gallery, a landscape, horses, fowls, and fruit--that Albert Cuyp who
holds a unique place in Dutch art, who in the course of a prolonged
life painted portraits, landscapes, animals, flowers, winter pieces,
moonlight scenes, marine subjects, figures, and in each style left an
imprint of originality. But nevertheless, like most of the Dutch
painters of his time, he was so unfortunate that until 1750, more than
fifty years after his death, his paintings sold for a hundred francs,
whereas they now would bring a hundred thousand francs--not in
Holland, but in England, where most of his works are owned.
Heemskerk's "Christ at the Sepulchre" would not be worth mentioning
if it were not an excuse for introducing the artist, who was one of
the most curious creatures that ever walked the face of the earth. Van
Veen--such is his real name--was born in the village of Heemskerk at
the end of the fifteenth century, and flourished at the period of
Italian imitation. He was the son of a peasant, and, although he had
an inclination toward art, he was intended for a peasant. He became a
painter by chance, like many other Dutch artists. His father had a
furious temper, and the son was very much afraid of him. One day poor
Van Veen dropped the milk-jug; his father flew at him, but he ran out
of the house and spent the night somewhere else. The next morning his
mother found him, and, thinking it would be unsafe for him to face the
paternal anger, she gave him a small quantity of linen, a little
money, and commended him to the care of God. The lad went to Haarlem,
and, obtaining an entrance to the studio of a famous artist, he
studied, succeeded, and then went to Rome to perfect himself. He did
not become a great artist, for the imitation of the Italian school
spoiled him: his treatment of the nude was stiff and his style full of
mannerisms, but he painted a great deal and was well paid, and did not
regret his early life. But herein consisted his peculiarity: he was,
as his biographers assert, a man incredibly, morbidly and ridiculously
timid. When he knew that the arquebusiers were to pass he climbed the
roofs and steeples, and trembled with fear when he saw their arms in
the street. If any one thinks this an idle story, there is a fact
which serves to prove it true: he was in the town of Haarlem when the
Spaniards besieged it, and the magistrates, who knew his weakness,
permitted him to flee from the city before they began to fight,
doubtless foreseeing that otherwise he would have died of fright. He
took advantage of the permission and fled to Amsterdam, leaving his
fellow-citizens in the lurch.
Other Dutch painters--for we are speaking of the men, not of their
pictures--like Heemskerk, owed their choice of a profession to
accident. Everdingen, of the first order of landscape-painters, owed
his choice to a tempest which wrecked his ship on the shore of Norway,
where he remained, was inspired by the grand natural scenery and
created an original style of landscape art. Cornelisz Vroom also owed
his fortune to a shipwreck: he was on his way to Spain with some
religious pictures; when the vessel was wrecked near the coast of
Portugal, the poor artist saved himself with others on an uninhabited
island, where they remained two days without food. They considered
themselves as good as lost, when they were unexpectedly relieved by
some monks from a monastery on the coast, whither the sea had borne
the hulk of the vessel with the pictures, which were unharmed. These
the monks considered admirable. Thus was Cornelisz sheltered,
welcomed, and stimulated to paint, and the profound emotions
occasioned by the wreck gave his genius such a new and powerful
impulse that he became a real artist. Another, Hans Fredeman, the
famous trick painter who painted some columns on the frame of a
drawing-room door so cleverly that Charles V. turned round to look as
soon as he had entered, and thought that the walls had suddenly closed
behind him by enchantment,--this Hans Fredeman, who painted palisades
that made people turn back, doors which people attempted to open, owed
his fortune to a book on architecture by Vitruvius which he obtained
by chance from a carpenter.
There is a good little picture by Steen which represents a doctor
pretending to operate on a man who imagines himself to be sick: an old
woman is holding a basin, the invalid is shrieking desperately, and a
few curious neighbors, convulsed with laughter, look on from a window.
When one says that this picture makes one break into an irresistible
peal of laughter, one has said all that is necessary. After Rembrandt,
Steen is the most original figure-painter of the Dutch school; he is
one of those few artists whom, when once known, whether they are or
are not congenial to our taste, we must perforce admire as great
painters, and even if we consider them worthy of only secondary
honors, it matters not, they remain indelibly impressed on our minds.
After one has seen Steen's pictures it is impossible to see a
drunkard, a buffoon, a cripple, a dwarf, a deformed face, a ridiculous
smirk, a grotesque attitude, without remembering one of his figures.
All the degrees of stupidity and of drunkenness, all the grossness and
mawkishness of orgies, the frenzy of the lowest pleasures, the
cynicism of the vulgarest vice, the buffoonery of the wildest rabble,
all the most brutal emotions, the basest aspects of tavern and
alehouse life, have been painted by him with the brutality and
insolence of an unscrupulous man, and with such a sense of the comic,
such an impetuosity, such an intoxication of inspiration, one might
say that words cannot express the effect produced. Writers have
devoted many volumes to him, and have advanced many different opinions
about him. His warmest admirers have attributed to him a moral
purpose--that of making debauchery hateful by painting it as he did in
repulsive colors, for the same reason that the Spartans showed drunken
Helots to their sons. Others see in his paintings only the spontaneous
and thoughtless expression of the spirit and taste of the artist, whom
they represent as a vulgar debauchee. However this may be, there is no
doubt that in the effects produced Steen's painting may be considered
a satire on vice, and in this he is superior to almost all the Dutch
painters, who restricted themselves to an external realism. Hence he
was called the Dutch Hogarth, the jovial philosopher, the keenest
observer of the habits of his countrymen, and one among his admirers
has said that if Steen had been born at Rome instead of at Leyden, and
had Michelangelo instead of Van Goyen been his master, he would have
been one of the greatest painters in the world. Another finds some
kind of analogy between him and Raphael. The technical qualities of
his paintings are much less admired, his work has not the finish nor
the strength of the other artists, such as Ostade, Mieris, and Dou.
But, even taking into consideration its satirical character, one must
say that Steen has often exceeded his purpose if he really had a
purpose. The fury with which he pursued the burlesque often got the
better of his feeling for reality; his figures, instead of being
merely ridiculous, became monstrous and hardly human, often resembling
beasts rather than men, and he has exaggerated these figures until
sometimes he awakens, a feeling of nausea instead of mirth, and a
sense of indignation that nature should be so outraged. The effect he
produces is generally a laugh,--a loud, irresistible laugh, which
bursts from one even when alone and calls the people away from the
neighboring pictures. It is impossible to carry further than Steen did
the art of flattening noses, twisting mouths, shortening necks, making
wrinkles, rendering faces stupid, putting on humps, and making his
puppets seem as if they were roaring with laughter, vomiting, reeling,
or falling. By the leer of a half-closed eye he expressed idiocy and
sensuality; by a sneer or a gesture he revealed the brutality of a
man. He makes one smell the odor of a pipe, hear the coarse laughter,
guess at the stupid or foul discourses--to understand, in a word,
tavern-life and the dregs of the people; and I maintain that it is
impossible to carry this art to a higher point than that to which
Steen has carried it.
His life has been and still is a vexed question. Volumes have been
written to prove that he was a drunkard, and volumes to prove that he
was a sober man; and, as is always the case, both sides exaggerate. He
kept an alehouse at Delft, but it did not pay; then he set up a tavern
and things went worse. It is said that he was its most assiduous
frequenter, that he would drink up all the wine, and that when the
cellar was empty he would take down the sign, close the door, and
begin to paint furiously, and when he had sold his pictures he would
buy more wine and begin life again. It is even said that he paid for
everything with his pictures, and that consequently all his paintings
were to be found in wine-merchants' houses. It is really difficult to
explain how he could have painted such a large number of admirable
works if he was always intoxicated, but it is no less difficult to
understand why he had a taste for such subjects if he led a steady,
sober life. It is certain that, especially during the last years of
his life, he committed every sort of extravagance. He at first
studied under the famous landscape painter Van Goyen, but genius
worked in him more powerfully than study; he divined the rules of his
art, and if it sometimes seems that he has painted too black, as some
of his critics have said, it was the fault of an extra bottle of wine
at dinner.
Steen is not the only Dutch painter who, whether deservedly or not,
won a reputation for drunkenness. At one time nearly all the artists
passed the greater part of their day in the taverns, where they became
famously drunk, fell to fighting, and whence they came out bruised and
bleeding. In a poem upon painting by Karel van Mander, who was the
first to write the history of the painters of the Netherlands, there
occurs a passage directed against drunkenness and the habit of
fighting, part of which runs as follows: "Be sober and live so that
the unhappy proverb 'As debauched as a painter' may become 'As
temperate as an artist.'" To mention a few among the most famous
artists, Mieris was a notable winebibber, Van Goyen a drunkard, Franz
Hals, the master of Brouwer, a winesack, Brouwer an incorrigible
tippler; William Cornelis, and Hondecoeter were on the best terms with
the bottle. Many of the humbler painters are said to have died
intoxicated. Even in death the history of the Dutch painters presents
a thousand incongruities. The great Rembrandt expired in misery almost
without the knowledge of any; Hobbema died in the poor quarter of
Amsterdam; Steen died in poverty; Brouwer died at a hospital; Andrew
Both and Henry Verschuringh were drowned; Adrian Bloemaert met his
death in a duel; Karel Fabritius was killed by the explosion of a
powder-magazine; Johann Schotel died, brush in hand, of a stroke of
apoplexy; Potter died of consumption; Lucas of Leyden was poisoned.
So, what with shameful deaths, debauchery, and jealousy, one may say
that a great part of the Dutch painters have had an unhappy fate.
In the gallery at Rotterdam there is a beautiful head by Rembrandt; a
scene of brigands by Wouverman, a great painter of horses and battles;
a landscape by Van Goyen, the painter of dead shores and leaden skies;
a marine painting by Bakhuisen, the painter of storms; a painting by
Berghem, the painter of smiling landscapes; one by Everdingen, the
painter of waterfalls and forests; and other paintings belonging to
the Italian and Flemish schools.
On leaving the museum I met a company of soldiers, the first Dutch
soldiers I had seen. Their uniform was dark colored, without any showy
ornaments, and they were all fair from first to last, and wore their
hair long, and almost all of them had a peaceful, happy look, which
seemed in strange contrast with the arms they bore. Rotterdam, a city
of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants, has a garrison of three
hundred soldiers! And it is said that Rotterdam has the name of being
the most turbulent and unruly city in Holland! In fact, some time ago
there was a popular demonstration against the municipality, which had
no consequences but a few broken windows. But in a country like this,
which runs by clockwork, it must have seemed, and did truly seem, a
great event; the cavalry was sent from the Hague, the country was in
commotion. One must not think, however, that this people is all sugar;
the citizens of Rotterdam confess that "the holy rabble," as Carducci
calls it, is stoutly licentious, as is the case in other towns of
worse reputation; the lack of police is rather an incentive to license
than a proof, as some might think, of public discipline.
* * * * *
Rotterdam, as I have already said, is a city neither artistic nor
literary; on the contrary, it is one of the few Dutch cities that have
not given birth to some great painter--an unproductiveness shared by
the whole of Zealand. Erasmus, however, is not its only man of
letters. In a little park that extends to the right of the town on the
bank of the Meuse there is a marble statue raised by the inhabitants
of Rotterdam to honor the poet Tollens, who was born at the end of
last century and died a few years ago. This Tollens, whom some dare to
call the Beranger of Holland, was (and in this alone he resembles
Beranger) one of the most popular poets of the country--one of those
poets of which there were so many in Holland, simple, moral, and fall
of common sense, having, in fact, more good sense than inspiration;
who treated poetry as if it were a business; who never wrote anything
that could displease their prudent relatives and judicious friends;
who sang of their good God and their good king, and expressed the
tranquil and practical character of the people, always taking care to
say things that were exact rather than great, and, above all,
cultivating poetry in old age, and like prudent fathers of families
not stealing a moment from the pursuit of their business. Like many
other Dutch poets (who, however, had more genius and different
natures), he had another profession besides that of an author. Vondel,
for instance, was a hatmaker; Hooft was the governor of Muyden; Van
Lennep was a fiscal lawyer; Gravenswaert was a state counsellor;
Bogaers, an advocate; Beets, a shepherd; so Tollens also, besides
being a man of letters, was an apothecary at Rotterdam, and passed
every day, even in his old age, in his drug-store. He had a family and
loved his children tenderly--so at least one would conclude from the
different pieces of poetry he wrote on the appearance of their first,
second, and third teeth. He wrote ballads and odes on familiar and
patriotic subjects. Among these is the national hymn of Holland, a
mediocre production which the people sing about the streets and the
boys chant at school. There is a little poem, perhaps the best of his
works, on the expedition which the Dutch sent to the Polar Sea
toward the end of the sixteenth century. The people learn his poetry
by heart, adore him, and prefer him as their most faithful interpreter
and most affectionate friend. But, for all this, Tollens is not
considered in Holland as a first-class poet, many do not even rank him
in the second class, while not a few disdainfully refuse to give him
the sacred laurels.
[Illustration: Statue of Tollens.]
After all, if Rotterdam is not a centre of literature and art, she has
as compensation an extraordinary number of philanthropic institutions,
splendid clubs, and all the comforts and diversions of a city of
wealth and refinement.
The observations that I have had occasion to make on the character and
life of the inhabitants will be more to the purpose at the Hague. I
will only mention that in Rotterdam, as in other Dutch cities, no one,
in speaking of their country's affairs, showed the least national
vanity. The expressions, "Isn't it beautiful?" "What do you think of
that?"--which one hears every moment in other countries, are never
heard in Holland, even when the inhabitants are speaking of things
that are universally admired. Every time that I told a citizen of
Rotterdam that I liked the town he made a gesture of surprise. In
speaking of their commerce and institutions they never let a vain
expression escape them, nor even a boastful or complacent word. They
always speak of what they are going to do, and never of what they have
done. One of the first questions put to me when I named my country
was, "What about its finances?" As to their own country, I observed
that they know all that it is useful to know, and very little that it
is simply a pleasure to know. A hundred things, a hundred parts of the
city, which I had observed when I had been twenty-four hours at
Rotterdam, many of the citizens had never seen; which proves that they
are not in the habit of rambling about and looking at everything.
When I took my leave my acquaintances filled my pockets with cigars,
counselled me to eat good nourishing dinners, and gave me advice on
the subject of economical travelling. They parted from me quietly.
There was no clamorous "What a pity you are going!" "Write soon!"
"Come back quickly!" "Don't forget us!" which rang in my ears on
leaving Spain. Here there was nothing but a hearty shake of the hand,
a look, and a simple good-bye.
On the morning when I left Rotterdam I saw in the streets through
which I passed to get to the Delft railway-station a novel spectacle,
purely Dutch--the cleaning of the houses, which takes place twice a
week in the early morning hours. All the servants in the city, dressed
in flowered lilac-colored wrappers, white caps, white aprons, white
stockings, and white wooden shoes, and with their sleeves turned up,
were busily washing the doors, the walls, and the windows. Some sat
courageously on the window-sills while they washed the panes of the
windows with sponges, turning their backs to the street with half
their bodies outside; others were kneeling on the pavement cleaning
the stones with rough cloths; others were standing in the middle of
the street armed with syringes, squirts, and pumps, with long rubber
tubes, like those used for watering gardens, and were sending against
the second-floor windows streams of water which were pouring down
again into the street; others were mopping the windows with sponges
and rags tied to the tops of long bamboo canes; others were burnishing
the door-knobs, rings, and door-plates; some were cleaning the
staircases, some the furniture, which they had carried out of the
houses. The pavements were blocked with buckets and pitchers, with
jugs, watering-pots, and benches; water ran down the walls and down
the street; jets of water were gushing out everywhere. It is a curious
thing that while labor in Holland is so slow and easy in all its
forms, this work presented an appearance altogether different. All
those girls with glowing faces were bustling indoors and hurrying out
again, rushing up stairs and down, tucking up their sleeves hastily,
assuming bold acrobatic attitudes and undergoing dangerous
contortions. They took no notice of those who passed by except when
with jealous eyes it was necessary to keep the profane race away from
the pavement and walls. In short, it was a furious rivalry of
cleanliness, a sort of general ablution of the city, which had about
it something childish and festive, and which made one fancy that it
was some rite of an eccentric religion which ordered its followers to
cleanse the town from a mysterious infection sent by malicious
spirits.
DELFT.
On my way from Rotterdam to Delft I saw for the first time the plains
of Holland.
The country is perfectly flat--a succession of green and flower-decked
meadows, broken by long rows of willows and clumps of alders and
poplars. Here and there appear the tops of steeples, the turning arms
of windmills, straggling herds of large black and white cattle, and an
occasional shepherd; then, for miles, only solitude. There is nothing
to attract the eye, there is neither hill nor valley. From time to
time the sail of a ship is seen in the distance, but as the vessel is
moving on an invisible canal, it seems to be gliding over the grass of
the meadows as it is hidden for a moment behind the trees and then
reappears. The wan light lends a gentle, melancholy influence to the
landscape, while a mist almost imperceptible makes all things appear
distant. There is a sense of silence to the eye, a peace of outline
and color, a repose in everything, so that the vision grows dim and
the imagination sleeps.
Not far from Rotterdam the town of Schiedam comes into view,
surrounded by very high windmills, which give it the appearance of a
fortress crowned with turrets; and far away can be seen the towers of
the village of Vlaardingen, one of the principal stations of the
herring-fisheries.
Between Schiedam and Delft I observed the windmills with great
attention. Dutch windmills do not at all resemble the decrepit mills I
had seen in the previous year at La Mancha, which seemed to be
extending their thin arms to implore the aid of heaven and earth. The
Dutch mills are large, strong, and vigorous, and Don Quixote would
certainly have hesitated before running atilt at them. Some are built
of stone or bricks, and are round or octagonal like mediaeval towers;
others are of wood, and look like boxes stuck on the summits of
pyramids. Most of them are thatched. About midway between the roof and
the ground they are encircled by a wooden platform. Their windows are
hung with white curtains, their doors are painted green, and on each
door is written the use which it serves. Besides drawing water, the
windmills do a little of everything: they grind grain, pound rags,
crumble lime, crush stones, saw wood, press olives, and pulverize
tobacco. A windmill is as valuable as a farm, and it takes a
considerable fortune to build one and provide it with colza, grain,
flour, and oil to keep it working, and to sell its products.
Consequently, in many places the riches of a proprietor are measured
by the number of mills he owns; an inheritance is counted by mills,
and they say of a girl that she has so many windmills as dowry, or,
even better, so many steam-mills; and fortune-hunters, who are to be
found everywhere, sue for the maiden's hand to marry the mill. These
countless winged towers scattered through the country give the
landscape a singular appearance; they animate the solitude. At night
in the midst of the trees they have a fantastic appearance, and look
like fabulous birds gazing at the sky. By day in the distance they
look like enormous pieces of fireworks; they turn, stop, curb and
slacken their speed, break the silence by their dull and monotonous
tick-tack, and when by chance they catch fire--which not infrequently
happens, especially in the case of flour-mills--they form a wheel of
flame, a furious rain of burning meal, a whirlwind of smoke, a tumult,
a dreadful magnificent brilliance that gives one the idea of an
infernal vision.
[Illustration: Near the Arsenal, Delft]
In the railway-carriage, although it was full of people, I had no
opportunity of speaking or of hearing a word spoken. The passengers
were all middle-aged men with serious faces, who looked at each other
in silence, puffing out great clouds of smoke at regular intervals as
if they were measuring time by their cigars. When we arrived at Delft
I greeted them as I passed out, and some of them responded by a slight
movement of the lips.
"Delft," says Lodovico Guicciardini, "is named after a ditch, or
rather the canal of water which leads from the Meuse, since in the
vulgar tongue a ditch is generally called _delft_. It is distant two
leagues from Rotterdam, and is a town truly great and most beautiful
in every part, having goodly and noble edifices and wide streets,
which are lively withal. It was founded by Godfrey, surnamed the
Hunchback, duke of Lorraine, he who for the space of four years
occupied the country of Holland."