marines and landscapes. He loved to frame familiar and rustic scenes in
beautiful landscapes; and he had no need to call upon others, such as
Barent Gael, Schellinkx or Van de Velde, for his figures, as so many of
his contemporaries did.
=Painters of Architectural Pictures: De Vries.=--Pictures in which
architecture forms the chief interest had their beginning with Jan
Vriedeman de Vries, who devoted himself to the study of Vitruvius and
Serlio. His works were very successful, though in the mannered taste of
his time.
=Hendrik van Steenwyck and his Son.=--A scholar of his, Hendrik van
Steenwyck (1550-1604), who became a master in Antwerp in 1577, painted
chiefly interiors of Gothic churches of fine perspective, both lineal
and aerial, and was the first to represent the light of torches and
tapers on architectural forms. One of the very numerous Francken family
usually added the human figures. His son Hendrik van Steenwyck was his
pupil and follower, though he painted in a cooler tone and was inferior
in all respects.
=Pieter Neeffs and his Son.=--Pieter Neeffs (1620-75), however, was the
elder Steenwyck's best pupil. He followed him in style but excelled him
in warmth of tone, power, and truthfulness in expressing torchlight
effects. Many of his pictures contain figures by Frans Francken the
younger, Jan Breughel, and David Teniers the elder. In the Mauritshuis
we find a good example of Pieter Neeffs,--The Interior of a Church, with
figures by Frans Francken III.
His son of the same name was his pupil and follower, but produced
pictures of inferior merit. To this group belongs Bartholomew van
Bassen, who painted interiors of the Renaissance churches and halls.
=Van der Heyden's Architectural Paintings.=--Jan van der Heyden
(1637-1712) is "the Gerrit Dou of architectural painters." His subjects
chiefly are well-known buildings, palaces, churches, etc., in Holland
and Belgium, canals in Dutch towns with houses on their banks, fine
perspective, the views selected with great taste. The trees are rather
minute in foliage. The figures in many of his works were supplied by A.
van de Velde, and after his death by Eglon van der Neer and Lingelbach.
A View of the Church of the Jesuits at Dusseldorf, signed and dated
1667, is a valuable work. The figures are by A. van de Velde. "The warm,
clear chiaroscuro in which the whole foreground is kept is admirable,
while the sunlight falling on the middle distance has a peculiar
charm."[10] He is also represented in The Hague Gallery by a still life.
=Other Architectural Painters.=--Other architectural painters are Gerrit
Berckheyde, who painted exteriors of buildings in his own country, and
occasionally interiors of churches; Jacob van der Ulft (1627-90), whose
large picture in the Mauritshuis of troops marching has already been
mentioned; Pieter Saenredam, whose works form a transition from the
earliest architectural painters like Pieter Neeffs to the maturest
expression of this class; Dirck van Deelen, a pupil of Frans Hals, who
has a view of the Binnenhof with the last great Meeting of the States
General; Emanuel de Witte, who, strange to say, was a pupil of Evert van
Aelst, the painter of dead game and still life; Hendrik van Vliet, pupil
of his father, Willem, who has an interior of part of the Old Church at
Delft in the Mauritshuis, of peculiar warmth, brilliancy of effect, and
delicate treatment of reflected lights; and last of all, Gerard
Houckgeest (?-1655), who is represented by the Interior of the New
Church at Delft and Tomb of William I. in the New Church at Delft.
=The Excellence of Houckgeest's two Paintings.=--"This almost unknown
artist is a new proof of the astonishing efflorescence of excellent
painters in Holland about the middle of the seventeenth century. Two
views of the Interior of the New Church at Delft, in The Hague Museum,
are on a level with the highest development of the school. It would be
difficult to render the brilliancy and transparency of full sunlight
more completely than in the one which contains the monuments of the
Princes of the House of Orange. The other picture also, inscribed with
the master's monogram, and 1631, is in every respect, and especially
in the soft and full treatment, of the utmost excellence."[11]
=Dou, Founder of the Leyden School.=--The founder of the Leyden school
of painters, Gerrit Dou (1613-75), is represented in the Mauritshuis by
a masterpiece of the first rank, which is considered one of the gems of
the gallery. It is known as The Good Housekeeper, The Household, and The
Young Mother.
=Description of The Good Housekeeper.=--In a large room that serves as
hall, dining-room, and sitting-room, as well as kitchen, is seated a
lady, handsomely dressed in a morning costume. She has evidently just
returned from market; for there is a plucked fowl in a basket on the
window seat and an unplucked bird on the table, where a cabbage also
lies. A hare hangs on the wall above, and below the table one notes a
fish on a platter, and near a pot a bunch of carrots. A lantern has
fallen on the floor in the foreground. The lady is sewing, with a basket
beside her and a sewing-pillow on her knee; while a little servant
watches the baby in its basket cradle. The pillar that supports the roof
is carved, the brass chandelier is of splendid design, the draperies are
heavy, and a coat-of-arms is painted on the windows. Everything betokens
wealth and comfort.
The young mother looks at us in a very friendly way with her attractive
little face. Our attention is first attracted to the group in the
foreground; but gradually we admire the complete representation of all
the little things around; the wonderful, finely expressed chiaroscuro,
the beautiful stream of light, and the boldness of the shadowed yet
plainly visible group in the background. The picture belongs to the
artist's middle period and is dated 1658; and although it has darkened,
it is still full of rich color.
[Illustration: GERRIT DOU
The Good Housekeeper]
=The Good Housekeeper presented to Charles II.=--When Charles II. left
Holland for his Restoration in England, the directors of the East India
Company could think of no finer present to offer him than a picture by
Gerrit Dou, which they bought for 4,000 florins from M. de Bie. It was
this very picture of The Good Housekeeper, which was afterwards brought
back to Holland by William III. and hung in his castle at Loo.
=Dou's Style imitated by his Pupils.=--It is by such pictures that we
test the numerous works of his pupils, which are now, and have been from
the end of the seventeenth century, offered for sale as Dou's. Very
early in life Dou made use of magnifying glasses, and with great care he
ground his own colors. Sandart relates that he once went with Pieter de
Laer to pay a visit to Dou, who was painting a broomstick "which was
slightly longer than a finger-nail." When Sandart praised his great
industry, he answered that he "had to work about three days longer on
it."
=His Devotedness to his Work.=--When the weather was not fine, he
stopped his work. He devoted his whole life to work. His palette,
colors, and brushes he carefully protected from dust, which gave him
much trouble; he put them away with the utmost care, and when he sat
down to paint he would wait a long time until the dust had entirely
settled. His studio was a large one with high lights, facing the north
and looking out on the still waters of the canal.
=His Fondness for Domestic Subjects.=--He almost always depicts a view
of the interior of a burgher's dwelling. He is the painter of nice,
quiet domesticity, and his people almost invariably look gay and happy.
When he attempts to portray strong emotions, his people do not look as
if they felt them; even his Dropsical Woman in the Louvre is dying
peacefully and with resignation. Dou was an excellent observer of all
surroundings, and the slightest objects in his pictures are represented
with the utmost completeness. Dou could readily please, and form a
school, in a Northern and Protestant country, where people lead an
indoor life, a silent, concentrated family life, where man is attached
to his dwelling, adorns it with care, and closes it in, with the feeling
of a sanctuary. In fact, Dou painted only familiar subjects on canvases
or panels of small size, such as are suited to the small cabinet of a
_curieux_, and he was one of the first to set in honor the most
_recherche_ style of painting in Holland,--that of little pictures
executed in that precious manner which the French of the eighteenth
century called the _beau fini_.
=Dou and Rembrandt contrasted.=--Dou differed greatly from his master,
Rembrandt. The one had the fire of genius; the other had patience. Even
when Rembrandt highly finished his pictures, he knew when to neglect
some accessory, to sacrifice some detail to the expression of the
essential parts, and thus to give full value to everything in the
picture that could appeal to the heart or interest the mind. Dou, on the
contrary, applying himself to what he considered the last word of
painting, tried to give equal importance to everything that entered into
his composition, without admitting any of those negligences that are
often such happy artifices, and taking as much care in the finish of a
pewter pot as in expressing the feeling in a woman's features, or the
thought in a man's physiognomy. Therefore, Dou's natural tendency,
instead of being modified by Rembrandt, became only more pronounced. As
his master broadened, his manner grew more smooth and polished.
=The Fruit of Dou's Precautions.=--His care in making his own brushes,
colors, and varnishes, and his precautions to keep his wet canvases free
from dust (he chose a studio overlooking stagnant water) have been
rewarded by the present condition of admirable preservation of his
pictures. His minuteness wearied his sitters and he soon failed as a
portrait-painter. It is related that he made a distinguished Dutch lady,
Madame Spiering, pose five days for her hand alone.
=He forsakes Portraits for Scenes in Common Life.=--As his sitters left
him one after another, Dou devoted himself entirely to represent the
scenes of common life without giving himself any trouble in selection,
being sure that in them he would find opportunities to display his
veritable genius, that of detail. He was content to take what first
offered as a subject, and the circle of his invention did not go beyond
that. He simply observed life in the neighboring shops: the
pepper-seller, when she is dangling the scales with the tips of her
fingers; the marketwoman verifying the transparence of her eggs by the
light of a candle, and the mysterious interior of the barber-surgeon. If
he sees in the street a servant coming home from market loaded with
vegetables, counting what she has spent and what she is going to steal
from the change, there is a picture already made. In the public square
he stops to study the faces of the simple dupes gathered around a
charlatan vaunting his elixir, teaching the practice of love-philtres,
and drawing teeth painlessly. His artist's eye finds motives readily at
hand; sometimes in the room of the embroiderer, absorbed in her
needlework; sometimes in the juvenile schoolroom, where the martinet
overawes his frolicsome pupils. He also delights in representing the
joys of the domestic hearth, that ever simple and ever charming picture
of the _mater familias_ busy with household cares, while the children
are rolling about on the floor at their grandmother's feet. Finally, he
sometimes goes so far as to be malicious and to complicate the
picturesque accidents of a winding staircase which a woman descends
softly to surprise her husband in the kitchen with the servant.
The simplicity of trivialities Dou made the subject of the finest and
most precious pictures in the world. The Herring Seller is as finely and
minutely painted as The Philosopher in Meditation.
=He preferred Interiors to Open-Air Scenes.=--Dou seldom painted
open-air pictures. Interior light suited him better; and moreover he had
learned chiaroscuro from Rembrandt. However, one of his most famous
pictures, The Charlatan (in the Old Pinakothek, Munich), is an
exception.
"Upon the whole, the single figure of the Woman Holding a Hare, in Mr.
Hope's collection, is worth more than this large picture, in which
perhaps there is ten times the quantity of work."[12]
=His Foreground in Many Cases bordered by a Window.=--His small pictures
of one or two figures were usually framed by a window. He has often
painted his own portrait thus, sometimes holding a trumpet, and
sometimes playing a violin. Having once found this natural border, the
painter framed all his models with it. To-day we see the girl with
beautiful blond hair blowing soap bubbles and smilingly watching the
prismatic globes rise in the air; to-morrow, the pretty girl who is not
sorry to have on her window-sill more than one pretext for showing
herself,--the canary-cage, hanging outside; a letter to read; a pot of
geraniums to water, and what not. And this fresh face, which has for a
background the transparent shadow of a room wherein a group of people
are conversing, comes forward to be gracefully framed by the vine that
runs along the sash, and with its contours relieves the cold regularity
of the architecture.
It is certain that this patient imitator of nature must have been very
industrious, if we may judge from the number of his pictures and the
time he devoted to each. His pupil, Karel de Moor, says so. The
pronounced liking of his countrymen for his pictures left him no repose.
=The Best Example of his Candle-light Scenes.=--He frequently painted by
the aid of a concave mirror, and to obtain exactness, looked at his
subject through a frame crossed with squares of silk thread. The Evening
School, in the Amsterdam Gallery, is the best example of the
candle-light scenes in which he excelled. President van Spiering of The
Hague paid him 1,000 florins a year simply for the right of preemption.
=Godfried Schalcken, Pupil and Imitator of Dou.=--The other picture
credited to Dou, A Young Woman Holding a Lamp in her Hand, and which was
so greatly admired by Sir Joshua Reynolds, is thought to be by Godfried
Schalcken (1643-1706). Those who are curious on this question may turn
to a picture by Schalcken called a Lady at her Toilette, by
candle-light, an effect which he was so fond of painting.
=His Device for securing Candle-light Effects.=--Schalcken was a pupil
of Dou, under whom he acquired delicacy of finish and skill in the
treatment of light and shade. He gained a reputation for his small
domestic scenes, chiefly with candle-light effects; and, to treat these
accurately, he is said to have placed the object he intended to paint in
a dark room with a lighted candle and peeping through a small hole
painted by daylight the effects he saw. A pupil of Samuel van
Hoogstraaten and Gerrit Dou (who were pupils of Rembrandt), he became an
imitator of the latter, following him in his depth of tone, extreme
finish, and preference for night scenes.
=Schalcken's Weakness in Drawing.=--Blanc says he was aware of his
weakness in drawing, particularly the extremities of the human body, and
this was one reason he liked partly to conceal his subjects in shadows
and half-lights. His master, Dou, had made a sensation with his Evening
School (in the Rijks) in which the effect of candle-light is treated
with such skill; but what was a caprice with Dou, Schalcken made a
habit. His pictures are a series of fantastic scenes and illusions. This
painter saw the night only; his pictures whether mythological,
historical, religious, or commonplace scenes, are always nocturnal ones.
Blanc says: "His brush was a permanent candle."
=His Great Popularity.=--Schalcken, however, attained an enormous vogue,
and many of the wealthy Dutch had their portraits painted by him,
pleased with the mysterious or piquant light he threw upon them. He went
to London, where he painted William III. with a candle in his hand. This
is now in the Rijks. Schalcken found Kneller too strong a rival, and
returned to Holland, having, however, acquired a good deal of money. The
Mauritshuis also contains four others of his pictures: a Portrait of
William III., King of England; _La morale inutile_; A Visit to the
Doctor; and a Venus.
=The Best Examples of Ostade's Work.=--Among the best recognized
examples of Ostade's work are: The Fiddler and his Audience (1673) and
Peasants in an Inn (1662), in The Hague; The Village School (1662), in
the Louvre; the Tavern Courtyard (1670), at Cassel; and The Sportsman's
Rest (1671), at Amsterdam.
=Description of The Fiddler.=--One of the gems of The Hague Gallery is
The Fiddler by Adriaen van Ostade (1610-85). The old dilapidated inn
with its broken casement window is picturesque because of the graceful
festoons of vine-leaves that grow above the roof and penthouse. A
wandering fiddler is playing to the innkeeper and his wife, who lean
over the door, while five children and a dog are variously grouped. A
young man with a large tankard in his hand also enjoys the music in his
lazy position.
[Illustration: A. VAN OSTADE
The Fiddler]
=Description of Peasants in an Inn.=--"Peasants in an Inn was painted
in 1662; but it exhibits all the qualities of Ostade's best work. The
figures are drawn true to life. Very charming is the poodle gazing
with great interest at the child, who is eating his bread and butter.
By allowing the full daylight to fall from the left through the door
while the background is lighted by a high window, Ostade gives himself
every opportunity to express his chiaroscuro as beautifully as he
desires. The little pot on the tree-trunk and all the other still life
of this picture forcibly remind us that Ostade was an unusually great
master in this field. His small pictures of still life, principally
representing pots and other kitchen stuff, are pearls of the first
water; but they are somewhat rare. The coloring of this picture is
warm, but it melts into cool tones, which we find still more strongly
in The Organ Grinder of the same gallery, which was painted eleven
years later."[13]
The Demand in Marriage, painted between 1650 and 1655, also hangs in the
Mauritshuis. This picture is owned by Dr. A. Bredius.
=Ostade's Pictures Generally taken from Low Life.=--The number of
Ostade's pictures as given by Smith is 385; but it is thought that he
painted even more. About 220 pictures have been traced in public and
private collections.
Adriaen Ostade was the contemporary of David Teniers and Adriaen
Brouwer, and, like them, chiefly devoted himself to painting rustic and
village life, tavern and gambling scenes, brawls and open-air games.
Smokers, drinkers, fish-wives, quacks, strolling musicians, itinerant
players, wood-cutters, children at play, alehouse-keepers and their
wives, all find sympathetic treatment. Like Brouwer, Ostade wandered
about the towns and country, finding his models in the taverns and
cottages.
=Increase in the Value of his Pictures.=--He painted with equal vigor at
all times; and so highly appreciated is he that pictures worth little in
his day now bring large sums. For instance, in 1876 Earl Dudley paid
L4,120 for a cottage interior. According to Houbraken, Ostade was a
pupil of Frans Hals, while he was also teaching Brouwer.
=Crowe's Opinion of Ostade's Style.=--"There is less of the style of
Hals in Adriaen Ostade than in Brouwer, but a great likeness to
Brouwer in Ostade's early works. During the first years of his career,
Ostade displayed the same tendency to exaggeration and frolic as his
comrade. He had humor and boisterous spirits, but he is to be
distinguished from his rival by a more general use of the principles
of light and shade, and especially by a greater concentration of light
on a small surface in contrast with a broad expanse of gloom. The key
of his harmonies remains for a time in the scale of grays. But his
treatment is dry and careful, and in this style he shuns no
difficulties of detail, representing cottages inside and out, with the
vine leaves covering the poorness of the outer side, and nothing
inside to deck the patch-work of rafters and thatch, or tumble-down
chimneys and ladder staircases, that make up the sordid interior of
the Dutch rustic of those days. His men and women, attuned to these
needy surroundings, are invariably dressed in the poorest clothes. The
hard life and privations of the race are impressed on their shapes and
faces, their shoes and hats, worn at heel and battered to softness, as
if they had descended from generation to generation, so that the boy
of ten seems to wear the cast-off things of his sire and grandsire. It
was not easy to get poetry out of such materials. But the greatness of
Ostade lies in the fact that he often caught the poetic side of the
life of the peasant class, in spite of its ugliness and stunted form
and misshapen features. He did so by giving their vulgar sports, their
quarrels, even their quieter moods of enjoyment, the magic light of
the sungleam, and by clothing the wreck of cottages with gay
vegetation."[14]
=Ostade the Greatest Dutch Painter of Peasant Life in his Day.=--Adriaen
van Ostade is rightly regarded as the greatest of the Dutch painters of
the seventeenth century who represented the peasant life of that day. In
song and dance, weddings and _kermesses_, at bowling, love-making, and
drinking, Ostade always was an observer of country folk, although he
himself was a townsman, and held a rather exalted position in the world.
His second wife seems to have raised him into a very high social class
of Amsterdam families, as numerous records of executions of wills, which
the painter must have signed in Amsterdam, inform us. To some extent,
his peasants involuntarily progress parallel with the force of his own
life. In his earliest pictures, when Ostade was still a modest artist,
his peasants are also still quite peasant-like; in his tavern-scenes
things are still very lively. Later, when the painter became closely
related to refined and well-to-do patricians, his peasants also became
more prosperous and polite; in a word, more decorous. Unfortunately, his
painting also became somewhat more polished and smooth, so that the
early pictures, and particularly those of the middle period, more
strongly delight the heart of an artist than the cool, smooth works of
the later period. Ostade is eminent in his coloring, chiaroscuro, and
composition: he knows how to arrange his groups in the most spontaneous
and natural manner; and truly artistic is his method of illumination,
for which, knowingly or unknowingly, he has to thank Rembrandt. In his
earliest pictures, which have a somewhat cold tone grading into gray,
reminding us of his teacher Hals (from 1631 to 1640), there still
remains some local color. The subjects, mostly peasants in poor homes or
in the tavern, are energetically conceived. Bode rightly says:
"Instead of the pleasant humor and the poetry of the prosperous middle
class which are common to the later pictures, these earlier works
display an effort for characterizing according to life and movement; a
keen humor in the spirit of Hals and Brouwer; and, particularly, a
characteristic inquiry into the separate individualities, such as the
lifelike representation of an expressive scene, the feasting, round
dances, and fighting of his jovial peasant folk."