants, not poets or pietists, and yet what splendid embodiments of the Dutch burgher! Here is the final word in fitness and character, the supremely telling portrait of Dutch life. II Yet was Rembrandt confined in his art to the externals — to flesh, and cloth, and light, and space ? Did he see nothing of the spiritual ? Did he know nothing of human emotion, passion, A NOTE ON DUTCH ART 7 feeling? Had he nothing of the psychological about him? A glance at the head of the Christ in the " Supper at Emmaus " will tell us. Never a face in the art of the East or the West contained more pathos, more suffering, more mute mental agony, than this face of a poor, mean Amsterdam Jew impersonating the Christ. Not in scriptural scenes alone did he show this passionate power. In the National Gallery, London, there is a portrait of an old woman, with a lace cap and a white ruff (No. 775 of the catalogue). The face is wrinkled and worn, the eyes deep-set, red as though with weeping, and gazing sadly out. At first, one is inclined to think the sadness of the face is produced by the physical marks of age ; but study the expressive chin, the quivering mouth, the contracted, careworn brow, and then look into the eyes, and you will see, or you will imagine, that they are filled with tears. It is more than pathetic ; it is tragic. That homely Dutch face masks, and yet reveals, the sorrow and the suffering common to all humanity, the weight of woe that excites sympathy, and makes all the world kin. Therein Rembrandt was world-embracing ; therein his art became universal ; therein he told not Dutch character alone, but world character. Rembrandt was about the only one who extended Dutch art beyond the dikes and dunes. The genius and feeling of the man meet with a response from all lands, because he told the great truths of life common to all peoples and races. In that respect he was Shaksperian. But his contemporaries and followers, the mass of Dutch painters, told only the truths peculiar to Holland. Theirs was a local art, speaking for Holland and its people, but for little beyond them. Their work was self-contained rather than comprehensive ; episodic rather than historic. This is quite apparent in the Dutch choice of subject. We have been told that, with the Reformation and the freedom of the Netherlands, there was no longer any use for church pictures, and that the religious subject failed. This is true only in part. The Church in Holland never was a patron of art in an Italian sense. It never, so far as history acquaints us, called for the architectural composition and the frescoed wall. Fresco was not the medium of the Dutch ; the climate was too damp for it. The churches were not like the Italian churches, and the painter was no coadjutor of the archi- tect in filling space with architectural lines. He followed the oil medium of the Van Eycks, painted upon panel or canvas, and 8 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS never got beyond an altarpiece. The demand for these, even, was sHght. Hence, in spite of the ItaHan imitation of the sixteenth century, and the bringing baclc to Holland of Italian work, the Dutch ot the succeeding century never learned to compose or handle the large religious, classic, or historical picture. There was little call for it, and the painters did not produce it. The nearest approach to it was the large-grouped picture, showing faculties of surgery, regents, syndics, shooting companies, and the like. But this was merely the portrait elaborated and extended ; something biographical again, rather than historical. It had no architectural significance, and hung in town hall, hospital, or uni- versity like any other portrait picture. The few successes and the many failures with even this subject show how poorly the Dutch comprehended the large composition. The greatest demand upon the painter came from the wealthy private citizen, and he called primarily for the single portrait. The painting of this necessitated a following of the model and a giving of the realistic likeness. The whole training of the Dutch school seems to have been based upon portraiture, and it was in this department that the very best efforts were revealed. The natural tendency of such a training was to develop a keen sense of observation, and a scrupulous exactness in giving the truth of fact. Hence, there sprang up painters who, with few e.xceptions, were observers rather than thinkers ; men of trained eyes, quick to see every line, and light, and color ; men of trained hands, who could record what they saw with unerring certainty; but not men of great reflective or imaginative disposition. " Realists " they have been called, though the word should only be used to define them as painters who followed the model, and recorded what they saw with such truth as they could command. Next to the portrait, the demand was for small pictures that should decorate the home. The subject most pleasing was then, as to-day in Europe and America, the contemporary theme show- ing the manners and customs of the people. The Dutch had a proper respect for their own, and were not at all disposed to blush for their national life. They did not boast of it in large military pieces and naval engagements. They pictured fights, but they were usually tavern brawls. Wouverman painted what were called battles, but they were only tavern brawls on horseback. Their chief subjects were the tavern interior, the streets, the A NOTE ON DUTCH ART 9 markets, the outlying village, with small figures. Hence came into vogue the genre picture. The Dutch have been credited with originating the genre picture; but that is, perhaps, the result of a misunderstanding. The meaning of that word is misinterpreted. It does not necessarily mean the painting of commonplace subjects, low life, streets, and interiors. Watteau and Meissonier were genre painters, yet they never painted low life. The word does not, or, at the least, should not, apply to a kind of painting, but to a method of treatment. The Italians were figure-painters, because in their pictures the figure was predominant, and the landscape, or whatever background they used, was subordinated. For the sake of conciseness, we may say that they painted figures with a back- ground. The Dutch were genre painters in that they reversed the practice of the Italians. The figure was not predominant, nor the background subordinated. The scene was conceived and painted all of a piece. If an antithetical statement is necessary, it may be said that instead of painting figures with a background, they; painted a background with figures. To give the proportions and sense of space in their landscapes, interiors, or street scenes, they had to reduce the proportions of the figures. Hence, we find the figures usually given much less than life size, as in the interiors of De Hooch, Terburg, and Ver Meer of Delft. This is genre painting, but it was not originated in Holland. It was known to some of the Italians, especially the Venetians ; but the Dutch were the first to accept it as a national form of expression. When the background was made to do service for the whole picture, the figure was still further reduced to a mere spot of color, counting for no more in the scene than a post, a tree, a rock, or a cow. It is thus we have represented street and town pieces by Van der Heyden, landscapes by Ruisdael, Hobbema, and Cuyp, shore pieces by Van Goyen and Van der Capelle. All these sub- jects were handled by the Dutch painters, and their training as observers of the model led them, almost invariably, to give the ex- act linear and aerial importance of each object depicted, whether it was a man, a chair, a building, or a tree. Their method of see- ing was not arbitrary, but justly natural, in that it comprehended nature as a whole, unemphasized in any part. That. they did empha- size, at times, certain features, such as figures or cattle, is true; but this was not so much the result of their observation as of their method of lighting. lO OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS III It was in workmanship that the Dutch were preeminently strong. The skilled eye and the trained hand were theirs, and as masters in the craft of painting they have never been excelled. Was it Sir Joshua who said that the style of Steen " might become even the design of Raphael ? " The quotation will at least serve to point the distinction between the Italians and the Dutch. Raphael was a ijreat artist, a thinker of imagination, a draftsman fillinsj archi- tectural space with composed lines. Steen was no great thinker, draftsman, or composer ; he was simply a master-workman with the brush. Like all the Dutch painters, he was trained in the knowledge of materials and methods. He knew the technic of his craft, and wrought understandingly. Perfect workmanship Avas the sign-manual of the whole school, and yet this should not be construed to mean that this workmanship always gave the abso- lutely realistic appearance. The Dutch were no such realists. They knew that painting was a conventionality, and they frankly acknowledged it in their pictures. They followed nature as far as their materials would allow, but they always had a shrewd notion that there was a point where nature left off and art began. They were abundantly aware of the fact that they were picture-makers, not map-makers; and, like many other painters, they did not hesi- tate to distort nature for pictorial effect. This distortion appears prominently in one feature, for the truth- ful rendering of which the Dutch have been superabundantly and undeservedly praised — I mean the feature of light. They understood it as a conventionality of art, a means of gaining relief, and they so employed it; but, barring a few exceptional men, they did not un- derstand it as a great truth of nature. They knew how to handle it in spots, to throw it here and there in a picture, and thus to brighten dark corners ; but light as a uniform illumination over a whole scene, not even Rembrandt quite comprehended. The long dispute over the so-called " Night Watch," as to whether it represented night or day, is in itself proof of something wrong in its lighting. The effect of a general illumination is wanting. In its place we have an arbitrary mass of shadow over the whole scene, with flashes from something like a gig-lamp illuminating it here and there in or- der to bring into relief certain prominent figures. The beautiful A NOTE ON DUTCH ART II picture by De Hooch, "The Buttery," which Mr. Cole has en- graved, is another case to the point. The lighting of the figures, and of the screen or wall back of them, is arbitrary. The light is sup- posed to come from somewhere in the foreground, but that illumi- nation is not enough for the painter. The little closet at the left has a flash thrown through it to illuminate that portion of the pic- ture, and the room at the right has again another illumination. This is all very knowingly and cleverly done, and it gives one the feeling that there is bright sunlight without that is trying to steal in at every door and window ; but it nevertheless points to the Dutch use of light in spots and points rather than in large masses. In open-air scenes, in streets, and in landscapes, they were much better ; yet even here there is a management of light that has an affinity with the candle-light effects of Dou and Schalken. Rem- brandt darkens his upper sky and darkens his foreground for the sole purpose of driving his light into a spot of the central sky ; and Cuyp is very fond of the dark side of a mountain in his fore- ground, beyond which light is seen pouring diagonally into the middle distance. One of the best Cuyps in existence, the " Land- ing of Prince Maurice," in Bridgewater House, is marred by a shadow drawn across the foreground in order to increase the power of the light beyond it. It can hardly be thought that the Dutch lost much by this arbi- trary lighting. They sacrificed a truth of nature, but they gained a force in art. The sharp light made possible great relief; the deep shadow lent itself readily to atmospheric effect, to sugges- tion, and to mystery. An arbitrary practice it was, but, neverthe- less, a potent means of expression. That its range was limited is true. It could be applied to the portrait, to the small interior with few figures, or to the small picture of any kind with powerful effect; but the large historical canvas was beyond its scope. Such light- ing was incompatible with composed lines and many groups. The central illumination, handled as the Dutch handled it, was not ra- diant enough to carry over a large scene. The sides and top of the picture fell into great masses of shadow, as in the " Night Watch," and these had to be illumined by repeated spots of light. The result was a lack of tone, a feeling of spottiness on the canvas, and a disjointed composition. Such, generally speaking, was the historical canvas in the hands of these painters. Whether a lack of demand for the large canvas produced a lack of knowledge with 12 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS the painters, or whether their method of illumination was against it from the start, is not worth speculating over. The fact is, it was not a success. The painters were not in sympathy with it, and they did not usually produce it. What they did produce was the single figure, the genre picture, the landscape with catde, the still-life. In charm of color the painters of Holland, in their way, were again quite unexcelled. Their work should not be seriously con- sidered for its linear composition. It is primarily an art, revealing the sentiment of color, light, and shade. They composed a picture by massing these. Moreover, their pictures were painted primarily to reveal these beauties. A material aim it may be thought, but no more so than the necessities of picture-making required. And it is necessary to repeat that the Dutch were picture-makers. In painting a portrait they were, of course, concerned with the truth of likeness, dignity, carriage, character ; in painting a group, a cattle piece, a landscape, they were again intensely concerned with the exact truth of character, but that never made them forgetful of the truth of art in color, light, and decorative effect. The religious, literary, or story-telling side of painting did not usually interest them. "A Woman at a Window," by Ver Meer; "A Dutch Interior," by De Hooch; "A Drinking Party," by Steen, speak only of the physical presence. When Ostade scatters people through a room he is not interested in their being there for an anecdotal purpose ; he cares little what story they tell. They are usually unrelated in their occupations, and about the only feature that binds them together is a technical feature — the relation of color, light, and shade. He is seeking always the pictorial rather than the literary ; making a picture rather than telling a story. And yet, the Dutch must not be regarded as mere surface paint- ers, brilliantly as they painted the surface. They had an abun- dance of sentiment and feeling; but, unlike the English painters, they did not display these in their subjects. They displayed them in their color, light, and methods of expression. Here is the chief reason why the Dutch pictures have never been popular with the world's masses. People see little sentiment in the faces and actions, and speedily conclude that the whole art is gross and sensual. But there never was finer artistic feeling shown in art than in the pictures l)y these Dutchmen. They grew emotional over bursts of light, sympathetic over color harmonies, mysterious in shadow masses, and their handling of the brush shows with what delight A NOTE ON DUTCH ART I3 they caressed this or that feature of detail. They loved the work for the work's sake, and this love is apparent in their pictures. It has been said that they distorted light for a pictorial effect and it may be said that they sometimes distorted color for an harmonious effect. Cuyp and De Hooch are perhaps too brilliant for the actual truth of the Netherlands, and Ruisdael and Hobbema are certainly not brilliant enough. Yet poetic feeling gave them license in these matters, and it was deep sentiment and love of harmonious rela- tions that caused the distortion. The painters could not express their poetry of shadow and color in any other way. That there is a poetry of color, light, and space, no one, at this day, thinks of denying. The Dutch possessed it, and the Dutch picture will be found a poem of depth and earnestness if it be looked at as a pic- torial poem. It is not a literary poem. In brief the Dutch painters loved character, fitness, honesty, truth. They were not ashamed of their own people and civilization, and they wrote the pictorial history of their time with frankness and candor. Picturesqueness, rather than symmetry and proportion, was their inheritance from nature, and this they produced with charming results. In point of view they always regarded a scene more for its appearance than for its meaning, and hence their art must be judged more by what it looks than by what it means. It was, as a whole, a local art, reflective only of Holland, and yet, within its scope, as sincere an art as that of Italy, and as perfect in every detail of craftsmanship as that of Japan. It is the autobiography of a self- contained people, who in peace, in war, in commerce, in art, have maintained their own with honesty and integrity. It is an auto- biography that no world-student can afford to leave unread. FRANS HALS I CuLE r,!r.o )v\"-' . . 'THE JKSTEK," I'.V FRANS HALS. K\KS MUbl'UM. AMblEUUAM. Chapter I FRANS HALS (i58o?-i666) IN the fifteenth century there was no art in Holland that dis- tinctly spoke for the land or the people. The nation had not yet declared itself. The Burgundian dukes were in power, and, though encouraging commerce, letters, and arts, they were be- stowing most of their favors upon Flanders. Holland was merely a northern province treated with some contempt. In art, the Van Eycks, with the schools of Bruges and Brabant, led the way, and the painters at the north did little more than follow them. In the sixteenth century the Flemish painters, especially those of the Ant- werp school, fell under foreign influence. Their own art was ap- parently not to their taste, for shoals of artists put off to Italy, there to study, assimilate, and imitate the subjects and methods of the Italian masters of the Renaissance. The example of Flanders was contagious in Holland, and again the northern painters fol- lowed. But toward the end of the sixteenth century Holland threw off the Spanish yoke, gaining thereby political freedom; and shortly afterward her painters threw off the Flemish-Italian yoke, and be- came Dutch in method and spirit. In the last quarter of the cen- tury Mierevelt, Ravesteyn, and Frans Hals were born, and with them, at the opening of the seventeenth century, began the great period of Dutch art. The apprenticeship to Flanders and Italy had not been wasted time or labor. The Dutch had learned color and handling from the one, drawing and some composition from the other ; so that, almost at the start, we find the accomplished craftsman, the man skilled in methods and materials, the painter versed in form, color. l8 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS and handling. Frans Hals is one of the earliest, and, perhaps, the most remarkable instance of the craftsman in all Dutch art. It is not often that the early man of a school speaks the latest and most mature language of that school. The idea is usually the first strong utterance; the style is the result of improved training and is more often seen in the late representatives. But Frans Hals reversed all this. He was practically the founder of Dutch paint- ing, yet he realized to the full the Dutch idea and subject, and that, too, with a style that is astonishing in its cultured maturity. In method and in manner, in technical expression, and in the skill of the craftsman, he stands at the head of his school. There never was a better painter in any school. Hals was primarily a master workman, and it has been said that he was nothing beyond that ; but this latter statement should be accepted with some qualifications. It is true that he had not the reflective, the speculative, the romantic temperament. He was a seer and a recorder rather than a thinker; a man devoted apparently to the beautiful in the material rather than in the intellectual, yet far removed from the mere mechanical realist of cold facts. Some natures reveal their artistic feeling in what they say, and others reveal the same feeling in how they say it. We see this continu- ally exemplified in modern poetry, where the artist in language is quite as apparent as the poetic thinker; and modern painting is filled with painters who are poetic only in their means of expres- sion. Frans Hals belonged to this class. He was a painter of great power, and, withal, of great sensitiveness and feeling in the pure art of painting. His work shows to us the shrewd observer of fitness and character, the learned student of tone and relation, the harmonist of full frank colors, the rhapsodist in all that relates to technical expression. The finer qualities of the man came to the surface through his eyes and finger-tips ; but it was no common realist's eye that perceived the beautiful harmonies of silvery whites and blacks in the regents' pictures at Haarlem; it was no mere workman's mind that grouped and held together those great pictures by giving due force and character to each figure in light, in value, and in color; it was no time-serving, mechan- ical hand that drew and painted them so truly and yet so easily. Frans Hals was something more than a mere technician. He was a great artist. A man's true nature appears in his work, but unfortunately I'Vans FRANS HALS I9 Hals's biographers have not studied his work sufficiently. In its stead they have substituted his subjects, and the few reported facts of his life, to prove that he was a very material soul, and consequently must have produced a material art. It is said that he was a man of free habits, a frequenter of the tavern, a brawler of police-court fame, who beat one wife, wronged a second, and finally in his age became dependent upon town charity. Such is the record we have of the man, a record preserving his (perhaps) occasional vices, and recording not one of his virtues. Shall we conclude, then, that the man had no virtues, that he was of low tastes, and that the police docket is but a sample page of the man's whole mental and artistic make-up? It is a conclusion too often and too hastily reached, and it is one that his pictures absolutely deny and confute. They do not show that he was gross or beer-sodden in either mind or hand. They show that he was a man of individual and positive view, a painter of great freedom and strength, and a colorist of infinite charm and delicacy. His subjects, indeed, might be regarded, in a popular sense, as un- select. They were of the common stock from which all the Dutch painters drew, and had nothing whatever to do with the ideal. They were things seen, not imagined ; people of Holland, not people of the air. He was peculiarly fond of the bluff, robust type, and he painted it in a fresh, vigorous manner to complement the character. Even his portraits are of this type. They have health and good spirits, substance and shadow, as in nature ; but again they have little of the ideal, or what is called in portraiture "character painting," about them. Hals followed his model, and painted only what was apparent. His well-fed burghers probably showed little more than physical life, and he was not the man to paint false character into a face. He was not a Van Dyck, painting scholars, lords, and princes ; and he had little use for the intellectual gaze, the refined face, and the lordly air. Possibly he never had a chance to paint men of noble mien ; and yet it is more probable that his sympathies went out to people of his own kind, and that he painted the frankly human because he believed in it and loved it for its truth's sake. His other subjects would seem to indicate this. He is always free, vivacious, hearty, full of animal spirits. Sometimes he lightly jests, as in the portraits of himself and wife at Amsterdam ; sometimes he is whim- sical and boisterous as with his Fools and Jolly Men ; and sometimes he is sober, sedate, calm, as in his Haarlem pictures. Good-natured, 20 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS candid, and honest, he is always pleasing and never frivolous. What- ever may be his subject, he is serious in its handling. And that brings us around to our first conclusion, that the real feeling and power of the painter lay in his methods of expression. What he said was often coarse ; but his manner of saying was eloquent, cultured, refined. His was the poetry of rhythmical color, light, and handling. As a technician, Hals had few equals, and it is hardly extravagant to say that he had no superior. Velasquez and Rubens were dif- ferent, and as artists they were greater; but as pure painters they were not more individual or more certain than was Hals. In drawing and modeling he was remarkable for giving the truth of mass and bulk in the physical presence. Flesh, bone, brawn, and weight he could translate with convincing precision. This effect he gained not by line drawing. He was not a man of clear outline like Hol- bein. His modeling was effected by regarding the exact relations of color tones. The black hat and white ruff of the "Jolly Man," engraved by Mr. Cole, do not hold their place by virtue of their outline or rim, but by virtue of their mass in black or white, each mass exactly true in value, and properly related to the head and to each other. This scrupulous regard for values enabled him to paint with flat tones, and thereby suggest modeling without actually giving it. The black hat has a crown to it, though it is not seen ; the brim circles the head, though at the back it is only indicated. The varia- tion in the shades of black gives modeling, and suggests what is not shown. In this flat painting Hals anticipated Manet and all the Whistlerians by two hundred years ; and for this very feature he is greatly admired by the moderns of to-day. It speaks strongly for the genius of the man that he did not learn or appropriate this from any master or school. He originated it. In the handling of light Hals was quite different from Rem- brandt and the painters who were born a few years after him. He did not display it in spots upon the canvas, or break the continuity of the picture by several focuses. There is nothing forced about his illumination. The light came not from the sky, but chiefly from the figures themselves, as was the manner of treatment em- ployed by the great Italians. The banquet piece that Mr. Cole has engraved illustrates this. The ruffs and sashes and faces are shown to be highest in light, and in comparison the windows, from which the light would naturally come, are dark. This is arbitrary FRANS HALS 21 lighting, iDut Hals is not to be blamed for it. It was the painters' practice of the time, — a conventionality, and yet handled by Hals with great regard for the tonal truth of the artifice. His distribu- tion was even, uniform, well-regulated, so that he was not compelled to sacrifice figures at the sides or back, nor colors under shadow. In color he was at first a little florid, and perhaps lacking in depth and delicacy ; but he soon began to employ a richer and more mel- low palette, upon which all colors seemed to be placed — orange, red, blue, green, brown, gray, black. These he used with great purity and tenderness, showing always the sense of a colorist in giving the proper fitness, resonance, and relationship of colors, under light and under shadow. Late in life his hand failed him, but not his eye. The colors became subdued, and he grew fond of rich blacks and pearly whites flecked with gray. He was less sparkling, less varied, but even more refined and harmonious. He now threw his remaining strength upon the general tone-effect, and gained a charm of sobriety. It was the final, perhaps the highest, step as a colorist in the painter's life, but it is marred by the feeling that it was in measure a makeshift to hide the inequalities of a failing hand. It is not wonderful that the hand of a person of eighty-four should forget its cunning. The man, physically, was sunk in twi- light; the feebleness of old age was upon him; but in the days of his strength there never was a more positive and powerful brush- man. His handling is of superb freedom and dash. A staccato qual- ity in it lends to energy and vivacity. He did not often indulge in the long serpentine sweep of Rubens. He used little oil, and his pigment was not so fluid as that of the great Fleming. He mod- eled by spots and areas, painted often in patches, and occasionally dashed in a hat or cloak with a large, full-loaded brush. He knew almost infallibly just where to begin, just how far to carry, just when to stop. He never tortured, or dragged, or thumbed ; he struck swiftly and accomplished his aim at one blow. We gain no idea of correction or emendation from his work. It looks to be done once and finally, and that, too, with the ease of a hand that does not pause to deliberate, but dashes forward, fully conscious of its touch and certain of its result. Hals is again strictly original in all this. His brush-work, so much admired and studied by modern painters, followed no tradition, and was not learned or imitated from others. It was invented, created, improvised by Hals to suit his conceptions and characters, and is a positive stamp of his own 22 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS individuality. It is in itself, aside from the other qualities he pos- sessed, sufficient to mark him as a technician of extraordinary re- sources, and a painter of prodigious power. His works are scattered through all the galleries of Europe. There are good examples at Berlin, at Dresden, at Paris, at Am- sterdam ; but perhaps the most complete showing of the painter's work is to be seen in the corporation and regents' pictures of the Haarlem Museum. Here he appears from his thirty-sixth to his eighty-fourth year, in eight large canvases, containing groups of life-sized figures. The first picture, painted in 1616, shows him sharp and abrupt ; he models with difficulty; the hands and heads are somewhat heavy, though strong in character; the coloring is over-warm. Eleven years later he painted the group of portraits Mr. Cole has engraved, and we see him almost, if not quite, in his prime. His color is more brilliant, yet more delicate ; he has mastered modeling ; the heads are singularly indi- vidual ; his light is equal in distribution ; his brush-work charming in its freedom. In 1633 he painted the "Assembly of Officers of St. Andrew." He is now surely at his height, with a gamut of wonderfully brilliant color. He uses all hues and shades of hues, mingling them together in a glowing harmony. He has overcome every technical difficulty of art, and his brush is intelligent to the last degree. To quote Fromentin, he has now " as much taste as Van Dyck, as much skilful execution as Velasquez." He is posi- tive, clear, sure, convincing. His zenith has been reached. The next picture, painted in 1641, shows us a change. Hals has become more sober in his colors, using large quantities of black, gray, and brown. He is still virile and impressive, and there is great rich- ness in his somber palette. In 1664 there is a deepening and an intensifying of this sobriety, as shown in the last two pictures of the series, painted when Hals was very old. Feebleness is stamped upon the canvases. His colors are still pure, refined, sober almost to sadness, but his once unerring hand has deserted him. He dashes here and there, but is ineffectual. He no longer draws surely, but he still retains a sense of relation. As though con- scious of his failing powers, he seeks to cover up his errors by spreading a tonal quality like a veil over the whole scene. The result is both admirable and pitiful. It records the last impression of an eye as sensitive as any that ever received light, the last eftort of a hand as masterful as any that ever grasped painter's brush. FRANS HALS 23 NOTES BY THE ENGRAVER IT'RANS HALS is one of the very few Uutchmen who cannot be thoroughly appreciated or studied outside the towns which claim them. To know him one must go to Haarlem, where he occupies an eminence similar to that of Rembrandt in Amsterdam, though with the advan- tage of being far more comj)rehensively illustrated. There, in the museum of the town hall, he is represented by eight large canvases varying in length from eight to thirteen feet, the figures of which are life- size. They are corporation and regent pieces, ostensibly portraits of officers of the orders of St. Andrew and of St. George, and of the lady managers and governors of the hospital for old men and women, and of the Elizabeth Hospital. They are arranged in chronological order, appertaining to the periods of the artist's life and embracing his long career. It is a rare treat to see an array of ma.ster- pieces, imposing, well lighted, and placed at a convenient height for examination) aftbrding at a glance fifty years of an artist's labor. Tiie first of tlie series is of the year 1616, and shows Hals to us at the age of thirty-six; the last, of 1664, shows him to us at the extreme age of eighty-four, two years before his death. These corporation pieces were much the fashion in those days, and form a not in- considerable feature of Dutch art. Frans Hals and Rembrandt have done the finest things of this kind, and their works are not merely portrait groups, but pic- tures. The example I have engraved is one of the best of the series, and displays Frans Hals in full flower. It is of the year 1627. when he was forty-seven years old. It represents the officersof St. Andrew at a banquet. F2ach individual may be identi- fied, since he is numbered in the paint- ing, and his name is affixed to the bottom of the frame. I did not engrave the numbers, for the names are of little or no account at the present day ; they have, in fact, all merged in the one name of Frans Hals. The painting is in a warm, fresh gray ; the background is brownish. The various coats of arms in stained glass are indi- cated witli delicacy and precision against the outside background of foliage. The scarfs are tawny, orange, or tender blue; the ruffs are white, and in them the artist employs touches of the pure pigment. The clothes are principally of dark stuff figured with embroidery upon the surface, the detail broadly yet delicately indicated. The hands are fine, and all well individ- ualized. In this he is superior in judg- ment to Van Dyck, his contemporary, who, considering the hands of no particu- lar importance in this respect, always used one model for them. There is a deHght- ful harmony in the whole. It is charm- ing to observe the rich but simple treat- ment ; the breadth and certainty of his touch, its sharpness, promptness, and ce- lerity ; his free, bold, intelligent, supple handling, its dash and brilliancy, together with its moderation. There is a buoy- ancy, a joyousness — in fact, a jocoseness about him that places him most in sym- pathy with the painters of to-day. Here are much fiber and unction ; good red blood, and plenty of it. How fine and living are his heads, and how expressive ! Moreover, the action and movement are stirring. One can feel the moral atmo- sphere that pervades the group of the original Orangemen, pioneers in the cause of civic and religious freedom in the Netherlands. To the period of this picture belongs "The Jolly Man" of the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam, one of those light subjects which Hals threw oft" in moments of re- laxation ; yet in point of technic it may be more remarkable than his more seri- ous work in displaying the deftness and 24 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS rapidity of his touch. In coloring it is golden and luminous. The dress is ocher, and the background is of a duller tone of the same. The hat is black, and the ruffs are white. The jolly fellow is in the act of singing ; this explains the action. His face is all animation as he trolls his merry song. One outstretched hand is in the act of marking the time — a very characteristic action in a comic piece ; while in the other he holds a wine-glass, grasping the lower rim. "The Jester" is an uncertain work though certainly displaying remarkable cleverness of handling. I had engraved this example before the others. When I had nearly completed it, the director of the museum came round to look at my work, and told me that the painting was considered by competent judges to be a doubtful example of the master, jiainted probably by some one of the Hals family, for Halshad sons who were skilful painters. It was not until after I had spent some six weeks at Haarlem, engraving the cor- poration picture, and had again con- fronted" The Jester," that I felt competent to pass judgment upon it myself. I could then clearly see in it the evidences of a heavier hand, something foreign to Frans Hals. The touch is conscious, and chs- played apparently for its own sake. In the hand striking the strings it is bungling. In his touch Frans Hals is simplicity itself, perfectly natural and unconscious. At times it is perfectly indifierent, as in " The Jolly Man " ; and again, in his more finished works, the smoothest pos- sible rendering in engraving would be necessary to give an adequate idea of its softness, and of the subtle blending of the tints. It is only within the last quarter of a century that Frans Hals has received the recognition due to his brilliant talents. Unfortunately, the records of his life are very meager; but what we liave of his history, from latest researches, shows him to us as a very difterent character from the mere sot his former biographers made him out to be. His habits were convivial, and he took no thought of the things of the morrow. His renown was great in his day; he was a member of the Guild of Rhetoric, of the Civic Guard, and of the Guild of St. Luke, and he received a pension from the town of Haarlem in his old age. The Hals family occupied a place of distinction among the patrician houses of Haarlem fully two centuries before the artist's birth ; but owing to misfortunes consequent upon the war of independence, his parents removed to Antwerp, where, about the year 1580, Frans was born. While he was yet a boy, however, his family returned to their native town, where the artist was mainly educated, and where he spent the rest of his long and uneventful, career. He is sup- posed to have received some instruction in his art before he came to Haarlem, but it is known that at this latter place he entered the school of Karel van Man- der in the beginning of the seventeenth century. In genre painting, to which the taste of the times strongly set, Frans Hals led the way. He was one of the first who sought to break up the hitherto staid and serious forms, and to introduce homely reality and easy comedy. He is particu- larly happy in the delineation of mirth — a master, in fact, of the art of painting a laugh. The titles of many of his ]5ic- tures, half-lengths of life-size and .smaller, to be found in the galleries of Europe, — such as " The Jolly Topers," " The Jolly Trio," " A Jolly Toper Sitting at a Table," " Laughing Women," " Singing Boys," " The Frolicsome Man," " Table Com- pany," etc., — are sufficiently suggestive of the good humor that has earned for him the title of "jolly Frans Hals." He was twice married, living happily for nearly fifty years with his second wife, by whom he was the father of a large family. In the Amsterdam Museum there is a portrait of him seated beside his wife THE JULLV MAN," HV FRANS HALS. n\'kS MUSEUM, AMSTEKUAM. FRANS HALS 25 upon a sylvan slope within the shade of overhanging foHage, which represents him to us quite as we should imagine him in his moments of relaxation, when he is lightly mocking us. His wife, resting her hand upon his shoulder, joins him in sym- pathetic look and gesture. In the Haarlem Museum is a picture representing the school of Frans Hals. It shows the interior of a studio, in which a number of artists are drawing from a nude model, while the aged painter, who presides, is greeting a late comer at the door. From the inscription on the back we learn that it is the atelier of Hals as it ajjpeared about the year 1652. He was then nearly seventy-two. His success as a master is seen in the powerful influence he exercised over the works of his con- temporaries, and in the number of cele- brated men who, directly or indirectly, .sprang from his studio. A story is told of a visit paid to Hals by Van Dyck. The latter was then twen- ty-two; Hals, nineteen years his senior. As a jjleasantry Van Dyck suppressed his name, announcing Iiimself as a wealthy stranger who wisheil to sit for his portrait, but who had only a couple of hours to spare. Hals fell to with his usual im- petuosity, and com[)leted a portrait for the sitter's inspection in even less tlian the limited time, much to the satisfaction of the latter, who expressed an astonish- ment not altogether feigned at the speed of its execution. "Surely," said he, "paint- ing is an easier thing than I thought. Suppose we change places, and see what I can do." The exchange was made. Hals instantly detected that the jierson before him was no stranger to the brush. He speculated in vain as to who he might be. But when the second portrait was finished in still less lime than the first, the mystery was solved. Rushing to his guest, he clasped him in a fraternal embrace. " The man who can do that," he cried, " must be either Van Dyck or the devil ! " T. C. REMBRANDT lU/lAil. IK' i.M "THK MCII 1 -\VAH II." i;V KK.M UKAM >T. Chapter II REMBRANDT (1606-1669) THE Dutch painter of the seventeenth century is not a diffi- cuk person to comprehend, if we look at his worlc from his point of view. He is an observer, a student of what he observes, and a consummate technician. He has an eye for the outer view, and he gives httle beyond the pictorial, with a smack of individual style in the expression of it. That is, generally speaking, his beginning and his ending in art. There are, however, some exceptions among the Dutch painters, and the most famous exception of all is Rembrandt. That Rembrandt had an outer view of great clearness needs no demonstration. There were few of the great truths of nature that escaped that keen eye we have all seen so many times looking out from his own portraits. His was the comprehensive vision of a painter who saw the characteristic breadth and harmony of crea- tion, and penetrated the justness and truth of all forms and types, however humble, in the scale man had chosen to place them. He saw truly, looking without, but his eye was not fashioned for the outer view alone. It had a habit of reversino- itself and lookine within to read the thoughts of the painter's mind. The inner vision told of joy and sadness, love and sorrow, triumph and defeat. The mysteries of existence, the burden of inequality, the problems of good and evil, of the here and the hereafter, all were there. The eye read what the mind brooded over, and, when it turned to look without again, it was so tinged and hued by mental colors that the world was seen sometimes through a flood of joyous sunshine, sometimes through a saddened half-light, and sometimes through a 20 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS mist of tears. The personal thought and feeling of the man crept into his work. All that he had enjoyed, and endured, and suffered ; all that he loved, and believed in, and sympathized with, so swayed and dominated him, that he could not keep them out of his art. Shut away from the world in a small northern country, and even there a solitary man among his fellows, he probably did not realize that his joy and his sadness were, in different form, the joy and sad- ness of the whole world, and that in the end he would be accounted one of the great expositors of human passion. He was not con- sciously fulfilling his destiny. He was simply revealing his own ideas in his own manner, because he could not do otherwise. Ap- plause did not lead him astray ; censure could not change him. He painted on in the way nature had marked out for him, and, from the beginning to the end of his career, the outer view was suffused and glorified by the inner vision. One turns to Coleridge and reads: "Art is of a middle quality between a thought and a thing — the union of that which is nature with that which is exclusively human." It seems as though Coleridge had written that sentence standing before a picture by Rembrandt. There are, then, two men to be considered in Rembrandt. The technician is by no means to be overlooked. His brush is not so free as that of Hals, but it is more varied and fuller of resource; his drawing and coloring are excellent, and, all told, he is one of the greatest of the Dutch craftsmen; but there is nothing in his tech- nic that raises him above and beyond Holland. It is the mental and emotional attitude of the man's mind that appeals to mankind at large. Let painters say what they will, the tickling of the eye by a display of mere form or color counts for less in a work of art than the stirring of the emotions by passionate feeling. The first is a means ; the second is the end of art in itself Rembrandt pleases the eye, but his superiority over every other painter in Hol- land, and his rank among the great artists of the world, are largely due to his pleasing the mind and the heart. He was, from the start, a student of expression in look and action, a man interested in the psychological side of man. His natural bent of mind devel- oped a genius for these very features. He was always concerned with the mental status of his characters, and he ever seemed to Inquire: " How should I feel and act under such circumstances ?" Thus it was that he read his own emotional feeling into every character he created. REMBRANDT 31 We can trace him in his work, step by step, and year by year, and can see his sympathetic feehng deepening and intensifying as he grows more worldly wise. At first, he has something of the gaiety of youth about him, and is at times joyous without being foolish. He gathers about him rich dresses, turbans, Oriental trappings, chains, armor, jewelry ; he dresses himself in these, and paints his own portrait with soldierly bearing and a dare-devil smile. He is fond of the physical, and paints portraits of the hale type, like the "Gilder"; paints Europas and Proserpines ; paints sacred subjects ; and all with much seriousness, but not with the depth an d_p£Detration of later years. Saskia is his wife ; and he is happy in painting her, now in one costume and now in another. At Cassel she is gorgeous in rich robes and hat, composed in features, frank, honest, very dignified ; at Dresden she is seated, smiling, upon Rembrandt's knee, while he is holding aloft a glass of beer and laughing boisterously. This is his time for laughter. Success is his, he is renowned, and has many pupils ; but his head is not turned by it. He never neglects or pauses from his study of humanity; and he is already in sympathy with the sadder and the sterner side of life. The trend of his mind is toward pathos; he is interested in old men, Jews, beggars, the forlorn, and the miserable ; and the way he takes up their cry of the street and the quarter is almost socialistic. A little later, he was asked to paint the so-called " Night- Watch." It was a great opportunity. The picture required dash — something that should have the bustle of movement and the brawl of color and light about it. There was little chance here for the play of emotional feeling across face or figure, little chance for a subjec- tive nature to show itself. Paolo Veronese could have done it superbly; Rembrandt tried it and practically failed. He was not in sympathy with it, mentally or technically. His mind was too serious for the gay sortie of a shooting company. And Saskia — his beloved Saskia — was dying. After her death misfortunes came trooping thick upon him, but he did not, even now, pause in his study of humanity. His art deepened and saddened under the burden of increasing poverty, neglect, and sorrow ; but it did not flag or decline. Then, in one year, he painted the " Good Samaritan " and the "Supper at Emmaus," in the Louvre; and in them we have the full expression of the man's emotional power. The pity and the tenderness of the " Good Samaritan " are not to 32 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS be touched upon, since a master pen has already described them, the "Supper at Emmaus" has been engraved by Mr. Cole, and, though the color is not given, the expression is, in measure, trans- lated. And how truly marvelous is that expression ! Did Rem- brandt understand the Gothic law of painting soul well by showing body ill .'' The thin, emaciated figure, the coarse hands and feet, the wan cheek, the dark lips, the pallid face, would all seem to say so. "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" This is not the glorified Christ, who has risen triumphant over death and is now free from all earthly taint. It is the Christ of Golgotha, still marked by the trial, the persecution, the crucifix- ion. The shame and the humiliation, the sorrow and the mental suffering, the ignominy and the torture of his death, are about him as he sits there, breaking bread, his soft brown eyes looking up, the pale ghostly light of the tomb about his head, the very archi- tecture back of him suggesting the tomb itself Was there ever such a painting of mute agony, and yet, with it, meekness and for- bearance to the last ? There is only one face in art that approaches it — the face of DLirer's " Christ on the Cross," at Dresden. The splendid Paolo Veronese, with the Jove-like type of Christ, — he who could have painted Rembrandt's " Night-Watch " so gor- geously, — tried and practically failed with this theme. Emotional expression was his weak feature ; it was Rembrandt's strong feature. Rembrandt was at his height ; yet still a student bent upon in- tensifying his expression of character and deepening his shades of meaning. As he advanced in years, the type of age seemed to at- tract him more and more, and he tried to give the sum of existence in the faces of old men and women. His rabbis wear the air of the tongue-lashed and fire-scathed, and his own portrait, which he continued to paint, is at times defiant-looking in fine robe and brii^dit color, though more often sad-faced and somber-hued. The shadows of misery and want were heavy about him. He was sounding the depths of woe in his own life, his eyes were looking within, and ever his brush was telling the fellow-feeling for man which was so strongly stamped upon his heart and brain. Yet whatever his personal despondency, he did not despair in his art. He worked on, his eye seeing clearer and surer the great universal r O en O o •a REMBRANDT 33 truths, and separating them from the merely local ; his mind broad- ening to the great problem of existence. At the last he failed quite rapidly. His hand no longer obeyed his mind. It had started sharp and precise ; it ended coarse, hot, fumbling. Appar- ently the bitterness of life had worn him out, and he died and was buried (so far as history tells us) unwept, unhonored, and unsung. The peculiar technical knowledge wherewith Rembrandt was en- abled to show his emotional feeling — that feeling which so often de- veloped into tragic passion — may be suggested in a sentence. It was a thorough understanding of human expression, not only in the face, but in the hands, the arm, the bowed head, the bent back. All his life he was studyijTg_the_o uter man ifestations, of '•h'" pmn- jtiojiai-Rature. As a young man he was painting his relatives, his acquaintances, his own portrait. Year after year he sat before his glass painting himself, watching the expression of the eye and brow, noting the play of the mouth and the chin. The heart spoke through the mobile face, and he would know its language. The classic face did not attract him. It might have symmetry and pro- portion, but it did not have expression ; it did not betray passion like the irretjular face. No wonder he made friends with the beij- gars and Jews of the quarter, and used one of them for the figure of the C hrist in the "Supper at Emmaus ." What he had to say could be _w:pn fnh] with no other fac e. Again, he could no t use _t he classic fig^ure. It was too coldly calm and self-conscious in i _ts_ p roportions for him . The worn outcast and the pallid pilgrim were more fitted to him. And what meanings he portrayed in the bended knee, the stooped back, and the upraised hand ! Look again at the "Supper at Emmaus," and see the incredulity and wonder written in the hands and turned heads of the two disciples at the table ; see the fear and trembling of the boy bringing in the dish. This synthesis of character, this strong grasp of the salient fea- tures, appeared not alone in mean figures heavy laden with sorrow. The wife of Manoah, at Dresden, large and splendid, is the epitome of prayer, as she kneels in her gorgeous robes ; and the lieutenant in the " Night-Watch " (the figure at the right in Mr. Cole's detail) is the very poetry of motion. Whether of high or of low degree, whether in emotional or in physical life, Rembrandt had the power of characterization. The firm foot, the substantial body, the burgher face speaking so loudly for animal life, how positively he could tell 34 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS them! We see them in the "Syndics of the Cloth Hall," at Am- sterdam. They are almost vulgarly healthy. Mr. Cole, in a private letter, writes : " It [the Syndic picture] fairly smells of beef and beer." Precisely! That w^as doubtless the quality of the men, and Rembrandt, like Hals, never falsified the character of anything. He told the truth — the truth of fact in the outer man, the truth of feeline in the inner man. He was a maste r of truthful characteriza- _tion_andexpression, and therein lay his great power. Rembrandt's life-long study of appearance naturally produced the anatomist, the physiognomist, the trained draftsman, the nearly per- fect modeler. He was each and all of these. The features of the face that were the most speaking were the ones he studied the most, the ones he portrayed with the greatest force. Nothing could be finer than his drawing of the eye, the lid, the brow, the cheek-bone, the mouth. In the modeling of the forehead, the skull, the side of the jaw, the chin, he could give the feeling of bone-structure and flesh with conclusive reality, and there never was a painter who could equal him in mingling flesh and hair. In the apparently small feature of blending a thin mustache over a mouth, so that the mouth was really emphasized rather than hidden by it, he showed a mastery of materials that no other painter ever approached. He thoroughly understood the human face, and yet was not lacking in a knowledge of other features. Hands, and feet, and nude figure he sometimes gave in a coarse, strong way, as his bathers testify. They were never eclectic or ideal in type. He worked from the model, and the Dutch type, somewhat heavy, wanting in height, and often distorted from work and the wearing of coarse clothing, was given with all its shortcomings ; yet again with a jowerful sense of actual lite and being. The figure has truth of mass, the hands are flesh and blood, ~tKFTeet stand firmly as though bearing a weight. With or without clothing he knew the human form in all its parts, and he repro- duced it with force and truth, if not always with grace and elegance. In giv ing the setting to the face or fi gure, he employed an _arbU. trary, but no less effective, chiaroscuro. _ He hardly comprehended Tigh t as an illum i nation, a' n_ equal distributi on. It was to him largely a means of emphasizing certain expressive features. He forced it, drove it in full power upon the forehead, nose, cheek, or chin. The eye, and often the side of the face or the forehead under a hat, he liked to leave in shadow, for the mystification that the shadow pro- duced, and for its contrast with the high light. It was bj- contrast REMBRANDT 35 that he gained strength. He made a center of light in his pictures, and from this center there was a radiation outward that soon lost itself in deep, luminous shadows, that enveloped, surrounded, and really gave the setting to the figure. Not only was the contrast of light up and down and across the picture, but it extended into it. His foreground was high in key; his background somber, gray- green, brown, or deep golden. Under such a lighting the chief fea- tures were powerfully relieved and the minor features subordinated, oftentimes to mere suggestion. Color fared in a similar manner. There was nothing for it but to follow the course of the radiating light. Hence, in the lighted portions, it was high-keyed, brilliant, glowing; but under shadow it could not, and did not, retain its truth of tone. It was sacrificed in a merciless manner, bleached, distorted, almost demolished. Even in landscape, he was inclined to follow this method of working, though here he was compelled to regard a sky illumination to some extent. Occasionally, too, in his figures, he dispensed with the deep contrasted shadow, but he did so with evident reluctance. He knew that shadow was the foil and the relief of light; he knew its haunting, suggestive qualities. With- out it his figures would have to hold by their clear profile, and he placed no love or confidence in outline drawing. The sharp con- trast of light and dark was as much of a necessity with him as the irregular face. He could not fully express himself without it. It was, as has been said, an arb itrary rn ethod_o f lighting , and yet with the portrait, the single figure, or even several figures, as in the " Supper at Emmaus," it proved a powerful method. It was the dramatic force of the stage applied to painting — a climax from dark to light, from somber hues to brilliancy, from the less truths to the greater ones. But it had its limitations, and Rembrandt showed them. When he grappled with the large composed group, his method proved unequal to the emergency. The sharp degrada- tion of light from the chief figures left the figures at the sides and back submerged in shadow. This he tried to obviate by creating several centers of light. But a picture loses strength by many focuses, just as a play loses strength by many climaxes. The " Night- Watch " is eloquent of this. Rembrandt apparently knew little of linear composition; liis _ relian ce_^ was on composition by )^ j^r/ jTiasses of light and da rk ; yet he tried some line effect in this picture. The flag at the left, the column and spears at the right, the architecture at the back, seem to cut the picture into three 36 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS pieces, like a triptych. The central compartment (a detail from which is shown in Mr. Cole's engraving) he used for his strongest light ; but the light ran off into shadow so quickly that it was not sufficient to illuminate this central piece alone. He began, then, forming new focuses of light. We see one of them brought to bear on the face of the man with the gun, another one on that odd little girl, — whose presence in such a scene is enigmatical, until we under- stand that the painter needed her just there as a spot of light and color, — and, again, the figures in the background form still other focuses. As for the figures at the sides, beyond the spears and the flag, they were plunged in shadow, and required separate cen- ters of illumination to be seen at all. The result was that the picture had many lights, but no one illumination ; had many figures, but no one composition ; had many parts, but each part unrelated to the others. It was not successful in Rembrandt's day, and since then V it has been cut down to its present size ; but it is still unsatisfac- '^ tory. It is not held together, it is spotty in light, and the different focuses are bewildering and confusing. As seen to-day, it is a mass of yellow, and a striking picture in that respect — but Rembrandt ^ can be neither praised nor blamed for it. He probably used Venice turpentine as a vehicle, and it has thrown a yellow tone over the picture. The limitation of Rembrandt's system of illumination is shown in many of his larger pictures. The " Lesson in Anatomy " is a blaze of light on the corpse, and the heads of the doctors are but reflect- ing mirrors; the "Good Samaritan" is not satisfactory, and tells of neither night nor day ; the " Manoah's Sacrifice," at Dresden, is disjointed ; the " Jacob and the Sons of Joseph," at Cassel, has been cut down. The " Syndics of the Cloth Hall," at Amsterdam, is one picture of half a dozen portraits, and not open to objection as a com- position ; but here Rembrandt abandoned his method for a fuller and broader illumination. The truth is that his peculiar chiaros- curo, when he carried it out fully, admitted of only a few feet (some- times a few inches) between the highest light and the lowest dark, and such a lighting could not be satisfactorily applied to the expan- sive canvas. It was appropriate to the portrait and the single figure. It was with such subjects that Rembrandt was the most successful. It is by them that he should be judged. We have been told many times that Rembrandt was "a perfect master of light," and we have also been assured that, as a colorist. 'N (.. DETAIL FROM "THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS," BY REMP.RAXDT. LOUVRr-:, I'AKIS. 36 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS pieces, like a triptych. The central compartment (a detail from which is shown in Mr. Cole's engraving) he used for his strongest light ; but the light ran off into shadow so quickly that it was not sufficient to illuminate this central piece alone. He began, then, forming new focuses of light. We see one of them brought to bear on the face of the man with the gun, another one on that odd little' girl, — whose presence in such a scene is enigmatical, until we under- stand that the painter needed her just there as a spot of light and color, — and, again, the figures in the background form still other focuses. As for the figures at the sides, beyond the spears and the flag, they were plunged in shadow, and required separate cen- ters of illumination to be seen at all. The result was that the picture had many lights, but no one illumination ; had many figures, but no one composition ; had many parts, but each part unrelated to the others. It was not successful in Rembrandt's day, and since then V it has been cut down to its present size ; but it is still unsatisfac- ■^J tory. It is not held together, it is spotty in light, and the different ^ focuses are bewildering and confusing. As seen to-day, it is a mass of yellow, and a striking picture in that respect — but Rembrandt ^ can be neither praised nor blamed for it. He probably used Venice \ turpentine as a vehicle, and it has thrown a yellow tone over the picture. The limitation of Rembrandt's system of illumination is shown in many of his larger pictures. The " Lesson in Anatomy " is a blaze of light on the corpse, and the heads of the doctors are but reflect- ing mirrors; the "Good Samaritan" is not satisfactory, and tells of neither night nor day ; the " Manoah's Sacrifice," at Dresden, is disjointed ; the " Jacob and the Sons of Joseph," at Cassel, has been cut down. The " Syndics of the Cloth Hall," at Amsterdam, is one picture of half a dozen portraits, and not open to objection as a com- position ; but here Rembrandt abandoned his method for a fuller and broader illumination. The truth is that his peculiar chiaros- curo, when he carried it out fully, admitted of only a few feet (some- times a few inches) between the highest light and the lowest dark, and such a lighting could not be satisfactorily applied to the expan- sive canvas. It was appropriate to the portrait and the single figure. It was with such subjects that Rembrandt was the most successful. It is by them that he should be judged. We have been told many times that Rembrandt was "a perfect master of light," and we have also been assured that, as a colorist, k i|[ffliifflmiiFi|i|iiiiiii"pii if' !!!L ■| DETAIL FROM -THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS," BV REMIiRAXOT. LOUVRr, PARIS. REMBRANDT 37 he ranks among the world's great masters. Both statements are true if taken with quahfications. If it is necessary that the ilhimi- nation of a picture should be even in distribution whether in full light, half light, or shadow, then Rembrandt was not a luminarist ; if color should be preserved under light and under shadow, main- taining always its fitness, quality, and absolute relationship, then Rembrandt was not a colorist. But ordinary rules did not apply to this man any more than to Michael Angelo. He made laws unto himself, created an arbitrary light, and produced an arbitrary color. He sacrificed the half lights to the full lights, and he sacrificed the half tones of color to the full tones in a corresponding manner. Truth of color he doubtless knew, but disregarded. His method of lighting compelled him to do so. Color had to decrease in value with the swift degradation of light, and Rembrandt as a colorist was a slave to Rembrandt as a chiaroscurist. Yet again in color as in light he gained strength by this forcing process. The swift transi- tion from dull brown to glowing red, or from bleached gray to brilliant yellow, was startling, ringing, dramatic. It was the climax again — the rushing up to the final point with ever increasing splendor and power. But was this disregard of the truth of color an indication of the colorist? It can hardly be thought so. Rem- brandt was a colorist beyond all question, but he was so in spite of his sacrifices rather than by virtue of them. He knew what colors were beautiful in themselves, and he knew how to arrange them in harmonious and beautiful combinations. Moreover, he knew the richness, transparency, and depth of tones. He was seldom flar- ing or shrill in color. A tone might be false, but it was not raw ; it might be despotic, but it pleased the eye. That his colors were indescribably subtile in both quality and harmony is true, but their real charm was more elementary, and lay largely in their choice and arrangement. In this he was not showing- color for color's sake, in a Paolo Veronese sense. It was not with him a sole means of expression — the final aim of a painting. He had something to say regarding humanity, and color he used as a means of saying it beautifully. As a workman with the brush he was not so free as Rubens, Velasquez, or Hals. Like Titian, he kneaded with thumb and brush, though at times he struck off with great ease and sureness. Nothing could be more masterful than his occasional modeling of a cheek and jaw with apparently one bold sweep. A comparison 38 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS of so simple a feature as the fluted collars in the portraits by Rubens, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt, will soon convince one that Rembrandt was the master, easily first in giving the sense of real- ity, though his work was not so cleanly done on the surface as that of the others. In the final finish he often allowed his brush to plow through and show the under-painting, for the sake of lumi- nosity, so that his surfaces are often tortured in appearance, and his methods difficult to determine. It is certain that his darks and his backgrounds were painted thinly in a lucid vehicle, and afterward overlaid with thin glazes. It was thus that he obtained his depth, richness, and transparency in shadows. The transparency of his lights he probably gained in a different manner; that is, not l)y thin paintings, but by broken touches, that allowed portions of the light under-painting to appear at the edges. It is said by Mansaert that he rarely blended his colors, laying one on another without mixing them ; but this is not apparent in his work, probably owing to the plowing effect already spoken of His work shows but slight trace (and that only in sul)ject and light) of influence from master or school. His precursors gave lit- tle indication of his coming. The man seems quite original in mind and hand. Doubless his chiaroscuro came to him from Caravag- gio, Init how or when no one knows. In modeling, in handling, in color, and, above all, in thought and feeling, he stands quite by him- self the great genius of Dutch art, and a painter who ranks with Titian, Rubens, and Velasquez, among the world's great masters. NOTES BY THE ENGRAVER ON my first arrival in Holland, fresh from Italy and the classicism of Italian art, and having my mind imbued with its fair and heavenly images, I was ill prepared to drop immediately into sym- pathy with Dutch art. Though I felt I should experience no difficulty in this respect, yet when I walked through the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam, a strange sadness came over me, and I felt inclined to look around on the collection of small pictures as upon a dreary waste. How should 1 ever learn to love these genre subjects, with what appeared to me their gross materialism ? I could have wei)t. I had descended from Parnassus, and was once more among the haunts of men. I resolved to plod on in fiiith, however, doing my best with whatever came to hand, and to see what the influence of association might do in changing this at- titude toward them. The" Night-Watch," by Rembrandt, was the only thing that possessed any attraction for me. I had already had some acijuaintance with the great Hollander, having engraved, at the REMBRANDT 39 Louvre, some ten years ago, his wonder- ful " Supper at Emmaus," which left an indelible impression ujion me ; so that my interest in him was not wholly effaced by my long sojourn in so opposite a field of art as the Italian. I decided to engrave a detail of the principal figures of the " Night-Watch " as my first essay in Dutch art. Nine months have passed since that time, and now I marvel greatly, as 1 pause before my favorites in the gallery, that I could have been so blind to their charming qualities. Every day I made a new discovery, until I began to count the masterpieces by the score. Now I see working in these earnest Dutchmen the same spirit of sincerity, and love, and reverence, which actuated the Italians. These honest workers tell us in their pic- tures that all things are miracles, and that each part and tag of anything or of any one is a miracle ; and so they paint the hair on a cow's back with the same reverence that Fra Angelico painted the flowers of paradise, and an old woman's face is as divine as that of an angel. How can there be too much fidelity and realism where nature is approached with humility and reverence ? Even the sub- limity of the Italian, which lifts one to the skies, is not wanting in the landscapes of Ruisdael and Hobbema. I learn now that what charmed and fascinated in the work of the Italians holds me equally in the work of the Hollanders. A confession of moral nature, of that self- forgetfulness or unconsciousness so capti- vating, of the large and tender soul, of purity, love, and hope, breathes from the one as from the other. This surely is the true excellence of all really great works of art, without which this business of pic- ture-making were but a trivial and profit- less aftair. The " Night-Watch " is the chief attrac- tion of the Ryks Museum, and is Rem- brandt's largest and, in the opinion of many, his most important work. It mea- sures II by 14 feet, and is dated 1642. A contemporary copy of the work by Gerrit Lundens, to be seen in the National Gallery, London, and a photograph from a drawing of it by Jacob Cats, made in 1779, which hangs in the Rembrandt Room, where the great picture is installed, show that the work has been cut down on all sides, thus seriously altering its composition as the great master left it. More than two feet were lopped away from the left side, carrying off two figures; something less from the top; from the bot- tom the foreground has been shortened by eight inches or more; and the same amount has been taken from the right side, cutting away half of one of the princij)al figures, which formerly was entire. The work was painted for Frans Banning Cock and his company of harquebusiers, and is one of the many guild pieces which in those days it was the fashion for corpora- tions to have executed, wherein the por- traits of the various members were de- picted. The real title of the piece is the " Sortie of the Company of Frans Banning Cock." The title of the " Night-Watch " is false and misleading. This erroneous title originated with French writers of the end of the eighteenth century, and Rey- nolds, in his " Tour through Flanders and Holland," has added to its publicity in his note upon the work. He evidently saw it before it was cleaned of its thick coating of varnish, and of the smoke of lamps and innumerable Dutchmen's pipes, — for the Dutch are famous smok- ers, — since he says that it disappointed him, as he had heard so much respecting it, and remarks that it had more the ap- pearance of a Ferdinand Bol, from the prevalence of a sickly yellow color. Seen under this circumstance of partial ob- scurity, it is no wonder that it should have been taken for a night scene. Since then it has been cleaned, and si.x years ago its varnished surface was again fresh- ened by the simple operation of subject- ing it to the fumes of alcohol ; and those 40 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS who saw it after the operation speak with rapture of the wonderful luminous depth and brilliancy of its coloring. After five or six years, however, the varnish crackles again, and obscurity once more sets in, rendering a renewal of the operation ne- cessary. This is always the case with pictures covered with a spirit varnish. The scene represents the company emerging from their guild-house in the golden sunlight of afternoon. The cap- tain, clad in deep brown or warm black, with a red scarf about his waist ; and his lieutenant, clad in a yellow jerkin and breeches, a white scarf about his waist, and a white plume adorning his yellow hat, precede the group, which in com- position recedes on each side. The dis- tribution of color against the soft, warm, and tender obscurity of the background is magnificent. The grace and easy ac- tion of the man in yellow are especially admirable. The coloring of Rembrandt's pictures appears more yellow when seen in proximity with other works of a colder and harsher tone. The position of the " Night-Watch " is unfortunate in this re- spect, since on each side of it is hung an immense corporation picture by Van der Heist. But shutting out of sight and mind everything else, and so getting into the key of his coloring, one can appreciate what a truly marvelous painter he really was. Of the three hundred and fifty paint- ings by Rembrandt, Holland possesses only twenty-five ; but among these are the " Night-Watch," the " Syndics," and the "Anatomical Lesson." Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn — for such is his full name — was bom at Ley- den, a town near Amsterdam, famous in the history of the independence of the Netherlands, and as the birthplace of many great artists and other men of re- nown. Rembrandt's parents were well- 1 Sir Fr.incis Seymour Haden calls attention to this fact in showing that many of the etchings bearing Rembrandt's name are the work of his to-do folk, and he was intended for the study of law ; but his father, discovering his strong bent toward art, placed him, at the age of twelve or thirteen, under the instruction of Jacob van Swanenburch of Leyden, and, after three years, under Pieter Lastman of Amsterdam, who had been in Italy and knew something of Italian art. Remaining with Lastman till he was eighteen or nineteen years old, he returned to his parents at Leyden, and nature thereafter became the object of his profound study. In 1630, when twenty-four years old, he felt himself strong enough to do something on his own account, and accordingly went again to Amsterdam, rented a large house, and divided the upper portion of it into cells or small studios for the reception of pupils, who were to be thus separated from one another for the better preservation of their individuality. Fortune smiled upon him. His house was constantly filled with students of good families, who paid him 100 florins annually, while the income he derived from their paintings and etchings amounted to 2000 or 2500 florins, or more. Among his scholars were Ferdi- nand Bol, Govaert Flinck, Gerard Dou, Nicolaes Maes, Van Hoogstraaten, Ko- ninck, Victoors, and many others, — thirty, in fact, in his house at a time.i — a busy hive of painters and etchers. He painted his famous "Anatomial Lesson" in 1632, when only twenty-six years old. After keeping bachelor's hall in this way for three years, he effected an alli- ance with the influential family of Rum- bartus van Ulenburgh, burgomaster of Leeuwarden, and a member of the court of Friesland. This same Rumbartus was more than once a political envoy from that court, and related that he had been treated with marked affability and re- tained at dinner by William the Taciturn on the very evening when the prince, on pupils, and further informs us that at The Hague it was unlawful for an apjircntice to sign liis own work. ■■"("[!I"'::I "THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS," DV REMERAXnT. LOUVRE, PARIS. REMBRANDT 41 leaving the table, had been assassinated by a Bourguignon. Saskia, the daughter of Rumbartus, became Rembrandt's wife in 1633, bringing him love and wealth. There followed a period of eight years of prosperity and sunshine, culminating in the " Night- Watch." Tlien the death of his beloved Saskia, which happened in the same year, changed everything for him. His life corresponds to his scheme of coloring in its contrast of light and shade; and the events of his latter days, like the forms in many of his backgrounds, are clouded in obscurity. We have a glimpse of its luminous side from Vos- maer. We see him at home, surrounded by his pupils, living a life of perfect sim- plicity, sober, regular, and absorbed in his work, a happy father and blessed with a devoted wife, in high favor and receiv- ing good prices for his pictures. His lower rooms were filled with all kinds of objects of art curiosity. He had a mania for collecting, and it is said had works of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Palma Vecchio, Diirer, Lucas van Leyden, and the earlier Dutch masters. It is evening, and he is at home. In a large back room, — their living-a]iartment, tinted blue, — he is seated at an ample table, beneath a cluster of candles, which, shaded, sheds its concentrated light — a Rembrandt flood — over the principal objects of interest. Rembrandt is .sketch- ing or etching ; his wife, seated near by, is tending the baby — their son Titus — or sewing ; while in the background are dimly perceivable a score of pictures, an- tique heads, a large curtained bed, a press, and a chest of drawers or " what-not." Or friends drop in, and gather round the table within the circle of light, and sketches are passed around, and we have a picture of the " Staalmeesters " in their broad-brimmed hats. I remember seeing a picture of his in which he seems to have symbolized the happiness of these all too fleeting years. He is seated in hilarious mood, with his wife upon his knee, and his arm about her waist, while in the other hand he extends on high a glass of wine. It might in truth be called " one hour to madness and to joy," such is its complete abandon. All the many por- traits he has made of himself during this time are of a romantic and fantastic kind, and show him to be a lover of fine array; his leonine head is adorned with long, floating locks, and his mustache is elegant and twirled. But the romance of his life coming to an end with the death of Saskia, we have no more portraits of him until about six years afterward, when, in 164S, a remarkable one appears, evidently a real likeness. His locks are shorn, a jjlain citizen's hat replaces the former jaunty cap and plume, his mustache is closely clipped, gone are all his " silks and fine array." He is seated at a desk at work, beside a plain, small window, and looks at the spectator with sad and reflective eyes. We now for the first time behold the man as he is, chastened and fit for his great work, the " Supper at Emmaus," which he painted in this year. Saskia in her will becjueathed him the usufruct of her property, on condition tliat he .should continue a widower, with remainder to their son Titus. Financial depression overwhelmed the city, and in- fluenced the sale of his pictures. The fashion in art changed. Some of his pupils, in the estimation of his contem- poraries, became of greater account than he, and rose in high favor, insomuch that the poets lauded them at his expense. His prestige had departed. It was no longer thought necessary to paint like Rembrandt to command success. The thing to do now was the reverse, and six florins was enough for a portrait of his. Little is known of him during these dark days. About 1654 he married again, and in order to satisfy the claims put forth by the trustees of Titus, who was yet a minor, he was obliged to make an inven- tory of his goods, which he valued at 40,000 florins, but which realized at auc- 42 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS tion less than 5000 florins ; and this being found insufficient to satisfy the demands made against him, he was obliged to sell his house for 6700 florins, and became bankrupt ; his brother and sister, who had inherited larger shares of the patrimonial estate than he, likewise falling into ex- treme poverty. All through the darkness of these latter days he shines forth with increasing luster in his works ; for, as Seymour Haden says : " He was no less than at any period of his career adding to his power, and both by his painting and etching accu- mulating immortality." He painted " De Staalmeesters " ("The Syndics") in 1661, eight years before his death. In this year he appears, from Walpole, to have wan- dered to England, and to have painted some fine things at Hull. It has been said that he was married a third time, and that he did not die so poor as is supposed; but this is doubtful. In the " Livre Mortuaire " of the Wester Kerk, Amsterdam, appears the following simple entry relating to his death : " Tuesday, 8th Oct., 1669, Rembrandt van Rijn, Painter on the Rovzegraft, opposite the Doolhof. Leaves two children." T. C. FERDINAND BOL Chapter III FERDINAND BOL (1616-1680) * MODERN theorist has recently told us, with a love of the sen- /\ sational and the paradoxical characteristic of the present X V time, that there was virtually no such painter as Rem- brandt, and that the majority of pictures ascribed to him were painted by his pupil Ferdinand Bol. The logic of the argu- ment, if there be any, would seem to be based upon the fact that Rembrandt at times painted down to the level of Bol. The re- verse of this conclusion seems not to have been considered. Did Bol ever paint up to the level of Rembrandt? The leader of a school is always held responsible for some of the works of his pupils ; but it is not often that the pupils are credited with the works of the leader. Some masters (Bel- lini, for example) made it a business matter to sign their names to school w^ork as a guarantee that the pictures came from their workshop ; and oftentimes, where they failed to sign their names, the directors of galleries have been only too prone to attribute to Raphael, Rubens, or Rembrandt, pictures that should be given to Giulio Romano, Grayer, or Bol. Then, too, a commercial spirit has sometimes led to forgeries of great names. As a result of all this a painter's style is often a badly confused problem if gallery attributions are accepted as infallibly true. In the Pina- cothek, at Munich, there hung for years portraits of Bol and his wife signed with Rembrandt's name. Every one who had made a study of Rembrandt could determine, almost at a glance, that they were not his work. Now% the signatures have been proved forgeries ; the pictures have been assigned to Bol, and the sub- 46 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS jects are said to be Flinck and his wife. These portraits came to Munich from the Mannheim Gallery, and with them, from the same gallery, came a "Sacrifice of Isaac" and a "Holy Family," which still bear the signature of Rembrandt. The modeling, handling, and coloring in all four of the pictures are substan- tially the same. It is not impossible that one man painted all of them, and that the man was no other than Bol. For Rem- brandt never modeled in such an uncertain manner, never used such pallid flesh-tints, never painted with such a smooth brush. He was more pronounced and individual in every way. In his late years he sometimes painted with a coarse, harsh touch, but never with thinness or timidity. The Munich pictures show his style at second-hand, reproduced by a pupil. Between the orig- inal and the imitation there is only a surface likeness. For Bol was to Rembrandt as Mazo to Velasquez. They both painted works that resembled their masters at their weakest ; neither of them painted works that resembled their masters at their strongest. Bol is said to have been the first and the Ijest [juj)il of Rembrandt, and to have quite superseded his master in public favor at one time. That is no matter for wonderment. The populace probably preferred a catching likeness, a white skin, and a finished surface, to a broader and stronOKTRAIT OF A YuUNG fllRI.," UV (JOVERT FLI.N'CK. LOU\Kt;, PARIS, GOVERT FLINCK 55 departed when he forsook Rembrandt and the Dutch subject. His expansive composition was frail, his color became florid and blatant, his flesh chalky, his handling slippery, ineffectual, uncer- tain. There was a good deal of glitter and show about his his- torical pictures, and, in consequence, many commissions poured in upon him from court and official circles. Prosperity and patri- cian acquaintances quite ruined him, and he ended as a perfunc- tory delineator of classic or official themes, much like many a latter-day academician. Pdinck, quite diflerent from his great master, never knew the pinch of poverty, the rich man's contumely, or the world's forget- fulness. He was born rich, married a daughter of a director in the East India Company, was patronized by the court and the munici- pality, and, it is said, had so many commissions toward the last that he turned over his portrait orders to Van der Heist. He died at forty-five, and Vondel mourned over him in bombastic verse, as a young Apelles prematurely called to the shades. He was, per- haps, not undeserving of his success, for he was a painter of ability ; but when we think of the public casting honors and commissions at the feet of Bol and Flinck, — honoring them, too, for their catch- penny features, — at the very time when Rembrandt was plunged in obscurity and neglect, we are inclined to begrudge them that praise which they really merit. Both Bol and Flinck were painters of substantial worth ; but in studying their works we are never al- lowed to forget the master who made them worthy. NOTES BY THE ENGRAVER GOVERT FLINCK, born at Cleves signing his work during the term of his in i6i 5, was among the earhest of apprenticeship. Though FUnck was eight Rembrandt's pupils. He had previously years younger than his master, he yet en- served an apprenticeship to Lambert Ja- joyed an intimate friendship with liim, cobsz at Leeuwarden, and did not apply and in 1637 he painted his portrait, in re- to Rembrandt much before the age of turn for that which Rembrandt painted seventeen or eighteen. That he was an of him and his wife. He therefore prob- independent master before he was twenty- ably married upon the termination of his one is proved by his earliest pictures, dated apprenticeship with Rembrandt. At this in 1636, among which is the " Pyrrhus" time he dwelt with the cousin of Rem- in the Brunswick Museum ; and further- brandt's wife, Hendrik Ulenburgh ; and more, by the fact that there existed a law a year later, in 1638, when only twenty- in Holland which prohibited a pupil from three, he painted one of his most remark- 56 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS able works, " Isaac Blessing Jacob," to be seen in the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam — executed, in all probability, under the eye of his master. Flinck excelled par- ticularly in portraiture, and this became his chief occupation. His picture of tlie " Regents," dated 1642, may be noted among many otlier fine works of the Am- sterdam Museum. It exhibits taste in ar- rangement ; the heads are living ; and it lias the breadth of treatment and the glow of color peculiar to Rembrandt. The " Portrait of a Young Girl," which I have engraved, is one of the popular pictures of the Louvre. It is the sweetest face that I have encountered among the Dutch- men, and its expression of innocence is captivating. Her head is decked with flowers. She holds in her hand a trowel, or sand-shovel, of the sort that is popular with children at the watering-places of Holland. It is a life-size bust, 26 inches high by 2iJ-^ inches wide, is signed, and is dated 1641. The coloring is rich and mellow, and the treatment of the drapery is peculiarly Rembrandtesque. Flinck had a good reputation at Amsterdam, and in 1652 the freedom of the city was con- ferred upon him. He had a zest for objects of art, especially casts from the finest an- tique sculpture, and drawings and engrav- ings by the best masters. He died at Amsterdam in 1660. T. C. NICOLAES MAES Chapter V NICOLAES MAES (I632-I693) Rembrandt's studio seems to have been a mild sort of lotus land for his pupils. Once there they seemed to forget I- their own individualities, and after they wandered from it they were forever talking about it with the paint-brush. Of the dozen or more of pupils, few escaped the impress of the master mind. The explanation of this is perhaps easy enough. They had not master minds of their own. They were able to receive an im- pression, but not able to create one. There were a few exceptions to this, however; and certainly one of the most interesting of the exceptions was Nicolaes Maes. If one looks at a picture by Flinck, Bol, or Eeckhout he is re- minded of a something that Rembrandt might have done better; but if one looks at the picture by Maes that Mr. Cole has engraved, he is struck with the fact that this is something that Rembrandt never did, or thought of doing. The subject, the sentiment, the feeling, are Maes's very own ; and even the technic, the color, the light, are somewhat removed from the Rembrandtesque formula. Maes was a pupil of Rembrandt, yet he had a mind and an indivi- duality that would not stand in absolute abeyance to another mind. He liked and learned Rembrandt's method, but his cast of thouehi & was not in sympnfh y ^^nth R -o mlirnnrlt'r; '-. i ^^pct^-nn. hig pgyrh n]ngi - cal view . He painted many portrait s, but his heart was not in the study of the hurnarLJace* They made up his poorest work, and were probably done to keep the wolf from the door. Smooth, flat- tering impersonations, hued brightly to please the women, they were remarkably successful in a popular way, and it was at one 59 6o OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS time considered a favor to be allowed to sit to Maes ; but the work was never other than just passing fair. His portraits do not show the true feeling of the painter. It is only in such subjects as Mr. Cole has engraved that we see the jp.oetic-^ide_of Maes . A picturesqiie interio r, walls dashed _ with Hghtand sli adow ^ a._fioaireor two, rich_rolnr, nti d a poeti c §€nitioient,j3fjuie^Jigme_Jife^were things that evidently appealed to him. It was a genre of his own, and he painted it best because he loved it best. And how well he saw the character of such themes! How well he felt the simpl€-lrulh—aft G I— < O r JACOB VAN RUISDAEL 1 25 understand, or understanding it, he chooses to subordinate it to the general effect. The surface is flat and thin in the rolling clouds, in the sharply defined foliage, in the brown earth. For a seventeenth- century painter, in a school remarkable for its masterful workmen, Ruisdael does not cut a great figure. He is acceptable, even satis- factory ; but never distinguished. And, after all, skill of the brush did not vitally concern him. What he sought to portray w as a sen timent about landscape -catl^er than a likeness of nature hers elf T h e sen tim ent was p oeiicand what mattered^ Tt iFTie used prose to tell it. The ultimate result was good, and it is upon that ultimate result that appreciation of Ruisdael's landscape must be based. In the part, it is not interest- ing ; in the whole, it is complete, well-rounded, designed with a single purpose in view, and revealing that purpose exceptionally well. Some of Ruisdael's pictures have darkened in tone, probably because they were based in bitumen ; but there are still many clearly preserved examples of him in England, Holland, and Ger- many. He was a very prolific painter, though he seems to have had very little encouragement. His landscapes lacked in human interest, and were not appreciated by the people of his time. The painter died in an almshouse, and to-day his pictures are placed at the head of all Dutch landscape art, and sell for enormous prices in the auction rooms. NOTES BY THE ENGRAVER JACOB VAN RUISDAEL was bom the most reserved, the least likely to cap- at Haarlem about 1628 — some say tivate the eye at first sight. He is one of 1630. It was formerly supposed that he those rare spirits whose inwardness is re- was bom in 1645, but on the discovery of vealed little by little; a lofty soul, grave, a picture by him bearing this latter date, tender, and tranquil, who loved the coun- it was thought prudent to put back the try, where silent nature ruminates far from date of his birth some fifteen years or so. the world and its restless eagerness to His father, who was a cabinet-maker, de- shine; a solitary rambler, simple, natural, signed him for the study of medicine, but and dignified ; a painter of the gray side his remarkable inclination toward art, of nature, as harmonizing best with his evincing itself at a very early age, de- own reflective and habitually pensive termined his profession ; he produced mood ; a lover of mists and clouds, of pictures at the age of twelve years that moist and shady glens, of rocky declivi- astonished artists and amateurs. ties, and mountains. It has been said of Of all the Dutch masters, Ruisdael is his works that they are the embodiment of 126 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS the poetry of melancholy. He certainly shows no liveliness, and in this respect he is singular among his more sprightly breth- ren. But he possesses a charm which is peculiarly his own — his supreme quality is repose. Before his works one is im- pressed with a feeling of serenity and pro- found peace. No one expresses better than Ruisdael the grandeur and amplitude of the heavens ; he veils them with clouds, which gratefully temper the light that is delicately diffused in subtle gradations of values. His coloring is gray and cool, somewhat darkish in character, varying from green to slate-color and brown, rather monotonous, but harmonious. Ruisdael never knew how to put figures of men and animals into his pictures, and for this purpose sought the aid of his fel- low-artists Berchem,Van de Velde, Wou- werman, and Lingelbach. Berchem is said to have been his teacher, though Sal- omon van Ruisdael, his uncle, was his earliest instructor. Hobbema is said to have been Jacob's pupil. Ruisdael was not appreciated in his day, and his great labors did not enrich him. Neglected and obscure, he fell into dire want in his old age ; and finally, in commiseration of his distress rather than from respect for his genius, which was hardly suspected by any one, he was admitted to the almshouse of Haarlem, his native town, where he died March 14, 1682. One of the most imposing and beauti- ful of Ruisdael's paintings — certainly a magnificent work, before which one might linger unconscious of all time — is the river view at the Ryks Museum, Amsterdam, which will be better remembered as " The Windmill." It is a singularly impressive piece, representing a dead calm before a storm. The mill, with its dark, wide-spread arms, rises high in the canvas to the right, upon the summit of a terraced ground — a palisade lapped by the dark and quiet river. The white sail of a boat, toward mid-stream, — flat, and unruffled by the slightest breeze, and of exquisite value in its relief and in its delicate reflection in the water, — rises softly against the far- off horizon. Above is the wide sky, heavy with clouds, which break as they scale to- ward the top of the canvas, disclosing the gray blue of the heavens through the watery vapors. AH is one harmonious and powerful tone composed of rich neu- tral browns and dark slate-colors, flowing and melting the one into the other in sub- tle gradations of shades — all shadow, so to speak, everywhere except the pink flush of light crowning the disks of two clouds high up near the middle of the sky, which is the final gleam of the retiring sun. The mysterious sense of expectancy which is the essence of this work is heightened by the strange Hght, as of an eclipse, that is diffused over all. I have felt at times that this picture was really the most entrancing thing I had ever beheld. Equally charming and impressive is the " Gleam of .Sunshine " at the Louvre. One is confounded by the beauty and the as- tonishing quantity of work in this most refined piece. In this, one would say, Ruisdael touches the limit of his skill. The National Gallery of London, in ad- dition to the many fine works it possesses by Ruisdael, has lately acquired another very fine one, which is remarkably well preserved. It is entitled " A Coast View at Scheveningen," — Scheveningen is a watering-place near The Hague, — and is the gayest Ruisdael that I have seen. The sea is in shadow and the coast in sun- light, while the sky is piled with Hght, warm clouds. Figures of men and women dot the beach, some shading their eyes from the sun with their fans. Of a piece with this in sentiment is " Le Buisson " ("The Thicket") at the Louvre, shown in the illustration. A bush, tormented by the wind, comes out with great force in the foreground, while the sunlight, which gilds the cumulus clouds, bright- ens the road where the man and dogs are, and glances along the fence, behind which is a glimpse of the village in the JACOB VAN RUISDAEL 127 distance veiled in gray and watery va- pors. In these galleries, where masterpieces crowd one another, one may pause often before a rare piece,ackno wledge its beauty, and pass on unmoved. But there comes a time, in the course of repeated visits, when the same picture discloses itself, and fills one with the rapture of a new dis- covery. Then, in the enthusiasm of the moment, one is ready to attribute to the new-found love every possible and im- aginable excellence. Only in this way can I account for such a writer as Mich- elet, for instance, calling " The Tempest " by Ruisdael " the prodigy of the Louvre." But one might commit the same excess with all of these wonderful works of art ; each one seems to tyrannize over every- thing else during the time one devotes to it. T. C. MEYNDERT HOBBEMA Chapter XV MEYNDERT HOBBEMA (i638?-i709) THE origin of landscape cannot be placed to the credit of the Dutch any more than the origin of genre-painting. Both kinds of art were known to the Italians, and to say that Pauwel Bril painted landscapes in the sixteenth century is to invite the statement that Bellini and Carpaccio painted them in the fif- teenth century. The Italians, however, never painted trees, skies, and mountains for their own sake, and as picture motives in them- selves. They used them as a background for figures. The Dutch, on the contrary, saw a beauty in nature, aside from its being a thea- ter of human action, and so painted it, and, in that respect, they may be said to have practically inaugurated landscape as an inde- pendent branch of art, if they did not originate it. Exclusive of the early men, there were three painters who estab- lished the type of landscape in Dutch art — Ruisdael, Wynants, and Hobbema. The last-named was the latest in point of time, and in many respects he was the most mature and talented of the trio. He has been ranked above and below his real master, Ruisdael, according as the views of critics have varied ; and, indeed, a good case could be made out on either side. As a painter he was Ruis- dael's superior ; as a man of imagination he was Ruisdael's inferior. He should be considered by himself; yet a comparison between the two men arises naturally, because Hobbema was greatly influenced by Ruisdael, adopted his style, something of his composition, light, and color ; and at times was so like his master that their pictures have been interchanged in attributions. This likeness is, however, more apparent than real, and a closer study of Hobbema reveals 132 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS him as quite an independent spirit, though he undoubtedly derived much pictorial sustenance from his predecessor. Hobbema never had Ruisdael's singleness of aim, nor his sus- tained sentiment. He was not a man of such large mental caliber as his master ; yet in what he saw and painted he seems to have been more original. The so-called Norwegian landscape appealed to him less than the scenes of his native land. Such subjects as quiet woodlands, water-mills with bushes and pools, and here and there a small figure — all of them distincdy Dutch — were more to his liking. He was positive and realistic with such scenes, though he sometimes failed in ensemble. Details of foliage led him astray into flickers of light, and the white trunk of a birch so interested him that he often gave it undue prominence at the expense of the general effect. Subordination to an idea or a sentiment, a feature so prominent in Ruisdael, was wanting in Hobbema. He had no very pronounced sentiment aside from a love for quiet, sunlit nature. The master's pervasive melancholy is apparent only in the pupil's color, and that, at times, seems inappropriate to the sunny scenes he painted. Though Hobbema had not his master's sobriety of view, and cared little for his classic landscape, he, nevertheless, knew his method of composition, and many of his studio conventionalities. He was fond of a symmetrical arrangement after the academic manner, as the en- graved picture will show ; and in all his large compositions he has somewhat of studied formality. On the contrary, his smaller pic- tures, like those at Dresden, seem as unconventional as though he had cut off a piece of nature with a window frame and painted it just as it stood. Besides the balanced composition, he often used the diagonal sky line, dividing the canvas into two triangles, the upper portion being given to light sky, the lower portion to dark ground. This was a favorite method of composing with Van Goyen and Cuyp, and possibly Hobbema learned it from the former. And again, he was fond of perspective lines running diagonally toward a distant point where sky and trees and hills converged, like the spokes of awheel toward the hub. The tree-lines, road-lines, sky- lines of Mr. Cole's engraving illustrate this. In aerial perspective he was not always so effective. He marred the effect of atmosphere by undue detail in distant objects, or by a preternatural spot of light on the ground or on a tree trunk. A careful student of nature, he was a sharp draftsman, and laid in separate leaves against the sky, a: > < c 5 a w r i > > ^- r -x S O -■^ r r > § p g w z o o » MEYNDERT HOBBEMA I33 and drew twigs and branches, with all the hardness of a youthful Diaz. Skies and clouds he knew quite as thoroughly as Ruisdael, and in all the details of a foreground he was precise enough to suit the most exacting truth-to-nature lover. In light he was fond of the sunburst falling on picturesque water-mills, or upon the tops of trees and bushes. He spent infinite time and labor filtering this light through tree foliage, flashing it upon pools of water, dry ground, stones — anything that would reflect it. In this feature I believe he was responsible for the spottiness of Constable in Eng- land, and of Rousseau, Dupre, and Diaz, in France. They all studied Hobbema, and from him learned how to enliven the dark portions of pictures with sparkles of light from pools, rocks, broken branches, and small figures. It seems impossible to reconcile this full sunlight with Hobbema's dull color. His palette was only a little more varied than that of Ruisdael, and he doubtless set it after that of his master. Grays, olive greens, and browns predominated, though at times he struck into a livelier key. His color was not so cold as Ruisdael's, for he based his trees in russet for warmth, and then laid upon this basing the dull greens of foliage. His color had its charm of sobriety, but it also had its lack of variety — its monotony. " The Avenue — Middelharnis," in the National Gallery, would be an almost perfect picture were it not for its slaty grays and its mildewed greens. The composition is unique, the perspective accurate, the atmosphere good, the sky superb in its expanse ; but the color is forbidding, notwithstanding it is appropriate to the gray day and the clouded sky that are represented. At Dresden there are some more sketchy pictures that seem to have greater brilliancy and vitality, though they are less important in size and composition. The Dresden pic- tures, too, show Hobbema at his best in handling the brush. He is freer in touch, fuller in impasto, more solid in modeling, and again he reminds us of Diaz. The skies are brushed in vigorously, as Ruisdael never thought of doing them ; the trees are handled in mass rather than in detail, and the sparkle of small lights is not so apparent. It is from these small pictures that we gain the clearest idea of Hobbema's ability and his originality. He was a student of what he saw in Holland, and had it not been for the color influence of his master, he might have given us a more complete portrait of Netherlands scenery than any painter of the school. As it was, though he was wanting in Ruisdael's depth and reserve force, he 134 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS was infinitely truer to locality, better in color, and a more versatile painter in every way than that master. Half a dozen cities claim his birth, but they failed to appreciate him during his life. He died in poverty, and his resurrection as a painter is due to the English. Most of his works are in England, and it cannot be doubted that they there had great influence ui^on Constable, and through him influenced the Fontainebleau-Barbizon painters in P'rance. NOTES BY THE ENGRAVER THE landscapes of Meyndert Hob- bema were little known or appreci- ated until about a century after his death, and consequently the details of his life are few and scanty. He is said to have stud- ied under Salomon van Ruisdael, though by others he is believed to have been the pupil of the greater Jacob van Ruisdael, nephew of the former. He certainly en- joyed the friendship and advice of the lat- ter, whose junior he was by a few years, and, as might naturally be expected, his works bear a certain affinity to those of his famous contemporary. He was bom in 1638, probably at Amsterdam, though the city of Haarlem, the town of Koever- den, and the village of Middelharnis in Holland are each said to have been his birthplace. He is known, however, to have resided at Amsterdam, and to have been married therein 1668, to which event his friend Jacob was a witness. He then recorded his age as thirty. He died in Amsterdam, December 14, 1709, and was buried there, ending his days in poverty and obscurity, his last lodging being in the Roosgraft, the street in which Rem- brandt had died, just as poor, forty years before. Only thirty-five years ago the best of his works was not valued at much more than thirty dollars, and often the signa- tures were effaced from them, and better known names, such as those of Ruisdael and Decker, were substituted. Now, how- ever, his canvases are highly valued, and a work which before went begging at thirty dollars would, perhaps, fetch a thou- sand times as much. The subject I have engraved is known as "The Avenue, Middelharnis, Holland." The long avenue of straight, lopped trees leads up to the village, in which the church tower is a conspicuous object. It is a faithful and characteristic glimpse of Hol- land, with its pastures, waterways, low horizons, and expansive and impressive skies. Above all, it is the sky which holds us here ; we feel the vastness of the im- mense vault of heaven. The work is gray and neutral in coloring. It is one of the finest of Hobbema's pictures, and is to be seen in tlie National Gallery, London. It is on canvas, and measures three feet, four and one half inches high, by four feet, seven and one half inches wide. The date upon it, 16-9, is read by some to be 1689, which would make it one of the latest of the artist's signed pictures. T. C. PAUL POTTER Chapter XVI PAUL POTTER (1625-1654) THE name of Paul Potter has been made famous by one picture, and that one not, In all respects, the painter's best effort — the " Young Bull " of The Hague Museum. People crowd about it to-day, just as they probably did two hundred years ago, to admire " the way in which that young bull stands out." Their observation is only too accurate ; the bull seems in some danger of falling out of the picture frame ; but it never seems to have occurred to the observers that it is not the object of painting to make things " stand out." On the contrary, it has been the aim of painters for many centuries, to make things stand in. Landscape does not resemble a convex mirror. To our eyes it is not a protru- sion, but a depth lighted by a sun, a recession in space, a dimin- ishing vista enveloped and held together in its parts by atmosphere. Does the picture in question verify or falsify this every-day elemen- tary truth ? What is the merit of Paul Potter's "Young Bull?" Has it merit, and is it really famous, or is it merely notorious ? If we analyze the picture we shall find that it is not a pic- ture in the sense of its being a single united impression. It is merely a study of a young bull. The animal occupies the center of the canvas, and around him, above him, beyond him, are accessory objects having little or no relation to the bull — objects lugged into the picture by the ears, for the purpose of filling space. The man, the trees, the hard sheep, and the harder cow, have no more actual existence than the disjointed planes of the distant meadows. The whole composition as a picture is weak, amateurish, almost puerile. One feature only of the landscape helps the bull, and even that 138 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS feature is handled without shrewdness. I refer to tlie sky. The dark of the bull's head has been relieved against a light sky, and the lighter hind-quarters have been placed against a dark storm- cloud. The relief is by contrast, the least subtile of all methods. Yet it served Potter's purpose well. He was painting the portrait of a bull, and the contrast w' as, perhaps, necessary to emphasize the clear outline. But what of the portrait itself? Is it as badly done as the rest of the picture ? By no means. It is unnecessarily rigid and woodeny, the anatomy is perhaps too sharply accented, the modeling is over- modeling, and the painting is under-painting. It has, however, been praised as a line piece of patient, accurate drawing ; and such it is. There is little fault to be found with it in that respect; yet, perhaps, the praise would better be bestowed upon the final aim and meaning of the accuracy. The painter has sought to give the physical character of a bull ; but this character does not necessarily rest in the anatomical drawing, in curled hair, and shining eyes. The details are good, but the bull, as a whole, is better ; and it is the wholeness of the character that makes the likeness striking. It is a young bull that the painter has pictured, and we feel his age from his size, his head and neck development, his weight, his general pose and attitude. There is the air and the braggado- cio, the alertness and the "smartness" of a two-year-old about the beast. The type and temperament, almost the breeding of the ani- mal, are revealed to us. In short, the impression conveyed is a positive one. We have the characteristic nature of the animal so convincingly presented, the fitness of life so completely justified, that again, regardless of subject, we abandon classic canons of beauty to admire it. It is the same truth of character shown in the animal that Hals and Terburg have shown in the human being ; it is the same grasp of essentials so apparent in the work of all these Dutch painters ; it is the same clearness of perception that makes all the Dutch work beautiful in its truth of insight. The whole im- pression is convincing, and it is this impression that people have felt and admired. That they have declared the virtue of the bull to lie in his "standing out," only proves that a general judgment may be right, but that the specific reason given for it may be wrong. Potter was a close student of detail, and saw the character of single objects with much truth ; 'but he was wofully weak in the pic- PAUL POTTER I39 torial correlation of his forces. To refer to The Hague picture again for iUustration, he made a separate study of the bull and then tried to transfer it to a landscape setting. He succeeded in the study, but failed in adjusting the bull to the landscape. The cause for this is not far to seek. Potter was a student of art ; he never became a thorough master of art. He had not the time to learn his craft thoroughly, for he died at twenty-nine. The "Young Bull" was painted at twenty-two. It shows a young painter who never had an adequate master — a boy toiling along and studying directly from nature, regardless of the art of his brilliant contemporaries. Every touch of his brush speaks the innocent frankness and sin- cerity of youth ; but it also speaks the immaturity, the lack of train- ing, incident to youth. He was working out the technic of painting by himself Circumstances willed it that he should be a self-made, or rather a self-making man, for the making was interrupted by death. His early taking away is matter for regret, but it should not be a reason for declaring Potter a great painter. He was a great student, if you will, but never a great master. There was hardly one fine painter's quality about him. Some small pictures in the National Gallery, and a notable one in the Louvre, the " Horses at the Door of a Cottage " (painted in the same year as the " Young Bull "), would seem to deny this ; but the more one sees of these pictures the more askance he looks at their attributions. Is it pos- sible that the same hand painted the " Horses at the Door of a Cottage," and then, five years later, painted the " Meadow," hang- ing on the opposite wall ? Yet the painter of the " Meadow " (1652) was the painter of the "Young Bull" (1647), the "Bear Hunt" (1649), the "Orpheus" (1650), the " Shepherd and Sheep " (1651) at Amsterdam. It has the same drawing, colorino- and handling; it is just as hard in substance, just as disjointed in composition, just as faulty in light, just as harsh in treatment, as the pictures cited. The year following the painting of the " Meadow," Potter died. Did he ever, at any time, reach the degree of facility, the knowledge of color, light, and atmosphere shown in the " Horses at the Door of a Cottage" and the National Gallery pictures? Potter's name on a picture has always had great value, and it has made valuable a number of pictures never painted by his hand. Again we return to the conclusion that Potter was an aspiration rather than a consummation. He could draw a cow, a tree, a rock, a leaf with harsh e.xactness, and he could paint them with a rasping, 140 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS wiry brush ; but he could not put them together and make a picture of them. He did not understand subordination, atmosphere, values, or picture planes. His compositions begin anywhere, and ramble indefinitely so long as there is canvas ; they are illuminated by a light that comes from no point in particular ; and their coloring is lacking in unity, depth, richness, and transparency. This was the result of an insufficient education, which he was striving to better with unwearying patience and industry when his life was suddenly cut short. What he might have done had he been spared can hardly be considered ; what he achieved under adverse circumstances, to- gether with the noble patience and candid spirit of his achievement, cannot be too highly praised. If we regard his work as the study of a young man devoted to the realistic portrayal of character in landscape and cattle, we shall find much to admire ; if we regard his work as final pictorial accomplishment, we shall not escape dis- appointment. NOTES BY THE ENGRAVER PAUL POTTER'S career was of short duration, but the number of works which he executed, and the zeal and un- tiring energy with which he labored, were extraordinary. He was born at Enkhui- zen, a fishing-village on the Zuyder Zee, November 20, 1625, and studied art under his father, an obscure landscape-painter ; yet such was the precocity of his talent that at the age of fourteen years he exe- cuted a charming etching, and from that time forth produced work upon work. He lived for some years with his father at Amsterdam ; then, at the age of twenty- one, he went to Delft, where during two years he painted many of his pictures, in- cluding his large work, the" Young Bull." In 1649 he took up his residence at The Hague, where he joined the Painters' Guild, and rose to fame and princely patronage. In 1650 he married, and in 1652 returned once more to Amsterdam, at the instance of one of his chief patrons, the burgomaster Tulp. Here, his health rapidly failing, he died in 1654 of con- sumption, superinduced by over-work. During this brief period of not more than fourteen working years, the latter part of which must have been hampered by disease, he produced an astonishing amount of work. His paintings amount to 103, besides i8 etchings, together with numerous drawingsand studies, including landscapes, and heads of oxen and sheep in varied positions with difficult fore-short- enings ; trees and tree-trunks well under- stood ; carts and plows, and all kinds of farming implements, showing singular pre- cision of design. The " Young Bull," considered as a piece of portraiture, is doubtless a fine work. It is one of the most celebrated things in Holland, and The Hague Mu- seum owes to it a large part of the curi- osity of which it is the object. Though it may not fill all the requirements of a perfect picture, it nevertheless satisfies as a complete and conclusive portrayal of a H X w < o c _ c s t" txi ■< > G •n O H H PAUL POTTER 141 bull, and has been rightly termed " The Bull." In point of execution it is marvelously minute ; the single hairs upon the brute's head are seemingly palpable to the touch, and flies are seen buzzing about. This closeness of observation extends to the bark and foliage of the tree, and the grass and pebbles on the ground, where also a toad is seen ; yet, although the artist ap- pears to ignore the art of sacrifices, and the fact that things must sometimes be suggested and but half expressed, he does not lose sight of breadth. This work measures eight feet six inches in height, by nine feet ten inches in width, and was painted in 1647, when the artist was but twenty-two years of age. The Hague Museum possesses a por- trait of Paul Potter painted by Van der Heist in 1654, and as Potter died in Jan- uary of that year, it follows that this por- trait must have been completed but a (ew days before his death. It shows a sensi- tive and refined countenance, light hair and eyelashes, full, strong lips, and deli- cate mustache. He is clad in velvet, and sits by his easel with palette and brushes in hand, looking out at the spectator with a serious, determined expression. It seems very remarkable that this should be the likeness of a man wasted with consump- tion, and at death's door. But it is not more remarkable than his life, which was one of prodigious labor, and wonderful perseverance. T. C. AELBERT CUYP Chapter XVII AELBERT CUYP (I620-I69I) I HAVE reserved to the last, not the greatest, but the most versa- tile of all the Dutch painters — Aelbert Cuyp. He traversed the whole domain of painting, and in all its departments, still- life, landscape, marines, animals, portraits, even historical pictures — for such the " Landing of Prince Maurice," in Bridgewater House, may be considered — he left recording canvases. He was a man of great talent, and painted many subjects well ; but perhaps we should have cared more for his art had he painted one subject with superlative power. Nothing that he produced lacks in knowledge and skill ; but nothing that he produced has the stamp of great ge- nius. When the human mind spreads wide, we must be content if, at times, we find that it spreads thin. Though Cuyp devoted himself to all the departments of paint- ing, his Weuse landscape with cattle was his favorite theme, and it is by this subject, more than any other, that he is familiar to picture lovers. His riding-parties, portraits, marines, appear frequently in European collections, but they fail in holding our interest as com- pared with his landscapes. As for his still-life and flower pieces, it is sometimes doubted if he painted them, and at any rate they are not his best work. The Louvre picture that Mr. Cole has engraved is a characteristic example of Cuyp's landscape, — in fact, one of his happiest efforts, — and in it one may see not only his usual mood of mind, but many of his peculiar methods of working. The concep- tion is one of profound pastoral peace under a warm summer sky, with light clouds heaped up against the blue, and a yellow light flooding down into the foreground. It is a dreamer's day, a day of 146 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS golden haze, blowing thistle-down, humming bees, ruminating cows, warm air, and soft shadows. There is no action in the scene ; nothing dramatic in incident to break the spell. It is a vision of rest ; and the great charm of it undoubtedly lies in the soft light that pervades and tinges everything with a summer day's warmth. That Cuyp painted this light as yellow as the picture now shows us may be doubted. He probably used amber varnish, not only as a surface glaze, but as a vehicle for his pigments, and time has in- tensified the yellowness of appearance. Aside from this, he was fond of the semi-Italian light of Both and Berchem, and he probably deepened its golden tone for uniformity of coloring. The composition of the picture seems simple enough, and yet, like all Cuyp's pictures, it is full of subtile perspective lines, reliefs by contrast, and repetitions of objects and colors, all woven together into a single unity with extraordinary skill. The main composition line is a diagonal running from the right upper corner to the left lower corner, and the contrast is that of a dark lower triangle of ground, cattle, and figures, against a light upper triangle of sky and clouds. Perspective is gained by leading the eye from the large man playing the pipe and the large cattle to the small sheep and shepherds on the hill ; and again, by receding steps as it were, from the large dark tree to the lighter tower of the middle distance and the two wind-mills of the far background. These lar^e lines, con- trasts, and repetitions not only give perspective, but they indicate the great sweep and space of the sky which are so powerfully felt in the picture. Nor does the contrast end with these broader and more apparent definitions. Cuyp seems to have been very fond of offsetting one object by another object, and emphasizing each by contrariety. The large man playing the pipe is a contrast to the small children, the large cattle to the small sheep, the light cow in the center to the dark cows about her, the blue sky to the light yel- • low clouds, sunlight at the left to storm-clouds at the right. The antithesis is even carried into the coloring and handling, as in the dark precision of the foreground, with its coarse touch upon foliage and cattle, contrasted with the hazy lightness of the background, and the infinite delicacy with which the sky and clouds are painted. That this intricate network of lines, groups, and objects was ap- parent in the actual scene is hardly possible. Nature is seldom so accommodating to painters. But Cuyp never cared too much about actualities. Nature furnished him with the materials, and he trans- AELBERT CUYP 147 formed them as he pleased. He was not averse to showing his knowledge and skill in composing a picture, and it must be admitted that his result generally justified his display. The effect of a Hol- land landscape under sunlight, with expansive sky, drifting clouds, quiet water, and a general air of drowsiness, has been given in this picture, and that was the painter's aim from the start. Cuyp was hardly so successful with the other subjects he under- took. His riding-parties of ladies and gentlemen — the two prome- nade pictures in the Louvre for instance — are striking in their blues and reds of costumes ; but the horses are somewhat faulty in draw- ing and action, and the men are curiously self-conscious. The cor- rect pose for an equestrian portrait seems uppermost in their minds. Moreover, the contrasts of light and dark are here too palpable, and the red and blue costumes are hardly true in tone. F'or por- traits Cuyp seems to have had no special talent. He painted people much as he painted horses, sometimes with a harsh brush, and at other times with smooth porcelain surfaces and hard outlines. His marines were much better ; and his shore pieces with boats and figures, of which the " Landing of Prince Maurice" is the larcjest and most notable example, seem directly responsible for the charm- ing pictures of that little understood painter, Jan van der Capelle. The handling of Cuyp can hardly be summarized, for he varied it continually to suit his subjects. In no case is it exceptionally strong. At times he is rasping, and putters over detail with a brit- tle brush, as in the foreground foliage of the engraved picture ; and then again he is delicate, almost feathery in his touch, as in his skies and clouds. His drawing varies in the same way. Cattle under his brush seem to have a plethora of bone substance, and are re- markable for an emphasis of the skeleton ; whereas his horses and figures often run to fatty tissue and abnormal plumpness. He was more successful with color, though not always maintaining its true value. He pitched it in an auburn key for cattle and landscapes, but when painting horses and figures he used a fuller palette. His greatest success was in light, and its distribution over landscape. Here he gave not only the truth of mellow sunlight, but usually its proper tonal effect upon all the objects and colors in the picture. The golden glow of mid-day or afternoon pleased him best ; but he also painted moonlights, storm-lights, and in the Prince Maurice picture there is a white light breaking through a mist that is mar- velous in its luminosity. Comparing it with the usual mellow 148 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS glow of his meadow landscapes brings out again the wonderful versatility of the man. Cuyp, all told, was an astonishing painter in his knowledge of nature and art. He seldom repeated himself, and when a new j^ic- ture by him is brought to light, it is new in more than the matter of its discovery. He found and painted something unique in almost every feature of Holland and its people. That such diversity of effort should result in some dissipation of strength was inevitable ; yet the wonder is, embracing, as he did, all subjects, that he should have done work of such uniform excellence. He established no new conception, led no new school of art, and yet he holds high rank in Dutch painting by virtue of his versatility, his industry, and his ac- complishments. It is not given every painter to be a Cuyp, as David said about Boucher ; and though we may prefer the single idea of a Corot wrought to perfection, we need not despise the varied ideas of a more comprehensive mind, though they be less perfect in form and setting. NOTES BY THE ENGRAVER A ELBERT CUYP was bom at Dord- . recht, or Dort, in 1620, and not in 1605, as has been accepted until recently. He was one of the first of the school, be- ginning with its robust incipiency, and living to witness its decline. He died in 1 69 1. Bythediversity of his talent he con- tributed greatly to enlarging the list of those homely observations which charac- terize the art of his period, and the variety of his subjects makes up almost a com- plete repertory of Dutch life, especially in its rural phases. He was well-to-do, liv- ing upon his own estate, and painting what he pleased and at his leisure, and according to the inspiration of the mo- ment. Taking nature ever as his guide, he rarely fails to impress us by a charm- ingly naive conception. Very little is known of his early life ; he was the pupil of his father, Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp, a landsca])e-painter. It is probable that he visited other parts of Holland be- fore beginning to paint on his own ac- count at Dort. He was little known or appreciated in his day, owing to the taste which sprang up at that time for the ex- treme finish that the works of Dou and his school exhibited. For this reason Rembrandt also suddenly lost favor, and other rare spirits, like Ruisdael, were mis- understood and neglected. Until 1750, the best examples of Cuyp were not valued at more than twelve dollars apiece. The English have the honor of first disclosing him to the world, and consequently Eng- land possesses the majority of his works. The engraved example is one of his finest pictures, and is to be seen in the Louvre at Paris. It is also one of his largest, measuring five feet seven and one half inches high by seven feet six and one half inches wide. The temperament of Cuyp led him to seek calm and sunny scenes, and his rare faculty for rendering Hght, and the atmospheric efiects of hazy > z c o > PI c ■ AELBERT CUYP 149 morning, of glowing afternoon, and of golden evening, is well known. Dwelling on the banks of the placid Meuse, he de- lighted in reproducing the warm skies of summer or autumn, and the amber-colored atmosphere that enveloped the surround- ing hills. Speaking of the painting here engraved, Fromentin, in his admirable work on the old masters of Belgium and Holland, has the following : " No one could go farther in the art of painting light, of rendering the pleasing and restful sensations with which a warm atmosphere envelops and penetrates one. It is a picture. It is true without being too true ; it shows observation without be- ing a copy. The air that bathes it, the amber warmth with which it is soaked, that gold which is but a veil, those colors which are only theresultof the light which inundates them, of the air which circulates around, and of the sentiment of the painter which transforms them, those values so tender in a whole which is so strong — all these things come both from nature and from a conception ; it would be a master- piece if there had not slipped into it some insufficiencies which seem the work of a young man or of an absent-minded de- signer." What these " insufficiencies " are may be seen in the proportion of the children to the shepherd playing upon the pipe, though this detracts nothing from the charm and poetry of the whole. Such, apparently, is the enchantment of the scene that I have come to imagine these little creatures as intended by the artist to represent the genii of the place, evoked by the music of the shejiherd, and the har- mony of this rarest of occasions, when all nature is attuned. T. C. A NOTE ON FLEMISH ART A NOTE ON FLEMISH ART IF it be true that art is the product of its surroundings, — the reflec- tion of the spirit, the thought, the general character of the people producing it, — then it follows that Flemish life must have been different from Dutch life, since the art- result was different in both matter and manner. The contrast between the two countries in either life or art was not clearly apparent at first. In the fifteenth century neither of them was of great political consequence. Flan- ders was the more important country, the Dukes of Burgundy ruled, and Holland was regarded as an outlying province of marsh lands and fishing-ports. One religion spread over all the Low Coun- tries ; and though there was always a demarkation line in faith and character between the upper and the lower lands, yet this line be- came distinct and prominent only with the Reformation and the subsequent freedom of Holland from Spanish rule. Once aroused, the Dutch began to show the sturdy, self-con- tained, independent spirit that was within them. They threw off the Church, threw off the Spanish yoke, and speedily developed a national life of their own. The Flemincrs tried to do the same things, but they failed. They had less energy, less conviction, less unity among themselves than the Dutch. Their Netherlands blood was not so pure, and there were many interests and influences to change a native disposition. The provinces bordering on France were more than half French, the Spanish and Austrian rulers were Roman, in faith at least; and the whole country was bound to Italy by political, commercial, and social ties. A mi.xed character in the people resulted from these diversified influences. By birth the in- habitants of Antwerp were allied to the inhabitants of Amsterdam ; and some of the stern characteristics of the North were apparent in the whole Flemish stock ; but there was much of the volatile 154 _hurghprs, merchanlsj^ and his portraits and genre pictures we re designed for the privat e house, the town hall, o r the ho s pital . In Flanders the demand^^arne JiroriL.ihe' Churchj_jhe_cqurtj_the_city_; and the painter scaled his canvas, and set his palette, for the large design to hang in the cathedral, the palace, the public hall, even on the triumphal arch of princely pa- rade. For such purposes the style of Terburg, Steen, or even Rem- brandt, was neither fitted nor available. It was not large enough in bulk, nor strong enough in line and composition. The minute treatment of the Flemish Van E)'cks answered well enough in the fifteenth century ; but that there was need for something with more carrying power was early evidenced by Ouentin Massys in his life- sized figures of the " Entombment," at Antwerp. Proportion of canvas, e.xpanse of color, composed groups were necessities of the altar-piece and the wall- panel if they would be seen at a distance in large buildings. The Flemings of the sixteenth century must have felt this, and some of their early imitation of Italy was doubtless with the idea of learning the large composition to meet just this need. We shall not go far astray in beheving tnat the place of setting and the purpose of Flemish pictures were responsible for the iorm and style of those pictures. The Church dictated the subject and place, but whence should the Flemings get their form and method ? The small style of the native Van Eycks had been outgrown ; the method of their neighbors, the Dutch, was not yet established. The only painters who had successfully handled the large composi- 156 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS tion were the Italians; and it is not stransje that the Fleminirs of the early sixteenth century should have turned to them for instruc- tion. Undoubtedly the Italian imitation that followed, in which whole schools of Flemisb^^painters Jjepjm^rep roducin g the style of the Italians, was helped along by other aims than the mere desire to fill Flemish churches with properly composed altar-pieces. There was abundance of admiration for the Italian success in all kinds of painting. The Flemings felt the baseness of their form, and turned to Italy to better it, much as the Early Renaissance Florentines turned to Rome and Greece. They also felt the need for fuller fields of color, and again they followed the example of Italy. That they should do this was quite natural ; for Italy was the mother-land of painting, the source from which European enlightenment had come, the oracle of piety, learning, and art toward which all eyes were turned. F"rance and Spain were already following her methods, and why should Flanders hold aloof? It is true that the Flemish result in painting during the sixteenth century was not inspiring. It lacked in spontaneity, in genuine- ness, in originality. It was too palpable an imitation ; and yet a tinge of Netherlands individuality remained in it. Italian method was acquired, but the northern painter could not possess himself of the southern point of view. His eyes were Flemish though his hand was Florentine ; and so, perhaps in spite of himself he produced a native Flemish feeling in his work, clothed, as it was, in the bor- rowed garb of Italy. The meeting of these two elements, Flemish thought and Italian method, was abrupt and awkward enough — more awkward than the meeting of nature and the antique in Botti- celli, and much less original. The product was neither one thing nor the other. Countless pictures were turned out by Mabuse, Floris, Lambert Lombard, the Franckens, and their followers ; but they had not enough of Flanders in them to make them true Flem- ish art, nor enough of Italy to make them good Italian art. By itself considered the product was an odd negation ; but in its effect upon the later art of Flanders its influence was very great. It taught the value of Italian technic to subsequent generations, who were destined to make the union of the two elements complete and perfect. With Rubens and his contemporaries of the seventeenth cen- tury the Italian method became better understood, better digested, better judged. There was a modification, an adaptation of the A NOTE ON FLEMISH ART 1 57 material borrowed, and an expansion, an amplification of home ideas. The work of Rubens i s typical of the harmony of the ele- ments. It shows the full-blown flower of Flemish art — a flower growing on Flemish soil, unique, and perfect of its kind, and yet a hybrid growth, a cross with Ital)-. The point of v iew, the spirit, the_sentime nt. the feeling, are northern . Even the form, the type, the color, the technic, seem native to the Scheldt ; but they were based on methods taught in the lagunes of Venice and on the banks of the Arno. Yet the absorption of these methods was quite per- fect. One can hardly place his finger on a feature in Rubens's work, and determine with certainty whence he got it. The whole teach- ing of the Italian school had been filtered through his individuality; it had been recombined, recast, recreated, and then put forth in such a manner that it was impossible to tell where one element left off and another began. The genius of assimilation and recombina- tion, so strikingly exemplified in Raphael, spoke again through Ru- bens. He it was who not only elevated the Flemish conception, but so rejuvenated the Italian technic that it virtually became his own, and was handed down to his pupils and followers as a distin- guishing mark of Flemish art. HI It has been said that the Church was the most considerable pa- tron of art in Flanders, and that the altar-piece and wall-panel established the character of Flemish painting; but this should not be understood to mean that other forms of art were neelected. The portrait had been from the time of the Van Eycks a desideratum, and never at any time thereafter ceased to be painted. It was the one kind of painting that kept alive the native art traditions of Flanders. With this there was also a painting of landscape and genre somewhat after the style of the Dutch painters. Bril, the Breughels, Brouwer, and Teniers were its most notable represen- tatives. But all this kind of art was inconsequential as compared with the figure painting of panels and altar-pieces. The ostensible aim of the church art was, of course, to tell Bible story, to teach church tradition, to move to repentance by the examples of suffer- ing saint and Christian martyr ; but its real aim, from the painter's view-point, was to provide handsome decoration. The religious sentiment and pietistic feeling of early Italian art were no more 158 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS apparent in the Flemish painting of Rubens than in the Venetian painting of Paolo Veronese. The subject was only an excuse for the portrayal of beauties of form and color that would hold together well at a distance. In spirit, the whole work was far removed from the pietistic and the emotional. It was worldly, sensuous, splendid. For carrying power the Flemish type, large in bone and muscle, a trifle gross in fleshy development, was used with some exaggeration. The ruddiness of flesh notes, the brilliancy and sheen of silks, satins, armor, jewels, the splendors of architecture and arabesque, were all employed for gorgeousness of color and to heighten the general richness of effect. The Italian composition was freely adopted, to solidify in one piece the different groups, to give dramatic move- ment, and varied life. The light was likewise Italian — that is, con- ventional, originating in the figure rather than in the sky. The shadows were rather fragile, rarely insisted upon for mystery, never used in large masses as in Holland, and usually employed only for relief in modeling. The brush-work was remarkably facile, thin over the shadows, loaded in the lights, rarely thumbed or dragged, usually limpid and flowing. When the painter put aside the altar-piece and the religious subject to do things of a mythological, allegorical, or historical na- ture, he did not change either his mood or his treatment. He painted with a sumptuous palette whatever subject came to hand. The Medici pictures by Rubens, in the Louvre, were not conceived or executed differently from his altar-pieces. They were wall deco- rations, and were made to flame with brilliant lights and colors re- flected from gorgeous silks and glowing flesh. The decorative sense was always uppermost, without by any means reducing the work to a mere matter of sensuous form and color. There were ideas enough and to spare in the Flemish school ; but they made themselves manifest less in the pietistic or literary treatment of the subject than in the work of art as art. The Flemings were picture- makers, like the Dutch ; but on a grander and more ornamental scale. True to nature they were, but truer by far to art. A por- trait by Van Dyck is true, but hardly so realistic as a portrait by Hals ; a nude female figure by Rubens is, again, true, but it does not give so much of the actual presence as a figure by Rembrandt. The laws of picture-making, the established methods of producing grace, rhythm, subordination, unity, are more apparent in the Flem- ish work. Undoubtedly this was the result of Italian training; yet A NOTE ON FLEMISH ART I59 it should not be set down as a vice of the school. The reality of nature and the truth of its representation are two different things. Art cannot give the first ; and in giving the second, it is governed by laws that vary in proportion to the purpose and the size of the canvas. The small, realistic handling of line, light, color, texture, that might be used appropriately in a panel by Metsu, would appear absurdly insufficient in a large "Triumph of Silenos " by Jordaens. The larger the canvas, the more dependent it is upon the artifices of art. It might be thought that in working thus by rule, originality and invention would be cramped or stifled ; but such was not the case in either Italy or Flanders. What wealth of ideas, what marvels of invention, what variety of technic, the Flemings developed under rule may be seen exemplified in the works of Rubens. A whole century of painters slaved that Rubens might triumph. He was the master of the school, raised above his contemporaries by com- manding genius ; and often we are disposed to regard his brilliant presence at the expense of his supporters who made his elevation possible. It should not be forgotten that a little way below him in the scale stood the Marlowes, the Massingers, the Ben Jonsons of art, whose lights were brilliant considered by themselves, and were dim only by comparison with the splendor of this new Shakspere of the brush. We should remember, also, that the master was the complete expression, not of himself alone, but of his school, his race, his age, his country. The pictorial genius of the Flemish people made Rubens its mouthpiece ; but every painter in the land helped to form the thoughts he rounded, and the eloquence of the winged words he spoke. The triumph of the man was also the triumph of the school and of the whole Flemish people. PETER PAUL RUBENS Chapter XVIII PETER PAUL RUBENS (1577-1640) IT is not often that nature in her economy endows any one man with an undue proportion of gifts. The fairies who come showering blessings over the cradle are followed by the un- bidden elf of compensation, who mixes in an evil to qualify every good. It is rare, indeed, that there is escape from the evil presence; yet here and there in the world's history we find a man whose cra- dle, by some lucky chance, seems to have been passed over un- touched. Such a man was Rubens. About all that nature or man had to give was his. He was well born, well bred, well equipped. Physically, mentally, socially, he was the nearly perfect man. Educa- tion trained him, wealth supplied him, every one courted him, ge- nius crowned him. His personal bearing fitted him as the associate of the most noble ; his mental gifts made him the peer of the most lofty ; his creative energy made him the equal of the most active. Honor, rank, fame, happiness were bestowed upon him. In addi- tion, he was favored by coming to power early, and by passing away while that power was at its height. He never knew decay. The light was suddenly extinguished when its flame was at its brightest, and the European world was acclaiming its splendor. All told, the life was as well-rounded and complete as any in human biography. Looking back at it to-day, it seems to us a model of sound thinking, forceful action, brilliant living, and proper dying. The well-proportioned character of Rubens, like a Greek profile, is difficult to epitomize, since there is no protruding feature about it. The striking quality of it is not symmetry or outline, but radi- ance. The splendor of the man is bewildering, dazzling, overpow- i6j 164 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS ering. It seems peculiar to himself, and yet it was, in measure, the result of the age and the circumstances out of which he grew. It will be remembered that he came at the beginning of the baroque seventeenth century. It was a time of exaggerated display in all phases of life ; and Flanders, like Italy, was feeling the influence of the Counter- Reformation. The Church was putting forth all the allurements of ceremony, embellishment, and processional pomp, to make religion attractive. It will be remembered that Rubens was a son of the Church, though his father had Protestant leanings ; and that his elementary education was given by Jesuit teachers at Ant- werp. At twelve he was a student of painting under Verhaeght, whose influence upon him was apparently slight. He afterward studied with Van Noort and Van Veen, spending in all about ten years of apprenticeship in Antwerp studios. His last two masters helped in the formation of his thought as well as his technic. Van Noort was thoroughly Flemish, and quite original, in coarse, strong types, brilliant colors, and flashy lights. He was of the soil, with a stubborn individuality and a Flemish assertiveness that undoubtedly left a trace upon Rubens, for we feel these qualities in the pupil. The last four years of his apprenticeship were spent under Van Veen, who was almost the opposite of Van Noort. The Flemish spirit in him was subservient to Italian culture. He had been a student in Italy, and had learned there Italian composition, with such qualities as moderation, selection, delicacy. The teachings that the two different masters stood for were united, amalgamated, blended in Rubens. The spirit of his art was based in Flemish na- ture, it was inspired by Flemish feeling, it revealed the Flemish point of view, and it was emblematic of the Flemish national life in the seventeenth century; but its structural parts — its composition, light, color, and brilliant ornament — were brought up from Italy. At twenty-three, Rubens went to Italy to study the art of that country at first hand. What his work was before this time we have slight means of ascertaining ; but after the Italian experience, his pictures speak the influences that finally molded his style. We do not know what schools or masters in Italy he liked the best, or what features he assimilated, save from his pictures ; and even in these his borrowings are so fused and transmuted by his own con- ceptions that they are but faintly recognizable. He must have liked Tintoretto's invention and his dramatic action, for he gives us remi- niscences of them occasionally ; and Paolo Veronese doubtless ap- "HELEN FOURiMEiNT AM) HKR CHILDREN," BV RUUENS. I.OUVKE, r.MJIS. PETER PAUL RUBENS 165 pealed to him in color schemes and ornamental accessories. At Mantua, where Rubens stopped for several years, Giulio Romano's giant figures in the old palace must have been studied ; for some of their exaggeration shows in the Flemish painter. Raphael and Michael Angelo left no perceptible trace upon him ; but a follower of Correggio, Baroccio, evidently influenced him greatly in color (particularly flesh color) and in facile handling. During his Italian sojourn, he went once to Spain, and, some time alter his return to Antwerp, in 1608, he made trips to France, Spain, and England; but no painter in those lands, not even Velasquez, seems to have attracted him in any way. In 1608 his style was established. He was himself; and though he never ceased to develop and expand during his life, there was no further change. Such an education upon a man of genius could have but one ef- fect. Where his predecessors of weaker mind were confused by the ramifications of Italian art, Rubens saw clearly ; where they fell into a rigid imitation of first one man and then another, Rubens stood up and asserted his own view ; where they lost the little individu- ality they possessed, Rubens held fast to his own, but gained valu- able lessons from the doings of others. He learned how to voice Flemish thought in graceful language. It was all that he required ; for in isictorial conceptions his brain was always teeming, and he had no need to visit Italy for ideas. When he returned to Antwerp his ability was already known ; the Church and the court were ready for him with countless orders for altar-pieces and decorative panels ; and he at once took the commanding place at the head of the Flemish school. For thirty years he held this place, and then died full of honors, leaving no great successor. He still stands in history to-day the one great master of the Flemish school. It cannot be thought that any painter for the Church in the sev- enteenth century, no matter what his genius, could be quite so soul- ful, or full of earnest piety, or so simple in faith and character, as one in the fifteenth century. The Renaissance had passed with the Reformation, and simplicity had been succeeded by the affectation and the factitious splendor of the Catholic Reaction. The religious subject under the late Venetians had run into gorgeous pageantry in which religious sentiment was not attempted; under the Man- nerists and the Eclectics, canvases expanded, compositions were crowded, colors were heightened, ornament overran all, but again the religious sentiment was lacking. This affected Flanders ; l66 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS it affected Rubens. It was the spirit of the time, and Rubens could neither avoid it nor change it. x*\ll he could do was to paint it ; and that he did. Hence we should not be disappointed to find his great Church canvases lacking in spiritual significance. The pietistic painter was dead; the ornate decorator lived in his place. Space had to be filled brilliantly, and the subject chosen or given did not influence the painter's palette. The " Road to Calvary," the " Elevation of the Cross," the " Crucifixion," the " Descent," were just as gorgeous in coloring as the "Adoration," the "Mirac- ulous Draught," the " Marriage in Cana." The sentiment of the subject was not complemented by the coloring. Life or death, plea- sure or pain, shame or glory, were, in the hands of Rubens, triumphs of decorative splendor. A flower-like radiance was omnipresent ; and at times this became glittering, flamboyant, bizarre. The painter's disposition was one of great calmness, but the taste of the age kept pushing him to the verge of the extravagant. Through haste he occasionally fell into the theatrical in his great contorted groups, or he was obscure in his literary allegories, or, again, he was tinsel-like in color or texture. He had an optimistic Shak- sperian mind full of exact knowledge, almost exhaustless in resource, bubbling over with imagination, reflective of sublimity, grandeur, and power ; yet when strained to its utmost it flagged, grew weary, and caught at the grandiloquent rather than the grand. He had a hand supremely skilled that could realize the truth of anything upon which it was set to work, one of the most adroit and facile hands in all art history ; yet sometimes that, too, grew weary, and ran to volubility and ineffectual bombast. It could not be otherwise. No human being could produce the upwards of two thousand canvases he has left us, without showing inequality in the results. The mar- vel is, and always will be, how he did so much, and did it so well. For he painted all subjects for all peoples — altar-pieces and ceilings to please the Church, allegories to please the court, por- traits to please the individual, landscapes, animals, still-life to please himself In each of these he was Rubens, the master-painter, the man who knew how to bend everything to his genius for splendor. His imagination often rose to great heights, his sentiment in mat- ters artistic, such as color, was often deep, his feeling as a painter was remarkable at times in its tenderness ; but these, again, gave way before his habitual mood of mind, that conceived life in majes- tic, Olympian proportions, and hued it with a rainbow glory. It PETER PAUL RUBENS 167 mattered little whether he painted the religious, the historical, or the allegorical. His subjects, as we study them to-day, seem of slight importance ; we are spell-bound and made captives by his great wealth of material, his prodigality of splendor. The large canvas was his preference, and he did not hesitate to say that he thought it best fitted to his talent. It gave him opportunity to ring the whole color-gamut into one magnificent harmony. His smaller easel-pictures were less effective, because more subdued. The por- trait gave even less opportunity for display, and he seems to have cared not too much about it ; notwithstanding his work in this de- partment may justly rank with that of Titian and Velasquez. Ani- mals, especially the horse and the dog, he pictured with a love for their truth of character ; and even where he introduced them in large decorative canvases, they were painted with exceptional care. His landscapes were again the output of a clear eye and a sure hand, sincere in spirit, noble in conception, strong in substance — things done evidently for his own pleasure. Whatever subject he touched made response to his genius; but a man of his colossal mind could appear at his best only in the vast composition and the resplendent color-scheme. They were as much of a necessity to him as the single figure was to Rembrandt. The type of the human form that Rubens employed was neither Greek nor Italian. It was derived from Flanders, but enlarged and ennobled to Titanic proportions, that it might be in keeping with the size and carrying power of his compositions. At times, it was gross in bone, muscle, and flesh, heavy in weight, bulky in mass ; but not ungraceful in line, nor unreal in character. In the drawing of it he was often faulty, or, at the least, the fault is laid at his door, though it is reasonable to believe that it belonged to his pupils. It is well known that Rubens sketched his larger works, but that his pupils enlarged them from the sketches, carried them to a certain point, and then the master applied the finishing touches. One is loath to believe that Rubens could do anything amiss, though he might palliate or overlook an error in a pupil. Certainly the works that seem done entirely by his hand leave nothing to be desired in the matter of drawing. The composition was always the mas- ter's own, and in it we meet with wonderful fertility and inventive power. A new arrangement seems apparent in each new picture. He did not hold to any one formula. All the design of Italy he seemed to know, and he turned it to profit without copying or imi- l68 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS tating. The " Descent from the Cross " has long been declared to be a derivation from Volterra's picture, and Rubens freely acknow- ledged it ; but this was about his only palpable appropriation. Whether or not he studied Signorelli at Orvieto is not known ; but he certainly must have seen the Tintorettos at S. Madonna dell' Orto, and elsewhere in Venice, for he used Tintoretto's diagonal composition in the "Fall of the Damned," the "Elevation of the Cross," the " Road to Calvary," and in other pictures. Moreover, there is a dramatic action about Rubens's pictures, a fling, and surge, and tumult of figures, that remind us again of Tintoretto in San Rocco, and Giulio Romano at Mantua. When painting calmer pictures, Paolo Veronese seems to have given him an idea of dig- nified grouping and appropriate balances. These were, however, only influences. He had invention enough of his own ; and the majority of his canvases are of his individual construction. It is impossible to think of any one but Rubens conceiving them or putting them together. In illumination he followed the ordinary method of lighting the large canvas — that is, not by light from the sky, but from the picture itself This lighting enabled him to keep a whole vast canvas in a gay, brilliant key, which was precisely what he desired. Shadow he used mainly as a means of modeling and relieving figures, one against another. The mystery of half-hidden notes, as exemplified by the Dutch, was something for which he did not strive. There is no mystery in his work. He gained depth of shadow by thin, transparent glazes over a white ground. All his darks were thinly laid, that he might gain light from the background by transmission ; whereas his lights were the reverse of this. He loaded with opaque pigments like white, and won his high lights by reflection. This was a simple enough process ; and Rubens was simple in his means, notwithstanding his results look complex in their variety. The word simplicity applies even to his color, ornate as it appears. It has no great subtlety or shrewdness about it. His harmonies were attained by using colors pleasing in themselves, and by keeping them in perfect tone. In this he was not confused by shadow masses. He struck a high pitch and held to it throughout the whole picture, placing primary colors in such elementary appositions that we often wonder at the result obtained with such means. He doubtless un- derstood complementary colors and the effect of optical mixture, for he relied upon them at times ; but his usual method was a more TH1-: "CHAPEAU DK FAILLE," CY RUBENS. NATIONAL t.ALLEKV. LONDON. PETER PAUL RUBENS 1 69 direct adjustment, with dependence upon contrast or accord. The intense brilHancy of his colors was a forceful adjunct of his art, for it gave sharp resonance to the whole. His flesh-color, alone, baf- fled every one of his pupils and imitators ; and his pictures may be told from those of his workshop by this one feature. His golds and yellows are superb in their light, used as a relief to the carmines of the faces ; and the reds of his draperies and costumes are astonish- ing in their depth and radiance. The Medici pictures in the Louvre are just now considered fair game for adverse criticism, because it is thought they were painted almost wholly by Rubens's pupils. Some of them undoubtedly were, but some of them were not. The " Coronation of Marie de Medici," especially the group of the queen and her maids of honor, is worthy of any master of any age; and for richness of color there is nothing better in art than the " Birth of Louis XIIL" Let the visitor take the golds and reds in the last- named picture, or the red in the small-clothes of the Dauphin in the picture hanging to the right of it, the " Henry IV. Confiding the Government to the Queen," and try to find their equal in any other picture by any other master, ancient or modern, in the Louvre : and some idea of Rubens's great excellence in color quality will be at- tained. Color was his supreme feature, and his prodigal use of it only intensifies the feeling of his complete mastery over it. Flesh- color, for example, is usually regarded by painters as something precious — something to be set off and made to shine by surround- ing costume. Rubens was about the only painter so full-handed in means that he could afford to place flesh against flesh. He seemed at times recklessly extravagant, a man throwing away opportune effects, but his wealth of resource was so great that he lavished freely and yet never seemed to want. The impression that we first gain from the work of Rubens is that the painter was headlong, impulsive, furious, passionate — something like a union of Tintoretto and Frans Hals — but nothincr could be more erroneous. There never was a painter who made impulse so subservient to principle. He was the deliberate artist in every movement, and could simulate a passion or extemporize a fury without, apparently, a particle of either in himself The fire and fury of his subject never disturbed the temperance of his exe- cution. Everything was coolly calculated in his arrangement, his drawing, his coloring. He did nothing by mood, nothing by dash, nothing by accident. He knew what was to be done beforehand. 170 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS and he did it with the greatest ease and calmness, as though it were merely a juggler's trick. Perhaps no one feature so leads the young student astray as the brush-work of Rubens. Here, he thinks, is the improviser, the man who strikes at white heat, the painter who dashes forward with impetuous freedom. His work, at first, cer- tainly looks to be unpremeditated ; but a closer study shows delib- eration and calculation again. The long sweep is deceptive ; its appearance of spontaneity is the result of training. Rubens knew pigments and brushes by heart. His hand was so thoroughly trained that he could almost model, draw, light, and color with a single stroke. It was not quick-flashing genius that told him how to act ; it was years of experience. He thought out everything in his sketch ; then, when his pupils had brought the enlarged work almost to completion, the master came in to give the finish. His whole power was thrown on the manipulation of the brush. And that power was something phenomenal. He did not load, or stip- ple, or model in little hillocks of paint ; he allowed his brush to slip thinly, smoothly, flowingly. The only places where he permitted the pigment to thicken or drag were over the high lights. This smoothness in Rubens has often been held up by modern lovers of paint for paint's sake as a sign of weakness, a want of solidity ; but if it be considered that Rubens wished to preserve freshness and brilliancy in his colors, and that the real power of his art lay in color splendor, the wisdom of his method will not be questioned. There was no weakness in the man's art, least of all in his brush- work. There never was a more graceful, facile, powerful touch than his ; and in this respect alone the world will see another Ve- lasquez and another Hals before it will see another Rubens. The pictures of Rubens present no marked changes in style cor- responding to periods of mental development. His clear intellectu- ality early discovered the right pathway for his genius to travel, and his whole life was a development along that pathway. As he grew more mature, he became more eloquent in technic, more delib- erate in animated themes ; but there was no decided change, and never a sign of decline or decay. His work is far from being all of an equal quality. That is due to the fact that Rubens maintained a studio of such proportions that it might not unjustly be called a picture factory. He had many pupils, and more orders than he could supply. Like Raphael, he probably often contented himself with designing, leaving his pupils to execute. Of the hundreds of PETER PAUL RUBENS 171 pictures passing under his name, many are by his own hand, many are the products of his workshop, some are retouched by him, some are entirely by pupils, and some are repainted beyond all recogni- tion. If we study him in the works wholly of his own painting we shall find him a thinker of great intellectuality, great imagination, great versatility ; an artist of prodigious capacity and knowledge ; a colorist of vast range, sensitiveness, and brilliancy; a brushman of consummate culture and infinite power. His pictures seem to con- tain all that is pictorial in the artistic mind, and all that is skilful in the painter's craft. If, however, it were possible to pronounce the secret of their power over us in one word, that word would be "splendor." It seems to be the only word that fittingly describes the life of the man and the art of the painter. NOTES BY THE ENGRAVER PETER PAUL RUBENS was bom on the 29th of June, 1577 — the fes- tival of SS. Peter and Paul — at the little town of Siegen, in Westphalia, to which place his father, John Rubens — a magis- trate of Antwerp — had been relegated in consequence of an offense he had com- mitted against the Prince of Orange. When young Rubens was a year old his parents removed to Cologne, where they remained for nine years, and where his father died. His mother then returned with her son to Antwerp, where she at- tended carefully to his education. He became versed in the classics and in Lat- in, and besides his mother-tongue he spoke French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish. His mother intended him for the law, but as he evinced an early pas- sion for art he was suffered to pursue that course. It is known that he had three instructors in art — that he began his stud- ies under Tobias Verhaegt, a well-known landscape painter, continuing them with Adam van Noort for the space of four years, and ending them with Otto van Veen (Otho Voenius). At twenty-three he departed for Italy, to study the great masters. In the service of Duke Vincenzo Gonzago of Mantua, an enthusiastic patron of the fine arts, he vis- ited Venice, Florence, Rome, and Genoa, copying important works. The Duke, dis- covering the variety and richness of his talents and having an eye to the beauty of his person and the elegance of his man- ners, sent him on a diplomatic mission to the court of Spain. At Spain he met Ve- lasquez, with whom he continued a cor- respondence of letters. He remained eight years in Italy, being summoned hastily to Antwerp by the illness of his mother, who died before he reached home. Here he was induced to remain by the Archduke Albert, who appointed him his court painter. He founded a school at Antwerp which became crowded with pu- pils, his most famous scholars being Van Dyck,Jordaens,Snyders,Diepenbeck,Van Thulden,Zegers,and Quellinus. This was in 1609, and he was thirty-two years old. His fame became such that his works and his society were contended for by princes and monarchs. He married his 172 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS first wife, Isabella Brandt, in 16 10, and built himself a magnificent house, paint- ing it within and without. The Duke of Buckingham saw and coveted it. Rubens sold it to the Duke for ten times its orig- inal cost. At Antwerp Rubens led an un- commonly active life. As he himself assures us, while in the service of the Re- gent Albrecht and his consort Isabella, he had one foot always in the stirrup, making repeated trips to London, Paris, and Ma- drid, and devoting as much of his time to politics as to art. He performed impor- tant services as ambassador to Spain and England. Marie de Medici, Queen of France, invited him to her court, and he celebrated her life in a series of great works now to be seen in the Louvre at Paris. Rubens was knighted by Philip IV. of Spain and by Charles I. of Eng- land, who, in addition to other favors, gave him his own sword and a gold chain, which the painter wore ever afterward. In 1 630, after the death of his first wife, he married one of the richest and most beau- tiful girls in all Flanders — Helen Four- ment, then only sixteen years of age. In 1632, pending negotiations between Bel- gium and Holland, Rubens was in the latter country, and visited the workshops of many of its most famous painters. It is matter of astonishment, as Vosmaer says, that there exists no trace of any relations between him and Rembrandt, who was then famous, having painted his "Anatomical Lesson," and many other important works. And it is also singular that in the inventory of Rubens's works after his death, among his many pictures of various schools, the name of Rembrandt is conspicuously absent. Notsowith Rem- brandt, however, who possessed many engravings after Rubens's works, choice impressions before the lettering. Rubens died in 1 640, possessed of immense wealth, after a career marked by all the distinc- tions that fame and universal admiration could bestow,accorded to him in the triple character of painter, diplomatist, and man. He was buried with extraordinary pomp in the church of St. Jacques, at Antwerp, where over his tomb is placed one of his most charming works — a picture of St. George; a work wholly formed, as tra- dition says, of the portraits of members of his family. Side by side in it are his two wives, then his daughters, his niece, the celebrated girl of the " Chapeau de Paille," his father, his grandfather, and finally his younger son, under the features of an angel, certainly one of the most adorable children he ever painted. Ru- bens himself figures there as St. George in shining armor, holding in his hand the banner of St. George. Rubens was an almost universal genius in his art, and has left a vast number of canvases dealing with every kind of sub- ject. He painted pictures sacred and secular, studies of animals and men, por- traits of men and women, charming pieces treating wholly of children, grand histor- ical and mythological works, and fine landscapes. His works are scattered all over Europe, but possibly the best idea of his range and versatility is conveyed by the collection in the gallery of the Pina- kothek, at Munich, where there are many examples of him. In his time, over 1200 engravings were made from his pictures. The " Descent from the Cross," in the Cathedral of Antwerp, is generally con- ceded to be his masterpiece. This, with the " Elevation of the Cross " in the same cathedral, are two magnificent examples of the genius of the painter that must be seen before one can obtain a judicious estimate of his powers. If we are accus- tomed, from the numerous historical and mythological works of Rubens scattered all over Europe, to regard him in the light of a boisterous deity, of tremendous dash and fire, in the cool precincts of the Ant- werp Cathedral we obtain an opposite view of his character and behold him wise, religious, and restrained. These works were painted shortly after his arrival in Italy, and while he was yet imbued with TCi^u uruscsi; rcb.js$i "PORTRAIT OF JACOUELINK I)E CORDES," liV RTBEXS. BRUSSELS MUSEUM. PETER PAUL RUBENS 173 the Italian spirit. The " Descent from the Cross " is a touching and impressive work, profound and tender in sentiment. The Saviour is being lowered from the cross into the arms of loving friends, by means of a winding-sheet. The value of the naked body against the sheet, and this in full light and relieved against a dark sky, is one of the most striking and effective things in art. The draperies of the others, in their rich and varied color- ing, are all subdued to the faintest note, so that the faces come out with wonder- ful relief, and the eye naturally dwells upon the various emotions depicted in each, from the weeping countenance of the Vir- gin, pale as the body of her son, to the visage of the dead Lord calm in the repose of death, and finally to the lovely features of the Magdalene, whose bloom of health and youth, emphasizing the pallor of death, is the culminating note of color in the whole. I could not understand why the best photographs and engravings I had seen of this work should all be so hard and ill-drawn, and so utterly void of the ten- der values and the floating atmospheric quality of the original, but the reason was evident enough when in the museum of Antwerp I saw what purports to be an original sketch by Rubens for the great work, and was informed by the custodian that all the photographs and engravings are executed from this poor thing, which bears the unequivocal marks of a copy, and a laborious and heavy copy at that. But being a bright and hard thing, it pho- tographs and engraves well, and makes an attractive and marketable object for a shop-window. The sketches in oil by Rubens are the most delightful things imaginable ; being executed in thin glazings, or frotted in upon some warm ground, they have an airy and dreamily suggestive character ; or else, if painted more solidly, they have a light and spirited touch and are charged with energy of character, as in his mar- velous study of some negroes' heads to be seen in the Museum at Brussels. An admirable example of his first stage of procedure in the painting of a picture is the sketch of the portrait of his second wife — Helen Fourment — with her two children, to be seen in the Louvre. The heads are the most finished portions. How charming in sentiment it is ! The young mother, not more than twenty — for she was married at sixteen — is dreaming in bliss over her first son. The boy evidently is the occasion of the picture, which gives expression to the old feeling which exists among parents to the present day in Ger- many and Flanders, of doting upon the boy, but relegating the girl to the back- ground of their regard. I like the natural innocence and unconsciousness of this little girl, coming in upon the scene with her apron filled possibly with flowers, as opposed to the decidedly conscious air of the boy, who already seems aware of the superior estimation in which he is regarded. He holds a dove by a silken cord in one hand and a perch in the other. This little fellow, of whom Rubens painted other portraits, in time succeeded his father as secretary of the State of Flanders. His name was Albert Rubens. The portrait known as the " Chapeau de Faille," in the National Gallery of London, is that of a young lady in a black bodice with red sleeves, and a black Span- ish beaver or felt hat. It is life size. How it came to be called the " Chapeau de Faille," is not known, since it does not re- semble a straw hat. It is supposed that its present title is a corruption of chapeau iVEspague, or chapeau de poil. The por- trait is said to be that of Mile, de Lunden, whom Rubens was once upon the point of marrying. The blending of a strong reflected light with a direct hght gives a pleasing transparent illumination to the features, which are powerfully offset by the black hat and dress. Nothing could be more strikingly effective. The portrait of the wife of Cordes, in 174 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS the Museum of Brussels, is another life- size bust. Though of a more serious or- der, it is none the less effective as a pic- ture. What could be more stylish and telling than this black satin dress illu- minated by cream-colored puffs and sur- mounted by a splendid display of lace and glittering jewelry against a gray back- ground? This sumptuous display and love of sensuous beauty are never want- ing in the works of Rubens. T. C. ANTHONY VAN DYCK Chapter XIX ANTHONY VAN DYCK (1599-1641) FROMENTiN, to whom wc are all indebted for his excellent ap- preciations of the Dutch and Flemish masters, describes Van Dyck at the end of his career as one feted, courted, ennobled, talented, luxurious, charming, dissipated, reckless, — "a Prince of Wales dying upon his accession to the throne who was by no means fitted to reign." The description is worth quoting to emphasize what Fromentin intimates, but does not directly say — namely, that Van Dyck never was a king in art. Rubens, Titian, Velasquez wore the purple and the crown ; but Van Dyck, though of royal race, a prince of the blood and standing near the throne, never came to occupy it. This was not because he died at forty- two (Raphael and Giorgione died younger) but because he was not "fitted to reign." He had not the genius or the originality that should entitle him to the supreme place. He held high rank surely ; but not the highest rank. What Van Dyck would have been without Rubens for a master, is an unprofitable query often propounded. Suffice it to say that he was the best and most favored pupil of Rubens, and followed him as closely as he could ; not by servilely imitating him, but by deriving from him type, style, inspiration, and mental stimulus. His artistic education in Flanders was of the best, his travel and study in Italy were like that of his master and productive of similar results, while his worldly success was again quite of a piece with that of his great predecessor. With similar tastes and views, he was a younger and a weaker brother of Rubens without by any means being a weak man. Nature never originally gave him the =3 lyS OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS elder's creative power, his versatility, his great range, his superb strength. The blood and bones, the robust life and energy, the brilliant color and technical grasp of the master vi^ere transmitted to the pupil in semblance more than in substance. One is made to feel in Van Dyck something of Rubens ; but Rubens slightly atten- uated, lacking in body, wanting in scope. Nature, however, com- pensated the pupil, in measure, by giving him more than his master of sensitiveness, distinction, and charm. Coming nearly twenty years after, he was enabled to refine the Rubens type, modify vio- lent action in groups, and bring deeper meaning to the human face through delicacy of modeling and clearness in outline. Rubens was the first to throw out the perfected Flemish idea, and he did it with youthful vigor ; Van Dyck came after, to refine and ennoble it as reofards the human countenance at least. That in doing- so he often paid heed to fashionable caprice and painted nobility to look more noble than it really was, that he flattered his sitters, and often gew- gawed his art to make it attractive to the mob, only proves that he caught from his master the passion for high living and worldly suc- cess, and consequently sacrificed art at times to picture-making. Rubens's picture factory at Antwerp was not the best training- school for the painter who would live for art alone. Van Dyck was remarkable, even among painters, for his early development. At ten he was a student of art ; at nineteen he was a graduate, having been elected a member of St. Luke's Guild, at Antwerp. He was still, however, under Rubens's guidance, and by his advice he set out for Italy at twenty-three to complete his education by studying the great masters, as was the wont of the time. The Venetian influence made its appearance in his art al- most immediately after his arrival in Italy, though it did not, any more than in the case of Rubens, override his individuality. He fancied Titian and Tintoretto, and his pictures painted while at Genoa — in whatsis called his "Genoese style" — show that he deepened hiscpLqnng^nd^fojro^d his_compjDsrt their example. Possibly, also, Correggio's type of the Magdalene pleased him, but no other Italian painter seemed to allure him, though he was in Rome and elsewhere in Italy for some years. In 1628 he returned to Antwerp, and his art, again, put on a Flemish look, with an admixture of Italian elegance in composition and color. Finally, he went to live at the court of Charles I., in Eng- land. There he grew conventional in composition (he had been T-COLt jt pAfj: 'PORTRAIT OF A LADV AND HER DAUGHTER/' BV VAN DVCK. LOUVKE, PAKiS. ANTHONY VAN DYCK 1 79 leaning that way for a long time), his brush-work and drawing be- came hurried and sketchy, and he seemed less careful in his choice and use of materials. Toward the last, carelessness went far to undermine his art, as dissipation his body. Reckless living finally broke him down, and he died at forty-two, leaving behind him a great reputation, a host of mourning friends, and nearly a thousand pictures. His subjects were substantially those of all the Flemish painters of his time. He painted sacred scenes for the Church, allegorical and historical pieces for courts, and portraits for the tenants of courts. He painted all figure subjects ; but his great reputation was chiefly founded on his portrait painting, and it is as a portrait painter that he is known to us to-day. This special branch of painting he early adopted on the advice of Rubens ; and it seems to have been good advice, though Sir Joshua regretted that he did not devote himself to history painting, thinking that he might have excelled in that department. He certainly executed some admirable altar- pieces, besides many of an indifferent quality ; but Rubens had gone before him in that field, and had said about all that Flanders was capable of saying. On the other hand, Rubens had been somewhat jjidifferentio portraiture, and Van Dyck had the oppor- tunity of making this department quite his own. He was gifted withi n eye that s aw: the elevated in the^ human presence, and in portraiture he conceived the id^a^of adding to this elevation the brlllTant coloring of Ruben s and the, Venetians. __This was a new departure, for the portrait up to that time had been usually re- gardecTas something to be done in sober hues ; though men like Bordone ami Baroccio had made brilliant innovations that may have attracted Van Dyck's notice while in Italy. At any rate, he put into practice the idea of not only painting i portrait, but of adding to it brilliant decorative color and making of it a picture. This, in the seventeenth century, was a happy conceit, and the result was an almost instantaneous success. Nobility liked the idea of being handed down to posterity in stately pose and glowing color; and Van Dyck soon found that the orders for portraits outran the orders for altar-pieces. Thus, partly by inclination and partly by circumstances (for he always had an empty pocket), he became a most famous painter of portraits. Nevertheless, Sir Joshua was quite right in his appreciation of Van Dyck's historical pieces. He was a painter of mark in any and all departments ; and if we of l8o OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS to-day are less impressed with liis excellence in large composed groups than in portraits, it may be owing to the nearness of Ru- bens. The latter's splendor eclipsed every light in the Flemish school. In composition, Van Dyck had a faculty for borrowing wherever he could, and wherever he was compelled to invent, he invented. He helped himself to Rubens in Flanders, and to the Venetians in Italy. One of his best works, the "Mocking of Christ," at Berlin, was evidently inspired by a Titian of the same subject now in the Louvre; and the " Madonna of the Donors," shown in Mr. Cole's illustration, is somehow a reminder of the left portion of Tintoret- to's "Marriage of St. Catherine," in the Ducal Palace at Venice, though the lines and groups are changed. He borrowed, he added to, he recreated, and that in art is called originality. In the com- pleted picture there was something of formality in the poses, a little of the academic in the contrasts, and no great inspiration to be ob- served anywhere. The surprises one meets with in Rubens are lacking in Van Dyck. He was limited in inventive power as com- pared with his master. Yet, when it came to the portrayal of the single figure, he rose to a lofty height; though he was not always free from errors caused by haste, or possibly by lack of skill in his assistants. He was usually beautifully clear in outline ; and in the modeling of the forehead, the eyes, the nose, — especially the deli- cate modeling of the nose, — the chin, and the side of the jaw, he was superb. It was just here that he showed his great ability ; and there is no better example of it than the " Portrait of Richardot and his Son," shown in the accompanying engraving. The head and face of the man are absolutely fine and above all reproach. There is, however, one head attributed to Van Dyck which is superior to this of Richardot — in fact, taking it for all and all, it is the most power- fully drawn and modeled head in all portraiture. I refer to the "Portrait of Cornelius van der Geest"in the National Gallery, London. The knowledge of bone structure shown in the skull ; the drawing of the eyes, the nose, the mouth ; the modeling of the side of the jaw from the ear to the chin, are perfection. The simplicity, the certainty, the power of it are at once convincing and astound- ing. Nothing could be finer or nobler, truer as a representation of nature, or greater as pure art. But did Van Dyck paint it? It would seem impossible. It has not his touch, save in the costume ; and the hand that did the costume was a different one from the 'THE MADONNA OF THE DONORS," BV VAN DYCK. I.onVRE, TAKIS ANTHONY VAN DYCK l8l hand that did the head. The picture is painted upon wood ; the head is painted upon another substance, and is inserted in the wood. Did Rubens paint the head, and Van Dyck, then a pupil under him, paint the dress ? It is possible ; but the handling of the head is, again, not the handling of Rubens. The picture, as re- gards the painter of it, has always proved a puzzle; and one inva- riably ends by asking: If Van Dyck did not do it, who did do it? It lies between the master and the pupil. No other Flemish painter could have reached up to it ; and Van Dyck could have done it only in a burst of inspiration which is apparent in no other known work of his hand. In the Dresden Gallery the early drawing, composition, and flesh-coloring of Van Dyck are brought into sharp contrast with the early work of Rubens by two pictures placed side by side. The subject of both of them is "St. Jerome in the Wilderness"; both pictures are the same in size, composition, and color scheme. The comparison cannot be avoided, placed as the pictures are ; and it results not too happily for Van Dyck. The drawing of the pupil is harsher, the modeling more violent and less effective, the color hotter and less luminous. The remark was ventured, some pages back, that no pupil of Rubens ever attained the master's flesh- coloring ; and here is the proof of it in Rubens's best pupil. As compared with the master's work, his flesh is apoplectic, blistered, saturated with blood at the surface. All of Van Dyck's figure-pictures were inclined to undue warmth in the flesh. They likened Jordaens more than Rubens. After his Italian experience he grew hot in robes and in shadows, following with some exag- geration the warmth of Titian and Tintoretto. By way of relief he often put in masses of blue and other cool colors, with some sharp- ness of contrast ; or he led the eye away from the main issue by sparkles and dashes of light and color on jewelry, embroidery, gold braids, rich garments. This became characteristic of his portraits as of his figure-pieces. Depth, warmth, and brilliancy in robe and costume, with architectural columns, looped-up draperies, and pala- tial furnishings, continued to show in his portraits from his Italian days to the end of his career. A late example of this is the " Por- trait of Charles I." — the full-length fimire standing near a horse in the Salle Carre of the Louvre. It is an attractive piece of color, barring the uncomfortable heat in the face of the attendant holding the horse, and is perhaps one of his most successful combinations l82 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS of the portrait and the picture. The composition, the drawing, the textures, the trees and sky, the horse, all go to the making of as fine a pictured portrait as any Fleming ever produced. Van Dyck's handling was easy and rapid, after the style of Ru- bens ; but never so effective, never so positive. He could drag broken whites about a forehead, or down a nose, or along a jaw, with great skill and much facility ; but his brush was never very pronounced. The loading is slight; he evidently did not wish it to be obtrusive. Vigor of touch was not quite in keeping with his delicacy of drawing and modeling ; and he had no idea of shocking the taste of his sitters by too much evidence of the painter. Even in costumes he was smooth and somewhat shallow in pigment, anxious enough to gain a textural surface, but not disposed toward heavy impasto or thickness in modeling. Tradition tells us of the great care he took in preparing his grounds, in choosing pigments, and in the use of lights and shadows after the Rubens teaching. Doubtless this was true of his early work ; but later on, when suc- cess came to him, he grew less careful, used a good deal of black, and painted flesh over dark grounds in such a way that many of his pictures have darkened in the heads and hands, and become opaque in the shadows. The left hand of the Child in the " Ma- donna of the Donors," looks at present as though covered with coal soot ; and those of the kneeling figures are quite as bad. Whether he used bitumen or not is unknown, but some disintegrat- ing pigment has worked through many of his canvases and made their repainting necessary. I find written from year to year on the margins of my Munich catalogues, beside the titles of the Van Dycks, the words "ruined," "repainted," "black," "totally gone." Haste, bad pigments, and modern restorations, have played sad havoc with many of his works, despite all his accredited care about grounds, oils, and varnishes. He left many pictures of varying merit, some of them superb, some merely good, some very indifferent through carelessness. Of pupils he had almost as many as Rubens, but he left no school. His art, however, was studied by painters who came after him; and his portraiture was the chief model of the English painters Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence, and others. It was not a bad model, save as the brilliant is always more misleading with follow- ers than the plain, the simple, and the true. Van Dyck's art was brilliant beyond (juestion ; though, oftentimes, in giving that quality PORTRAIT OK RKTIARDOT AND HIS SON," liV VAN DVCK. LOl'VRE. PARIS. ANTHONY VAN DYCK 183 he sacrificed something of sincerity and candor. The artificial in his pose and aristocratic bearing, the use of genteel hands for all characters, the grandiose elegance of his accessory objects, finally became mannerisms with him, but never disagreeable ones. We feel that the painter was often less free-spoken about the facts than he might have been ; but we also feel that with all his convention- ality and affectation he was a great painter — a prince of the royal blood, if not a king, in art. NOTES BY THE ENGRAVER VAN DYCK was born at Antwerp, in 1599, of well-to-do parents. His mother was celebrated for a rare degree of skill in embroidery, and her love and sympathy guided the artist's infancy, which manifested itself in a precocious genius for art. She died when he was only eight years old, but his father made careful pro- vision for the continuance of his artistic studies, and placed him, at the age of ten years, with Hendrik van Balen, a histor- ical painter of great merit, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen he passed to the studio of Rubens, where he became this master's first and favorite pupil. Here his progress was so rapid that in 1618 he was enrolled as a master in the registers of the Guikl of Saint Luke — an honor unprecedented in the case of a painter who had not yet completed his nineteenth year. Rubens now advised him to go to Italy and com- plete his education by the study of the great Italian masters, and, furthermore, to make portraiture his special vocation. But as his pictures were attracting atten- tion far and wide, he was induced to ac- cept an invitation to visit the English court of James I., which he did in 1620, when only twenty-one years old. The death of his father, however, among other events, brought him back to Antwerp in 1623, and immediately after his father's burial he resolved to depart for Italy, as Rubens had advised. At Venice, his first stopping-place, his time was assiduously occupied in studying and copying the works of Titian, Giorgione, Veronese, etc., and his sketch-books remain to attest the severity of his self-discipline, being crowded with memoranda from the trea- sures of Venetian galleries. Some idea of the marvelous rapidity of his brush is given in the fact that, proceeding to Ge- noa in this same year, 1623, and finding himself inundated with commissions from the nobility, who actually competed for the honor of sitting to him, he here com- pleted portraits of the illustrious scions of the houses of Balbi, Spinola, Raggi, Palla- vicino, Brignole, Durazzo, — two of which were equestrian portraits, — besides paint- ing a few classical and sacred pictures, upward of a dozen important works, which are still the pride of the Genoese galle- ries, and before the year was ended had left the city for Rome. And this is not counting two religious works which upon his outset he executed for the parish church of Saventhem, not far from Brussels, and which are considered remarkably fine ex- amples of his early style. At Rome he stayed two years, was the guest of Cardi- nal Bentivoglio, and had commissions from the Pope and many of the noble famiHes. His portrait of the cardinal, now in the Pitti Palace at Florence, shows all 1 84 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS the highest quahties of his art, and glows with the rich and harmonious coloring of the Venetians. His journeyings in Italy included Florence, Milan,Turin, and other cities, and he even went as far south as Sicily, where, at Palermo, he produced some remarkable portraits. When, in 1628, he finally returned to Antwerp, where his master Rubens was at the zenith of his glory, he naturally suffered by compari- son ; but Rubens, soon departing on an embassy to Spain, left the field clear to his famous pupil, and demands for his works increased thick and fast. During the years that followed, before he took up his permanent abode in England, his brush was kept incessantly busy, and he paint- ed many of his finest creations. Of the " Crucifixion," painted for the Church of the Recollets at Mechlin, but now to be seen in the cathedral of that city. Sir Joshua Reynolds has the following: " This picture, on the whole, may be con- sidered as one of the first pictures in the world, and gives the highest idea of Van Dyck's power; it shows that he had truly a genius for history painting, if it had not been taken off by portraits." Van Dyck also executed many etchings during this period, which are esteemed very highly. Van Dyck quitted Flanders for good in 1632, and repaired once more to the court of England. The Earl of Arundel, his friend, was instrumental in bringing his work under the notice of Charles I., and the picture which is said to have been the immediate cause of the king's deter- mination to have Van Dyck at court was a portrait he had painted of one of the court musicians named Laniere. Wal- pole, in his life of Mrs. Mary Beale, quotes an interesting passage from the manuscript diary of her husband relating to this pic- ture, which affords a glimpse of the assi- duity of the artist : 1672. 20 April. . . . Mr. Lcly told me at the same time, as he was studiously looking at my Bishop's picture of Van Dyck's and I chanced to ask him how Sir Antony cou'd possibly devise to finish in one day a face that was so ex- ceeding full of work, and wrought up to so extraordinary a perfection — I believe, said he, he painted it over fourteen times. And upon that he took occasion to speak of Mr. Nichol.as Lanicre's picture of Sr. Anto. V. D. doing which, said he, Mr. Laniere him- self told me he salt seaven entire dayes for it to Sr. Anto. and that he painted upon it of all those seaven dayes both morning and afternoon, and only intermitted the time they were at dinner. And he said likewise, that tho' Mr. Laniere satt so often and so long for his picture, that he was not per- mitted so much as once to see it till he had perfectly finished the face to his own satis- faction. This was the picture which being show'd to king Charles I., caused him to give order that V. Dyck shou'd be sent for over into England. Van Dyck was received at court with every mark of favor and distinction, and his rapid preferment was such that after three months the king made him a knight, and settled on him a pension of two hun- dred pounds a year for life. His handsome person, engaging manners, and brilliant social gifts, together with the reputation of his talents and the special favor of the king, combined to make him the lion of the day, and his studio was the resort of the nobility. Meanwhile his industry was unflagging, and his fertility and produc- tiveness were great. Often the king him- self would drop down in his barge to spend an afternoon in the fascinating so- ciety of the gifted young artist. His habits were luxurious and extravagant to prodi- gality, and his hospitality was unbounded. He kept open house, and frequently de- tained his noble sitters to princely dinners. He figured as a patron of the fine arts, was fond of music, and specially liberal to musicians, whose services he deemed in- dispensable to the perfection of any social entertainment. But though his receipts were great, his expenditures were greater, ANTHONY VAN DYCK 185 and he often found himself in pecuniary straits. He frankly confessed to the king, on one occasion when money matters were broached, that " a man whose house is open to his friends, and his purse to his mistress, is likely to make acquaintance with empty coffers." His financial trou- bles were doubtless aggravated by the disturbed condition of the country, which was verging on revolution. His pension came to remain unpaid, and court patron- age to be a thing more of honor than of profit. Instead of endeavoring to balance his accounts by the ordinary method of economy and hard work, he was led into seeking gold in the alembic — experiment- ing with alchemy in the delusive pursuit of the philosopher's stone. In this he was encouraged by the example or advice of his friend Sir Kenelm Digby, and it was a subject which in those days appeared to many intelligent minds worthy of consid- eration. In this vain quest of treasure he spent much precious time, money, and health. A friend came from Flanders to visit him at this period, and found him brooding over his crucible, broken in health and spirits — a complete wreck. His friends and the king, considering his miserable condition, concluded that a good marriage would change the course of his mind, and give him a fresh impetus. Accordingly he was married about 1640 to Lady Mary Ruthven, a charming, well- bom maiden ; but sickness and disap- pointments terminated the brief remainder of his career in 1641. Notwithstanding his expensive style of living, he left prop- erty to the value of about a hundred thousand dollars. So far as portraiture goes. Van Dyck occupied a high place. His works have an air of elegance and distinction and a mundane grace and courtliness naturally befitting his title of " painter to the king." Though the majority of his pictures are in the private houses of the English no- bility, and comparatively few are found in public museums, those which I have engraved from the Louvre, viz., " Portrait of a Lady and her Daughter," " Portrait of Richardot and his Son," and " The Madonna of the Donors," are among the best. T. C. DAVID TENIERS THE YOUNGER Chapter XX DAVID TENIERS THE YOUNGER (1610- 1690) BETWEEN Van Dyck and Teniers the Younger stretches the whole length and breadth of Flemish art. They are the opposing poles, and they stand for two very different con- ceptions of painting held in Flanders during the seventeenth cen- tury. Van Dyck was a painter of elevated life, with a style largely influenced by the great Italian masters. He was a figure painter who, like Rubens, blended the Flemish with the Italian to make a new art. Teniers, on the contrary, was not influenced by Italy ; he never went there, and had nothing to do with the large decorative composition. He was a thorough Fleming, painting the common- place life that he found on his native heath, a cousin in art to the Dutch genre-painters Ostade and Steen, a painter of small easel pictures. In fact, he was Dutch in all except birth and some fea- tures of technic peculiar to the Flemish school. It is said that he was a pupil of Rubens, or, at the least, was influenced by him and by Brouwer ; but there is no record to ver- ify this, and little trace of the influence of either master in Teniers's work. He was a pupil of his father, and learned from him his sub- ject, his point of view, and his technic. He was an improvement upon his father, and, counting out Brouwer, who was more Dutch than Flemish, he was certainly head and shoulders over all the other genre-painters in Flanders. He painted all themes — peasants, boors, ale-houses, kitchens, fetes, musical parties, landscapes, por- traits, battles, biblical scenes, allegories — but he always treated them in a genre style, with Flemish types and costumes, and in a true Netherlands spirit. Whether he told of the parable of the 190 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS Prodigal Son, or of an idle group of people in front of a tavern, the conception was the same. In this respect he was, again, like the Dutch painters, valuing his art for what it looked, and caring little for what it meant. As depicting actual historic occurrences many of his pictures are absurd enough ; but as art in color, light, air, grouping, they are excellent. His representations seemed to have a more pointed meaning when he pictured alchemists and St. An- thonys surrounded by goblins, bats, flying-fish, and small devils. It may be that he meant such scenes as a hit at philosophers and theologians ; and then again it is possible he was merely following the subjects of the Brueghels. At any rate there is a comic vein about them that he evidently enjoyed. As things dramatic or tragic they were decidedly weak. Teniers had little of the dramatic about him, and though he occasionally showed actien, he displayed no emotion. His work is picturesque, seldom literary, never passion- ate. He used Flemish types, and disposed them in his compositions much as he might chairs or tables, or church steeples or door- posts — for their value in line and color. The psychological in the human face bothered him little ; and for that matter, he used only two or three faces for all his characters. He was very shrewd in his placing of objects and colors, and sometimes he was excessive in this very feature by dragging into his composition numberless small objects, to gain a sparkle of light or to fill a vacancy on the canvas. His St. Anthony pictures are finical, petty, and spotty in small devils with flashing eyes, that crawl or fly here and there across the canvas. In open-air pieces he loved great sky space, broken cloud ef- fects, architecture, distant towers ; and he handled these with a very sensitive regard for aerial perspective, as may be seen in Mr. Cole's illustration, one of the most beautiful of all his works, and yet hardly a represe'ntative picture. In interiors, he was again successful in atmosphere, and, like Ostade and De Hooch, gained it with two or more planes in his picture, by using a screen, a partition, or a back room seen through a doorway. Neither indoors nor out-of-doors did he use the heavy shadows illuminated by sharp shafts of light, as did the Dutch painters. His illumination was more uniform, and in landscape it came from the sky, clear, bright, almost sunny. He was fonder, however, of the broken half-light, because it comported better Avith his somewhat monotonous scheme of color. It was his practice to block out a picture in monochrome, usually brown, and 'AFTERNOON," BY TENIERS THE YOUNGER. ANTWERP MUSEUM. DAVID TENIERS THE YOUNGER I9I upon this to superimpose dark greens for foliage, pale blues for sky, carmines for flesh, and touches of gray for shadow. The impasto was thin, and the warmth of the under color was felt through the surface pigments, tingeing and tempering the coloring of the whole. In shadows his pigment barely covered the ground, and in many of his pictures the ground can be seen shining through. He did this to gain transparency ; while in his lights he loaded quite freely in spots to gain reflection by opacity. When he had thus worked up his picture from its monochrome state, he added spots of color in costumes and accessories ; and when the picture was finished, he dashed a line of white or blue on a cock's feather protruding from a red cap or hat, and signed his initials. Teniers's pictures give the impression of being produced with little effort ; and, indeed, it is said he often painted a picture in a day. He worked with great rapidity and sureness, and with a charming sprightliness of touch. His pigments look fresh as though laid but yesterday, and there is always a snap and sparkle about the lights that lend to vivacity. Sir Joshua thought his work worthy of the closest attention from those who desired to excel in the me- chanical knowledge of art. " His manner of touching, or what we call handling, has, perhaps, never been excelled ; there is in his pic- tures that exact mixture of softness and sharpness which is difficult to execute." He had several of these " manners," showing princi- pally in his use of color, and corresponding to different periods of his development. At first he was somewhat sharp and harsh, in the style of his master, with a deep, brown tone. After 1640 he became golden, and, still later, silvery. In his age he returned again to the golden tone. He left some seven hundred pictures, but no school. No pupils of consequence succeeded him. He was the last of the masterful painters of Flanders ; and after him came the eighteenth century decline — a period in art remarkable for nothing but littleness in both men and measures. NOTES BY THE ENGRAVER TENIERS THE YOUNGER was old, he was admitted to the Guild of Ant- bom at Antwerp in 1610, and as werp. His father, David Teniers the elder^ early as 1632, when only twenty-two years a painter of repute, was his instructor, and 192 OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS he enjoyed the society of Rubens, as well as the friendship of other distinguished ar- tists. He married a daughter of Jan, or "Velvet" Brueghel in 1637, when twen- ty-seven years old, at which ceremony Rubens was one of the witnesses, and came into the favor and patronage of the nobility. He became Dean of the Guild of St. Luke when thirty-five years old, and later was instrumental in the erection of the academy of fine arts. Upon the regis- ters of the guild his name is written with- out the final s. His wife dying, he married in i656adaughter of the secretary of state for Brabant. By means of his talents and pleasing personal qualities he attained a higher position in society than had before been occupied by any genre-painter of the school. The stadtholder of the Spanish Netherlands — Archduke Leopold Wil- liam — appointed Teniers court-painter, and also groom of the chambers, including the charge of the picture-gallery, and he was confirmed in both these offices by the successor of the archduke, Don Juan of Austria, natural son of PhiUp IV. of Spain. His art at the same time obtained him a European reputation, so that other great potentates, Philip IV., Christina of Swe- den, and the Elector of the Palatinate^ gave him commissions. Christina, in ad- dition to recompensing him magnificently, sent him her portrait and a gold chain. Teniers became prosperous and popular, and lived in grand style at his chateau of " Three Towers " at Perck, between Vel- vorde and Mechlin, entertaining noble- men, literary and scientific personages, and art patrons, who made a point of vis- iting the painter. He gave Don Juan of Austria lessons in painting, and this prince, before quitting the Netherlands, painted a portrait of Teniers's son, and presented it to Teniers as a souvenir and token of his regard. For the Archduke Leopold William Teniers painted a great number of small copies of pictures in that prince's gallery, which were engraved in Teniers's " Theatrum Pictorium," a work that be- came widely celebrated. His extraordinary technical facility of hand, and his untiring industry, enabled Teniers to execute a prodigious number of works. He declared it would need a gallery two leagues in length to contain all his pictures. It is said that he began and finished many of his canvases at a single sitting. His versatility, and his power of imitating the manner of the most various masters, as well as the great range of his subjects, caused him to be styled the " Proteus of painting," for although the animated delineation of the peasant world, under the most varying forms, was his favorite sphere, he frequently depicted scenes from the realm of fancy. The guard-house, with its old armor, drums, and flags, he often painted ; and also cat- tle-pieces and landscapes, wherein his del- icate feeling for nature is evident. The many works executed by Teniers during a working life of three-score years are widely scattered throughout Europe. The gallery of Madrid alone has 53, St. Petersburg 40, the Louvre 36, Dresden 30, Vienna 18, the National Gallery of London 6. The little town of Cassel has 10, and I counted 9 in the Antwerp Gal- lery. From Antwerp I selected the en- graved example. The original is but little larger than the engraving, measuring six and one quarter by eight and one half inches. Its title is " L'Apres-diner" (Af- ternoon). It is an example of his best period. The " silver " manner of Teniers is a close approach to the cool gray air of nature, and with this style there fol- lowed a more precise and careful treat- ment, though no diminution of that light and sparkling touch wherein the separate strokes of the brush are left unbroken — a touch in which he stands unexcelled by any other genre-painter. T. C. 14 DAY USE 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due oo the last date stamped below^ or on the date to wbtch renewed. Renewab only: Tel. 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