Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

=His Visit to Jordaens at Antwerp.=--Having become rich, and getting tired of everlastingly painting the rich burghers of Amsterdam and their wives, Maes thought he would like to go to see the works of the great artists of Antwerp, who at that time were so much talked about throughout Europe. Having been initiated into the high freemasonry of art by Rembrandt, he was cordially received by the Antwerp painters and soon recognized by them as a brother. Among others, he went to visit Jordaens and was shown into a room filled with pictures, which he examined while awaiting the appearance of the latter, who was watching his visitor through the keyhole. When he entered, Jordaens said: "I see plainly that you are a great connoisseur, or perhaps an able painter, for the best pictures in my gallery detained you longer than the others."

Maes simply replied, "I am a portrait-painter."

"In that case," replied Jordaens, "I sincerely pity you. So you also are one of those martyrs of painting who so richly deserve our commiseration!"

In fact, Maes's weariness at having to put up with the whims of human vanity probably had much to do with his turning to _genre_, by which he is now best known and for which he is most highly prized.

=Maes's Pictures of Familiar Scenes.=--The average art-lover, however, cares little for the portraiture of Maes, but prizes him as a painter of familiar scenes, like Pieter de Hooch. Although less varied and less supple, but not less robust than the latter, Maes was his equal in the power of his effects. The triviality of the subject which he often selects is relieved by the charm of an astonishingly vigorous and spirited execution. Burger says:

"On passing through a kitchen, perhaps, you see an old woman scraping
carrots, having various kitchen utensils about her. If you have seen
this humble interior in one of Maes's pictures, it will be impossible
for you not to halt and spend some time in looking at it. The painting
of Nicholas Maes is one of those that become encrusted in the memory.
The light gleams in it, the canvas glows, the subject stands out, the
eye runs over it, and if the figures were of natural size one would go
forward to meet them, so strong is the impression, so solid is the
tone, so palpable, and modelled in relief are the forms.

"In his little familiar scenes, Maes is not always insignificant or
vulgar in his choice of subject. Most often, indeed, his composition
is ingenious, witty, and piquant. In the first place, it is set in the
most picturesque corner of the room; the painter likes to take up his
position in a place whence he can see at once the house from top to
bottom,--both the stairs descending to the cellar and those mounting
to the first floor. Then the figures he brings into the scene usually
have some malicious trick to play, some secret conversation to
overhear, some theft to discover, or some infidelity to discover."

=Samuel van Hoogstraaten.=--It is singular how few pictures are known by Rembrandt's remarkable pupil, Samuel van Hoogstraaten (1625-78), a versatile painter of landscapes, portraits, marines, architecture, fruits, flowers, and, more particularly, interiors, in which he followed Pieter de Hooch. In his Lady in a Vestibule he has demonstrated his knowledge of perspective, of which he was very proud. The chief feature of the picture, however, is the beautiful chiaroscuro, for which he has to thank Rembrandt's teaching. The lady is walking in a portico of very fine architecture, and reading. With one hand she is holding up her straw-colored dress. This figure is only two feet high, while the spaniel that accompanies her is life size!

=Effects of Rembrandt's Teaching on his Pupils.=--Thirty of Rembrandt's pupils made great names for themselves by copying that great master in one or other of his manners. Some made a system of what with him was merely a mood or caprice. Not being able to follow him in the expression of the human soul, they made a specialty, some of portraiture, some of costume, some of chiaroscuro, some of _genre_, and some of landscape.

=Philip Koninck's Landscapes.=--Philip Koninck (1619-88) is almost the only pupil of Rembrandt who painted landscapes almost exclusively, and he listened to the teachings of his master with great docility. His principle was to regard nature from a little distance, so as to grasp the masses, rather than to enter into details. The Mauritshuis possesses a beautiful and characteristic specimen of his genius. In composition and treatment, it reminds us of Rembrandt's Landscape of the Three Trees.[2] Blanc says:

"Among the Dutch landscape painters perhaps there is not one, unless
it is Van der Hagen, who would have dared to paint this monotonous
plain, all the lines of which are horizontal, all the clumps and rows
of trees of the same height, and in which the only objects in the
foreground are a cottage half hidden among trees, and, a little
farther on, a low sandy hill which does not rise beyond the level of
the middle distance. The vast stretch of country is traversed by so
many courses of water that it almost looks as if it were threatened
with an inundation. The meadows are on a level with the sea; the
distant villages look like flotillas at anchor, and the houses seem to
be floating on the canals. The painter has placed his point of view so
high that neither the sails of the windmills, nor the points of the
belfries, nor the tops of the highest trees stand out against the sky.
The picture is cut in half by the almost straight line of a horizon
which gradually recedes until lost to view, and the towns we perceive
in the distance, the rows of trees, the hamlets, and rivers all run
parallel with this horizon. That is to say, that Philip Koninck (and
this picture resembles all the others of his we know) is conceived
entirely at variance with the ideas that are generally held regarding
the picturesque."

Gilpin says:

"'The greatest enemies of the picturesque are the symmetry of the
forms, the resemblance and parallelism of the lines, the polish of the
surfaces, and the uniformity of the colors.'

"Very well! Here is a landscape by Koninck that fulfils all the
conditions of the non-picturesque; and which, nevertheless, produces a
certain impression of grandeur and sadness, solely by means of the
canvas being furrowed into infinite depths, the gradations of the
perspective being extremely well observed, and the uniformity of the
ground being happily contrasted with a sky full of movement, a fine
disorder of clouds which the breeze slowly drives before it as a
shepherd does his flock."

=Dutch Painters who imitated Italians.=--Rembrandt, although he arose at a time when the influence of Italian art was supreme, never went to Rome; nevertheless, he owed a great deal to the studies of those artists who had been there. The Hague Gallery contains several pictures of this period; and these are sufficient to give us a very good idea of the qualities of Dutch art just before Rembrandt, in 1629, set up for himself in Amsterdam at the age of twenty-one.

=Hendrik Goltzius.=--An influential founder of a large school of painters who modelled themselves on the great Italians was Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1616). He started for Rome in 1590, and indulged to the full his intense admiration for Michelangelo, which led him to surpass that master in the extravagance of his designs. The works by his own hand he most valued were his eccentric imitations of the designs of Michelangelo. His portraits show exquisite finish, and are fine studies of character. The beauty and freedom of his execution make amends for his extravagance. In the Mauritshuis are three pictures painted shortly before he died--Mercury, Hercules, and Minerva.

=His Academy at Haarlem.=--On his return from Italy Mander, who was a great friend of Goltzius, induced him to open an academy at Haarlem, in combination with Mander and Cornelisz, and with the assistance of his old pupils, Matham, Muller, Sanraedam, and De Gheyn, as professors. As might be expected, Italian taste predominated in this academy, not solely on account of the personal preference of the founders, but because the Italian style had been popularized in the Low Countries by Lambert Lombard, and his pupils, Hubert Golz, Lambert Zutman, Dominic Lampson, William Key, and Frans Floris (1518-70). Of these the most famous was Floris, who also studied in Italy, and himself founded a large school. The Hague possesses in Venus and Adonis a charming example of his style.

=The Italian Style followed by Cornelisz.=--Cornelis Cornelisz (1562-1638) had never been to Italy, but his education and environment had given him Italian tendencies. We learn that even after he had attained proficiency he never dispensed with the model; nevertheless, he was neither a slavish imitator of nature, nor altogether a painter of style. He has two large pictures in The Hague Gallery that were painted about the time he joined Goltzius in the Haarlem academy. These are the Massacre of the Innocents (1591) and the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis (1593). The dominating idea of the artist in the Massacre of the Innocents, which covers a canvas 8-3/4 by 8-1/4 feet, is the wish to appear a great master of drawing by curves and modeling that exaggerate the relief of the muscles. There are more than two hundred figures which are almost all entirely nude. The executioners, and the infants in particular, show an attempt at noble form which rises above nothing more than affectation. There is an obvious striving after the genius of Michelangelo which, in the Dutch master, is merely pretentious imitation of what would be facile and superb in the great Florentine. There is not a single attitude nor a movement that is not _contrasted_; for instance, if the left arm is behind, the right leg is in front. In fact, the study of nature is completely subordinated to academic conventions. The color is far more natural than the drawing. The artist has been extremely successful in rendering the flesh tints of life as well as of death, and he has varied the _nuances_ in accordance with sex and age, giving very faithfully the tenderness and freshness of the flesh tints of infancy, and the softness of the female form, the stronger tones of the executioners in action, and even the cadaverous hue of the bloodless corpses. As for the expressions of the faces, they are vulgar though energetic.

=His Love of painting the Nude.=--The love of Cornelisz for compositions thronged with nude figures in the most varied attitudes wherein he could exhibit all the resources of his learning and study of the works of Michelangelo is again shown in the large canvas, measuring 8 by 14 feet, entitled Banquet of the Gods of Olympus, or Marriage of Peleus and Thetis.

=Gilles Coignet.=--Cornelisz had received his tastes and instruction principally from Gilles Coignet (1540-99), who set out for Italy with another painter named Stello in 1555 and worked principally at Terni, between Loretto and Rome, for five years. He painted historical and mythological subjects of easel size, but was more successful in landscapes, and more particularly in candle-light subjects and moonlight. He took up his abode in Amsterdam in 1586. His influence on the Haarlem school was pronounced.

=Elsheimer's Excellence in Chiaroscuro.=--The Mauritshuis possesses two Italian Landscapes by Adam Elsheimer (Elshaimer or Elzheimer) (1574-1620), a German painter, whom the Italians call Adam Tedesco, who possessed great influence over his contemporaries, particularly the elder Teniers and Rembrandt, who followed out the same characteristics of chiaroscuro. Elsheimer delighted in the effects of moonlight and evening dusk; also in torchlight, conflagrations, and every other kind of artificial light,--all of which he represented with greater excellence than had ever been done before him. Visiting Italy, he became charmed with the country and settled in Rome, where his little pictures, usually painted on copper with microscopic and beautifully finished figures, had great success. Elsheimer was visited by all the artists of his country, including Poelemburg, who saw him in 1617. He was almost as great in chiaroscuro as Rembrandt; and his immense reputation did not diminish until after the eighteenth century.

=Cornelis van Poelemburg.=--A picture of Women Bathing, by Cornelis van Poelemburg (1586-1667), is a fine example of his style. He studied first under Bloemaert, but during a protracted visit to Italy he fell under the influence of Elsheimer; and on his return to his own country he became quite the rage as a painter of classic landscape. In Rome he had been fascinated by Raphael's pictures, and studied him with affectionate admiration. Poelemburg possessed a happy and tranquil nature.

=His Attractive Landscapes.=--"The little pictures that his
imagination painted breathe a quiet happiness, and are imprinted with
a suave poesy. They nearly always represent a countryside adorned with
ancient ruins and frequented by demi-nude nymphs. His landscapes,
enveloped in vapor which, while decreasing the dryness of the
outlines and crudity of the tones, would soften the aspect of the most
rugged spots, serve as a background for the whiteness of the goddesses
who dance with fauns or repose in the shade of some abandoned
monument. Sometimes, as though the vale that they dwell in were
reserved for the gods, Poelemburg's nymphs do not fear to remove their
light vesture and bathe in some open pool where only the painter may
see them. But, most frequently, it is in the neighborhood of a grotto,
at the foot of rocks perpetually washed by a spring of fresh water,
that one likes to surprise them, nude, trembling, their bodies
rendered whiter by the transparent veil of the atmosphere, playing
with the water they are disturbing, swimming after one another and
half-hidden by the current of their chaste fountains."

=Dutch Artists who migrated to Rome.=--Bartholomeus Breenborch (1599-1659) was another member of that band of artists who at the beginning of the seventeenth century deserted the banks of the Meuse for those of the Tiber, and exchanged the land that was to produce Rembrandt for the country of Raphael's birth. A few Dutch artists successfully resisted the lures of the Eternal City; but the majority of painters of that period followed the example of Elsheimer, Poelemburg, Karel Dujardin, Herman Swanevelt, Andreas and Jan Both, and others, and formed a little Dutch colony among the Seven Hills.

=Breenborch compared with Poelemburg.=--Breenborch devoted himself to history and landscape alternately. His historical subjects were chiefly Biblical and mythological. He was fond of painting classical landscapes with ruins; and the only artist who could excel him in painting charming little figures in a landscape was Van de Velde. The chief characteristic of Poelemburg, with whom Breenborch is so often compared, is grace. The only picture of this artist in The Hague Gallery, Mercury appearing to the Nymph Herse, resembles Poelemburg both in subject and treatment.

=Van der Ulft's Architectural Paintings.=--Van der Ulft (1627-90), another artist of this school, was originally a painter on glass. Later, he turned to historical compositions of small dimensions; but his real talent lay in the representation of architectural monuments, and scenes inside city walls. It is strange that he never visited Italy, but formed himself by the study of the works of returning Roman art pilgrims and of engravings. His perspective is exact; his ancient ruins, triumphal arches, and statues are correctly placed in his pictures, and his architectural backgrounds, abounding in strong and golden grays, form an excellent frame for the little figures that animate his spirited paintings. He delighted to paint Roman processions. The Hague picture shows an army on the march in a landscape adorned with architectural remains.

=Nicolas Moeyaert's Best Points.=--A follower of Elsheimer, who later became a disciple of Rembrandt, was Nicolas Moeyaert (1630-?), who settled in Amsterdam in 1624 and joined the Painters' Guild in 1630. In some of his pictures he imitated Rembrandt very closely. He excelled in portraits, animals, landscapes, and historical and Biblical scenes. The Hague Gallery contains three: Mercury appearing to the Nymph Herse; Triumph of Silenus, and a Biblical scene, also called the Visit of Antiochus to the Augur.

=Description of one of his Pictures.=--Antiochus, about to engage in a war, is consulting the augur. In the centre stands the king dressed in a long blue robe, with a white girdle and a purple cloak lined with fur; also a furred bonnet. He is talking to an old man, the augur, who has a long white beard. He is wrapped in a yellow cloak, is barefooted, and he is writing in a book. By him are some animals, including a dog and some rabbits, and on the right of Antiochus are two goats and a sheep. On a rock on the left is a group of ten persons; and in the centre of the picture between the two high rocks stand a tower and a temple. For pupils Moeyaert had Berchem, Van der Does, Salomon Koninck, and J. B. Weenix.

=Pieters and Lastman.=--Gerrit Pieters, the best pupil of C. Cornelisz, also went to Rome. He painted assemblies, _genre_, and small portraits; his success prevented him from devoting himself to historical painting, which he preferred. A pupil of his was Pieter Lastman (1583-1633), who also made a long sojourn in Italy under Elsheimer's influence. He groped about in different styles for a long time, devoting himself principally to Biblical subjects. He learned a good deal about light effects from Elsheimer; on his return he imparted what he knew to Rembrandt, who studied with him for a short time. Later, when his brilliant pupil grew famous, Lastman humbly followed his lead. Jan Lievens (1607-74), was another of his pupils. A picture by him, painted in 1622, when Rembrandt was still only fourteen years old, and therefore could not have influenced him, is in the Mauritshuis. It is called The Resurrection of Lazarus.

An artist who accompanied Lastman to Italy in 1605 was named Jan Pinas (f. 1608-21). He painted portraits, landscapes, and historical subjects.

=Herman Swanevelt's Study of Nature.=--Herman Swanevelt (Herman of Italy) (1600-55) was a pupil and imitator of Claude Lorraine in Rome, whither he went in 1624, and where his excessive application to study gained for him the name of "the Hermit" from the band of Dutch and German artists established in that city. Unlike Claude, with whom he used to walk in the environs of Rome, and who never sketched from nature, Swanevelt always had his pencil in his hand, taking note of all that he saw, studying the oaks and large plants, and copying the buildings, campaniles, and vine-wreathed arcades and ruins. He left nothing to his imagination. While Claude's landscapes speak of the Golden Age, Swanevelt's are actual reproductions of the country as he saw it. His buildings are not imaginary villas, temples, and palaces, but are the Roman ruins and the facades and cloisters that he knew. In his arrangement and composition he resembled Claude; and, like him, often placed in the corner of his picture wooded mountains or large trees, and sometimes even placed them in the very centre to make a striking contrast to the very light background.

Naturally rude and savage, Swanevelt contributed some of his character to his work. He liked bold mountains clothed with dark forests, deep ravines, solitary places, and torrents bounding from the rocks; and he understood how to mingle the heroic style with rural beauty.

Two Italian landscapes, one dated 1650, the other formerly attributed to Claude Lorraine, hang in the Mauritshuis.

=J. van Swanenburch.=--Rembrandt spent three years in the studio of J. van Swanenburch (d. 1638), who had finished his studies at Rome, and worked in Naples for a long time, returning to Holland in 1617.

=Bloemaert, Founder of the School of Utrecht.=--Abraham Bloemaert (1564-1651) constitutes in many respects the link of transition with the succeeding epoch; for however his frequent mannerisms and gaudy coloring betray the tasteless period in which he was born, his later pictures show a power, taste, and broader touch. He painted a great number of religious and mythological subjects, portraits, landscapes, and animals. By reason of his talent and his long life (ninety-two years), he exercised great influence over the School of Utrecht, and may be regarded as its founder.

=Some of his Pupils.=--Among his principal pupils may be mentioned: J. and A. Both, the Honthorsts, J. B. Weenix, Knupfer, Cornelis van Poelemburg, and the father of Albert Cuijp. Two pictures painted in the prime of his life are in The Hague Gallery; they deserve attention if only for their size and the number of figures they contain. The subjects are: Hippomenes receiving the Prize (signed and dated 1626), and the Marriage of Peleus (signed and dated 1628). The latter was carried off by the French, but returned after 1815.

=Description of the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis.=--"It is composed
of fourteen large figures, half nude, representing the gods of Olympus
celebrating the marriage of Thetis. Seated at table and distinguished
by their divine attributes, the gods appear to be troubled at the
sight of Discord, who descends from above, borne on a cloud, and
throws down among them the golden apple destined for the most
beautiful. In the foreground, with her back turned to the spectator,
is shown the figure of Venus, who displays unveiled her divine
shoulders, her voluptuous neck, and her incomparably beautiful body,
which will carry off the prize, and which has no need of the girdle of
beauty to render the goddess beloved. Elsewhere than in The Hague
Gallery this mythological painting would perhaps not excite more
remark than any other picture, but there, in the midst of a family,
_bourgeoise_, and Protestant school, which avoids the nude and ignores
academic conventions and style, a picture of this kind cannot fail
strongly to attract attention. Abraham Bloemaert, like the famous
Cornelis of Haarlem, has the air of an Italian who has gone astray in
these northern regions. These noble contours and learned lines, this
modelling of the flesh pursued with a certain pedanticism by the
former, and with grace and facility by the latter, and finally these
more or less violent foreshortenings,--those, for instance, offered by
this picture in the figures of Discord and the Loves who scatter
flowers or suspend from trees the curtain that decorates the place of
banqueting,--all this is at variance with the jollity and naturalism
of the Dutch; all this betrays the influence of a foreign style, an
influence that reigned in Holland in the sixteenth century,
disappeared at the arrival of Rembrandt, and did not return till the
appearance of Gerard de Lairesse, more than a century later."[3]

=Others who painted in the Italian Style.=--Nicholas (or Claes) Berchem (1620-83), Karel Dujardin (1622-78), and Jan (or Johannes) Both (1610-52), painted in the Italian style. Berchem was a pupil of his father, Pieter Claes, and of J. B. Weenix, Moeyaert, Pieter de Grebber, and probably Jan van Goyen. Karel Dujardin was a pupil of Berchem. All three travelled in Italy; and all three are represented in The Hague Gallery. Berchem has an Italian Landscape and Figures; an Italian Landscape or Pastoral (dated 1648), with life-sized figures.

=Berchem's Picture of a Boar-Hunt.=--A Wild Boar Hunt, of the year 1659, shows that he could successfully treat an animated scene. Crowe says:

"It is a model of precision combined with elegance of execution;
though at the same time that blue dark tone which, to the eye of a
connoisseur, so much detracts from the value of his later works,
already partially appears. This is more seen in a landscape dated 1661
in the same museum, though otherwise belonging to his more attractive
works. But here also the conventional and monotonous treatment of his
cattle begins to be visible.... But the most striking example of the
master's deterioration is afforded us by one of his latest works, the
Cavalry Engagement, in The Hague Museum, which is a very type of crude
and discordant effect and hardness of detail."

His fourth picture is An Italian Quay, dated 1661.

=Pictures by Dujardin, Jan Both, and Others.=--Karel Dujardin, famous for his animals, portraits, and landscapes, can be well studied in a fine Italian landscape, called A Cascade in Italy, rich and warm in tone and dated 1673.

Johannes Both has two Italian landscapes, one of which glows with sunshine and is remarkable for breadth and delicacy.

Other pictures showing this Italian influence are The Ambuscade and an Italian landscape by Moucheron, with figures by J. Lingelbach; the Terrestrial Paradise by Jan Brueghel the Elder; and The Torrent, by Adam Pynacker.

=Adam Pynacker and Jan Both compared.=--Pynacker, though inferior to Jan Both in his Italian landscapes, surpasses him in variety. His tone is cooler than Both's, and he excels in painting early morning scenes. In addition to pastoral scenes, he loves rocky heights, mountain ranges, Italian harbors, bold bridges, and waterfalls.

Pynacker enlivened his landscapes with human figures and cattle, both of which he was able to draw and paint extremely well.

=Albert Cuijp's Portrait of Sieur de Roovere.=--The famous Albert Cuijp (1620-91) belongs to this group, being a pupil of his father, Jacob Gerritsz Cuijp, who was a pupil of Abraham Bloemaert.

There is but one Cuijp in the Mauritshuis, Portrait of Sieur de Roovere directing the salmon fishery near Dordrecht, which need not detain us long, for we shall find more interesting examples of this master in the Rijks. Burger calls this A View in the Environs of Dordrecht, and says it is "a beautiful painting, but perhaps a little brusque." A gentleman wearing a black hat with red plumes and mounted on a bay horse, is seen on the left, to whom a fisherman in heavy boots is offering fish. On the right lies a spaniel. In the middle distance are some fishermen, a black horse, the other side of a canal, and a house. The two principal figures are about a foot high.

=The Beginning of the School of Dutch Landscape.=--Jan Hackaert (1629-99) forms a connecting link between those painters who represent Northern and those who represent Southern scenery. He travelled when young into Germany and Switzerland. The Hague has a good example of an Italian landscape with figures by Lingelbach; but better examples of his work are in the Rijks. This brings us to the beginning of the great school of Dutch landscape, when the painters began to take an interest in the scenery of their own country. Two great names are Jan van Goyen (1596-1666) and Jan Wijnants (1600-77), important not only because of their own productions, but because they were the first painters of Dutch landscape, and each had followers and pupils who attained great fame.

Jan van Goyen was a pupil of Esais van de Velde and the master of Salomon Ruisdael, who produced Jacob Ruisdael, who in turn produced Hobbema. Another famous pupil was Simon de Vlieger, who was also a follower of Willem van de Velde.

=Jan Wijnants and his Followers.=--Around Wijnants cluster Adriaen van de Velde, Wouwermans, Lingelbach, Barent Gael, Schellinkx, and Helt Stockade.

=Characteristics of Van Goyen's Works.=--Jan van Goyen was fortunate in being the son of an amateur of painting, who encouraged his talent. After studying with various artists of no special reputation, he travelled in France and on his return studied with Esais van de Velde. He is always simple in painting and manner. Ordinarily he selects tranquil river scenes on which merchant ships or fishing-boats are quietly sailing. You often see hamlets on piles, and, very frequently, the steeple of a church, standing out in picturesque contrast to the horizon line. Sometimes a ruined tower forms the chief motive of his composition.

=His Marines and Watery Landscapes.=--One of the principal characteristics of Van Goyen's marines and landscapes is their peacefulness, calmness, and slight touch of sadness. It is not the sadness inspired by Ruisdael's groves, but a gentle melancholy feeling that touches the imagination and induces dreams. The sun never appears in Van Goyen's pictures. Humid clouds veil his skies, which in their light portions have the silvery tones of Teniers. His beach or shore is generally enveloped in a grayish mist, and in the moving clouds you feel the breath of wind and fancy you hear it sigh. His long flat surface, so dull and solitary, is animated only by a fishing-boat or a shallop. Holland, because of its water-ways, is a silent country and the impression of silence and peace is marvellously reproduced in Van Goyen's pictures. He never allows a brilliant tone to disturb the uniformity and harmony of his watery landscapes; but behind the clouds that float across the sky you divine the far-away sun, like a light behind a curtain. The famous View of the City of Dordrecht, by the latter, signed and dated 1634, is a splendid example of his qualities and style.

=His Illustrious Pupils.=--After his marriage, Van Goyen established himself in Leyden, his native town, where he opened a school, to which flocked painters who afterward became illustrious. Among them was Jan Steen, who married Van Goyen's daughter Marguerite.

Only one of Esais van de Velde's (1590-1630) pictures--A Dinner in the Open Air, painted in 1614, hangs in this gallery, so that one cannot learn here how much Jan van Goyen owed to his master.

Hermann Saftleven (1606-81), a pupil of Jan van Goyen, painted, as a rule, views of the Rhine and Moselle with small boats and figures. He was a good portrait-painter and was successful with animals. His Landscape with Cattle is a charming example of his work.

To Salomon Ruisdael, who so greatly resembles Jan van Goyen with his pictures of canals, bordered with houses and trees, river banks, etc., we shall return when visiting the Rijks; for the Mauritshuis possesses no picture of this artist. He taught his more famous brother.

=The Greatest of the Dutch Landscape-Painters.=--"Jacob Ruisdael
(1628-82) is beyond all dispute the greatest of the Dutch
landscape-painters. In the works of no other do we find that feeling
for the poetry of Northern nature and perfection united in the same
degree. With admirable drawing he combined a knowledge of chiaroscuro
in its most multifarious aspects, a coloring powerful and warm, and a
mastery of the brush, which, while never too smooth in surface, ranges
from the tenderest and most minute touch to the broadest, freest, and
most marrowy execution. The prevailing tone of his coloring is a full,
decided green. Unfortunately, however, many of his pictures have, in
the course of years, acquired a heavy brown tone, and thus forfeited
their highest charm. Many also were originally painted in a grayish
but clear tone."

=His Favorite Subjects.=--"He generally presents us with the flat and
homely scenery of his native country under the conditions of repose;
while the usually heavy clouded sky, which tells either of a shower
just past or one impending, and dark sheets of water overshadowed by
trees, impart a melancholy character to his pictures. Especially does
he delight in representing a wide expanse of land or water. If the
former, the scene is frequently taken from some elevation in the
surrounding country, commanding a view of his native city, Haarlem,
which is seen breaking the line of the horizon with its spires.

"Taken altogether, his wide expanses of sky, earth, or sea, with
their tender gradations of aerial perspective, diversified here and
there by alternations of sunshine and shadow, may be said to attract
us as much by the deep pathos as well as picturesqueness of their
character. On the other hand, we often find the great master taking
pleasure in the representation of hilly and even mountainous
districts, with foaming waterfalls, in which he has won some of his
greatest triumphs; or he gives us a bare pile of rock, with a dark
lake at its base; but these latter subjects, which embody the feeling
of the most elevated melancholy, occur very rarely. In his drawing of
men and animals he was weak, and occasionally obtained the assistance
of other masters, especially of A. van de Velde and Berchem."

=Difference between his Earlier and Later Works.=--"As he seldom dated
his pictures, and early attained his full development, we find a
difficulty in determining the order in which they were painted. His
earlier works, however, may be identified by the extraordinary
minuteness with which all objects--trees, plants, and every diversity
in the soil--are represented; by a decision of form bordering on
hardness, and by less freedom of handling and delicacy of aerial
perspective."[4]

=Reynolds's Estimate of him as a Landscape-Painter.=--Four very fine examples of Jacob van Ruisdael are owned by the Mauritshuis: a Cascade, a Strand, View of Haarlem, and View of the Vijver at The Hague.

After a study of these beautiful works, Sir Joshua Reynolds's estimate of the painter will not seem excessive: "The landscapes of Ruisdael," he says, "have not only great force, but have a freshness which is seen in scarce any other painter."

=His Character seen in his Paintings.=--Ruisdael is considered by many critics the greatest of the Dutch landscape-painters. His execution is always masterly, and his works always express a poetic sentiment. Ruisdael delights in portraying sombre forests, rushing cascades, trees bent by the wind, gathering storm-clouds, and all the dark mysteries of the woodlands. His misfortunes probably had much to do with increasing his natural melancholy, to the great gain of his artistic development. As a rule, the paintings of his mature period have greatly blackened because he loved to paint sombre backgrounds, and always used a very dark green for his foliage and other verdure. His earlier works have remained brighter in tint; for at the beginning of his career he painted the dunes and meadows, woods and roads near Haarlem, bathed in light from sunny skies half veiled with clouds.

=His Picture of Haarlem.=--The View of Haarlem, taken from the dunes of Overveen, shows a bird's-eye view of an immense stretch of country. In the foreground is shown a level meadow on which strips of white linen are being bleached; and on the left are the houses of the washerwomen. Beyond, a vast stretch of country almost destitute of trees or dwellings, reaches to the horizon line, where the town of Haarlem, with its bell-tower, is discerned.

"All these miles of country," exclaims Burger, "are represented on a little canvas only one foot eight inches high!"

This picture is regarded as one of the gems of The Hague Gallery.

The Cascade is noted for its warm lighting and careful execution; and the beautiful Beach at Scheveningen for its heavy gathering clouds and dim and broken light upon the water and shipping.

=Ruisdael's Sea Pieces.=--Ruisdael's sea-pieces are few; and, unlike Willem van de Velde, he never represents the ocean in repose; his sea is always stormy and sometimes raging, and the sky is full of heavy, angry clouds. The waves are always fluid and full of motion.

=Some of his Notable Works.=--The Mauritshuis has the rare luck to possess three pictures by Ruisdael, which are splendidly preserved, and each of which exemplifies a separate style of the master. A fourth one, bought more recently, is also exceedingly interesting in its way, because it gives a view of the Vijverberg in The Hague; but the rest of this picture is of such dubious art, and the color so sunken, that it cannot hold its own beside the others in the collection. The Strand and the View of Haarlem belong to the artist's middle period (between 1660 and 1670) as well as the Cascade. Bredius says:

"The still, heavy impasto and the clearness of the color make me think
it is one of the first waterfalls that Ruisdael painted. We never, or
hardly ever, find pictures of the painter's earliest period (covering
the years 1646 to 1655) in the Dutch galleries.

"A fine, strong, cleverly painted little picture of Ruisdael's,
painted in 1653, was sent to the Amsterdam Gallery with the Dupper
Collection. Another very clear, lovely, and beautifully worked study
of the Dunes, with a Grove, similar to the picture in the Louvre, is
owned by Madame van Vollenhoven in Amsterdam. A somewhat dark but
strong and spirited study, the Hut in the Dunes, also of his early
period, was lately acquired by the Haarlem Gallery, which hitherto had
owned nothing of Ruisdael's. These early pictures, of which, for
instance, the Leipzig Exhibition in the Autumn of 1889 was able to
show very important examples (the figures are often supplied by
Berchem), are very highly esteemed by connoisseurs."

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

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

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

=Vermeer's View of Delft.=--Vermeer of Delft (1632-75) was a pupil of Karel Fabricius (whom we shall meet in the Rijks), who was a pupil of Rembrandt. One of the most important and beautiful pictures in The Hague Gallery is Vermeer's View of Delft. On an appreciative eye and receptive mood it leaves a tenacious impression which will never be forgotten. Until about thirty years ago, Vermeer of Delft was hardly thought of, although in his own day his pictures were highly prized and sought after, and later his work received great praise from Sir Joshua Reynolds. It was the French critic Burger (Thore), who rehabilitated this great artist.

Bredius exclaims:

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

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

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

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

Lemke says:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

=Impressionism and Naturalism.=--"Adriaen van de Velde is one of the
few artists by whom landscape and figures composed in a masterly
manner are both felt and thought out harmoniously. He stands so close
to our modern impression as does scarcely another of his day, being so
simple in his motives and going so straight to nature, that he knows
how to reveal the intimate connection between the outside world and
our own feeling. A real painter of moods, he excels in awakening in us
dark and gloomy feelings; his shadowy forest-glimpses on summer days,
with herdsmen reclining beside their panting cattle in obvious rest.
His bright mornings with the hunting-parties called together to the
halloo, with the gentlemen and nobles promenading on the walks near
their equipages, ring fresh and gay in the heart of the spectator; in
his homelike evening-feeling with the sound of the returning cattle,
he affects us with the feeling of happy departure and well-earned
rest."

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

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

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

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

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

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