_Philips Wouwerman_ (Dutch: 1619-1668).
Wouwerman--whose pictures may nearly always be told by a
white horse, which is almost his sign-manual--is selected
by Ruskin as the central instance of the "hybrid school of
landscape." To understand this term we must recall his division
of all landscape, in its relation to human beings, into the
following heads: (1) _Heroic_, representing an imaginary
world inhabited by noble men and spiritual powers--Titian;
(2) _Classical_, representing an imaginary world inhabited by
perfectly civilised men and inferior spiritual powers--Poussin;
(3) _Pastoral_, representing peasant life in its daily
work--Cuyp; (4) _Contemplative_, directed to observation of
the powers of nature and record of historical associations
connected with landscape, contrasted with existing states
of human life--Turner. The _hybrid_ school of which Berchem
and Wouwerman are the chief representatives is that which
endeavours to unite the irreconcilable sentiment of two
or more of the above-mentioned classes. Thus here we have
Wouwerman's conception of the heroic in the officers and in
the rocky landscape; of the pastoral in the pretty milkmaid,
to whom an officer is speaking, and who gives her name to the
picture. So again the painter's desire to assemble all kinds
of pleasurable elements may be seen in the crowded composition
of an adjoining picture (879). Wouwerman is further selected
by Ruskin as the chief type of vulgarity in art--meaning by
vulgarity, insensibility. He introduces into his pictures--see,
for instance, 879--every element that he thinks pleasurable,
yet has not imagination enough to enter heartily into any of
them. His pleasure is "without a gleam of higher things," and
in his war-pieces there is "no heroism, awe or mercy, hope or
faith." With regard, finally, to the execution, it is "careful
and conscientious," the tone of his pictures generally dark
and gray, the figures being thrown out in spots of light
(_Modern Painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. viii.). "There is no
good painting," Ruskin says of a Wouwerman at Turin, "properly
so called, anywhere, but of clever, dotty, sparkling, telling
execution, as much as the canvas will hold" (_ibid._ § 8).
Wouwerman was born at Haarlem; his father was a painter. From
him Philips learnt the practice of art, afterwards studying
landscape under Wynants. He worked for some time at Hamburg, in
the studio of Everard Decker. In 1640 he returned to Haarlem,
where he remained for the rest of his life. He had two brothers
who were also painters. His productivity was enormous. He
lived forty-nine years, and it has been calculated that even
if we deny his authorship of one half the pictures ascribed to
him, we leave him with at least 500, or about one for every
three weeks during his productive years (Bryan's _Dictionary
of Painters_). Few galleries are without several pictures by
Wouwerman. In the Wallace Collection he is represented by six,
in the Dulwich Gallery by ten.
The picture is known after the milkmaid whom the officer is chucking
under the chin, whilst the trumpeter takes a sarcastic pleasure, we may
suppose, in sounding all the louder the call "to arms."