van Mieris was a pupil of his father, and at first had no other ambition
than to imitate his style and produce those charming Conversations in
which rich furniture, shining chandeliers of brass or copper, Japanese
porcelains, silken curtains, Turkish table-carpets, flowers, and
elegantly dressed people make a somewhat restricted, although
delightful, world. Willem, falling under the influence of Gerard de
Lairesse, who was much in vogue in Holland, selected such subjects as a
young lady playing on the clavecin, or making lace, or walking in the
country in a lilac satin robe with large sleeves that reveal through
their slashes a beautiful arm, and a straw hat ornamented with a
sweeping plume. Becoming a shepherdess this attractive lady next sits in
his pictures with bare feet, in the shade of an oak, and beside her
Corydon talks of love.
=His Success with Mythical and Biblical Subjects.=--Next he turned his
attention to subjects from fable, romance, and mythology; and Diana,
Armida, Cleopatra, Bacchus, Jupiter, Tarquin, the Sabines, etc., fill
his panels or copper plates, which were hardly larger than your hand.
Biblical and religious subjects occupied him for a time and then he
again turned pagan. His success grew greater every day, and his Dutch
patrons who loved scenes of familiar life demanded from Van Mieris
pictures in the style of his famous father--those charming _genre_
pictures still being produced by Slingelandt, Van Tol, and other
imitators of Gerrit Dou.
=A Window-frame his Favorite Setting.=--Like Gerrit Dou, Willem van
Mieris selects a window-frame of stone, which he often decorates with
graceful creepers or a bouquet of tulips or jonquils placed on the sill,
or throws over it a bright piece of tapestry. From it a blond lady leans
to flirt with the unseen passer, a child blows bubbles, a portly dame
waters her flowers; or the artist himself sits calmly by. When tired of
this, Willem van Mieris takes us to his favorite shop.
=Arie de Vois.=--Among the portraits one must not fail to notice the
picture of A Huntsman Holding a Partridge by Arie de Vois (1630-80).
This was originally in the collection of William V. and was bought for
1,210 florins. His pictures are so rare that we are not surprised that
the Mauritshuis contains but one example. The Rijks is more fortunate in
owning four by this delightful painter.
=Abraham de Pape's Style.=--Abraham de Pape (1625-66), supposed to have
been a pupil of Gerrit Dou, is represented by An Old Woman Plucking a
Cock, with a little boy kneeling beside her. It is a very good example
of this master; and at the Gerrit Muller sale brought no less than 490
florins. Crowe says:
"This almost unknown artist is decidedly one of the best _genre_
painters of this time. He is true and speaking in action, animated in
his heads, harmonious, and even in some of his pictures warm in
coloring, and very careful and soft in execution."
=A. van der Werff's Biblical and Mythological Pictures.=--Adriaan van
der Werff (1659-1722) occupied a peculiar position among Dutch painters.
While his contemporaries were devoting themselves to the study of
nature and becoming realistic, he adhered to the pursuit of the
ideal and produced pictures inspired by Biblical or mythological
subjects,--pictures noted for their beauty and elegance, and moreover
finished with wonderful smoothness of touch, which he had learned from
his master Eglon van der Neer. His figures as a rule are small, and the
flesh-tints are of an ivory tone. Van der Werff was so popular that it
was impossible for him to execute all the commissions sent him. His
greatest patron was the Elector Palatine John William; the pictures that
Van der Werff painted for him are now in Munich, where this master may
best be studied.
=Description of The Flight into Egypt.=--He is fairly well represented
in the Rijks; but The Hague has only two of his works,--a Portrait of a
Man, dated 1689, and The Flight into Egypt, dated 1710. This is only one
foot six inches high and one foot two inches wide. The Virgin is in
profile in a Prussian-blue mantle, accompanied by St. Joseph, who is
leading an ass. The road runs by the side of a brook, and the landscape
is diversified with trees, ruins, and a portico. This picture was given
by the artist to his daughter, who sold it to Mr. Schuijlenberg for
4,000 florins. At the Schuijlenberg sale at The Hague in 1765 it brought
6,500 florins.
=Reynolds on Van der Werff's Manner.=--This picture was much admired by
Sir Joshua Reynolds, who saw it in the King's collection. In describing
Van der Werff's manner he said:
"He has also the defect which is often found in Rembrandt,--that of
making his light only a single spot. However, to do him justice his
figures and heads are generally well drawn and his drapery is
excellent; perhaps there are in his pictures as perfect examples of
drapery as are to be found in any other painter's work whatever."
=Philip van Dijk and his pupil, Louis de Moni.=--To this group belongs
Philip van Dijk (1680-1753), a pupil of Arnold Boonen, and an imitator
of Van der Werff. Judith with the Head of Holofernes is a good example
of his historical work; and two good _genre_ pictures, A Lady Playing
the Guitar, and A Lady at her Toilet, show this artist in a happier
mood, where he gives free play to his more delicate touch. His
Bookkeeper also hangs in this gallery. His pupil, Louis de Moni, shows
the decline of the school. An Old Woman and a Boy, in a window, the boy
blowing soap bubbles, is dated 1742.
=Ochtervelt a follower of Metsu and of Pieter de Hooch.=--Jacob van
Ochtervelt (?-1700), who occupies a first place among the second-rate
painters of his day, was a follower of Metsu and also of Pieter de
Hooch. The Fish Vender, representing a woman in a room where a man is
offering her fish, in conception and careful finish recalls Metsu, while
in lighting and combination of color it reminds one of Pieter de Hooch.
The general tone is warmer than most of Ochtervelt's pictures.
=Jan Steen's Favorite Subjects.=--One of the greatest of all the Dutch
_genre_ painters is Jan Steen (1626-79), "the jolly landlord of Leyden."
As a draughtsman and colorist he takes high rank, and as a student of
human nature he has been compared to Hogarth and Moliere. His pictures
are studies of life and character, and are full of humor. He paints
feasts and merry-makings, weddings, quacks, tavern-brawls, dentists,
invalids, children at play, family parties, etc., with sympathy and
joyousness.
=His Character-painting.=--As a character-painter, he is unapproachable.
Nobody so well as he has understood all human passions, all
emotions--hilarious joy, deep-seated satisfaction, fear, grief, and
_Weltschmerz_ with such mastery, and known how to represent them in the
smallest possible space.
=His Method of showing Background to Advantage.=--With regard to Jan
Steen's interiors it is interesting to note that, like Ostade's, they
are painted from an elevation, so that the figures in the background are
not hidden by those in the foreground. Ordinarily he opens a window in
the background to illuminate the distant figures and thus is formed an
echo of the principal light. The number of utensils is less than with
most painters of this class, for Jan Steen had too much sense to
multiply them uselessly. Like Metsu, he often painted little pictures on
the walls of his interiors, and it is singular that these depict heroic
landscapes, battle scenes, mythological subjects, etc., and never tavern
or _genre_ scenes such as he himself painted.
=Refinement and Culture in his Pictures.=--Another thing to notice is
that whether in houses of affluence or in common taverns his people do
not drink grossly and from jugs, as in the taverns of Adriaen Brouwer.
Each one takes his place gracefully and naturally at the table or in the
room; and the details of the furniture accord with the politeness of the
people or the players. On the mantelpiece, for instance, stands a bronze
figure of Love; a guitar hangs from one of the panels; and here hangs a
fine landscape in an ebony frame. The collation consists of delicious
fruits that rejoice the eyes; perhaps also open oysters, which glisten
in the light like pearls; ripe grapes and beautiful peaches, whose furry
skins are blushing like the cheeks of a young girl, and finally some
lemons half peeled, the skin falling in a golden spiral. All this shows
the influence of Van Mieris, who was a friend of Steen and who spent
many hours in his tavern at Leyden.
=Reynolds's Appreciation of Jan Steen.=--Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was so
delighted with the Steens he saw in Holland, wrote the following
appreciative criticism of the artist:
"Jan Steen has a strong manly style of painting, which might become
even the design of Raffaelle, and he has shown the greatest skill in
composition and management of light and shadow as well as great truth
in the expression and character of his figures."
=Jan Steen's Fondness for painting his own Family.=--Jan Steen was very
fond of painting his own family; his wives, his aged parents, and his
children provided him with varied models of assorted ages and sizes. He
had six children by his wife Marguerite van Goyen, daughter of the
painter; and when she died, he married a widow, named Mariette
Herkulens, who had two. He has characterized the pleasures of all ages
in his picture called The Family of Jan Steen, bearing the legend "_Soo
de ouden songen pypen de jongen._" (As the old ones sing so will the
young ones pipe.) This is particularly interesting, because the artist
has painted himself between his wife Marguerite van Goyen and Mariette
Herkulens, who was destined to be his second wife. They were both quite
handsome, especially Marguerite. Mariette Herkulens was a meat vender.
=How he ridiculed the Physicians.=--Physicians were always butt for
Steen's caustic wit. It was a common practice in the seventeenth century
to turn them into ridicule; and as Moliere brought them on the French
stage, Jan Steen painted them with all their charlatanism and gravity
and that severity of costume so studied for effect.
=Description of The Young Lady who is Ill.=--The Hague Gallery contains
two of these,--one known as The Young Lady who is Ill (sometimes called
The Doctor Feeling the Pulse of a Young Woman). In this picture a doctor
dressed in black, with a pointed hat like that worn by Sagnarelle in the
_Medecin malgre lui_, is seated at the bedside of a young and pretty
girl with round arms and clear, pale complexion, who looks with interest
at the potion that is being prepared according to the doctor's
instructions. The latter pretends to be looking at the medicine which an
elegant woman is bringing, but he is really looking at the beautiful
throat of the blond and well-dressed Dutch lady, who lowers her eyes,
charmed to let him gaze at her brilliant white neck, her little
_retrousse_ nose, and her hair arranged _a la Ninon_, which is half
covered with a sort of black cap. "If it were not for a little touch of
malice and certain inconsistencies in the somewhat careless execution,"
Blanc says, "this picture might pass for a Van Mieris or a Metsu."
=Description of The Doctor's Visit.=--In The Doctor's Visit, a physician
dressed in black, with pointed hat and holding his gloves in one hand,
with the other is feeling the pulse of a young lady who is sitting near
her bed in a _neglige_ costume. With a very knowing and solicitous
manner the doctor seems to interrogate the throbs of the pulse; but
while he seeks for the secret of the illness, the chamber-maid has found
it out, as her glance indicates; and, that you may not be left in doubt,
the painter has placed on the corner of the chimney a little statue of
Love the Conqueror. In some of his pictures of this class Steen adds the
legend "_Wat baet hier medecyn--het is der minne pijn_" (Of what use is
medicine here? Love is the trouble).
=Other Pictures by Jan Steen, in the Mauritshuis.=--In addition to those
already mentioned, the Mauritshuis owns A Village Feast, a picture of
his first period; the Dentist, who is extracting the tooth of a peasant;
A Menagerie; and an Interior known as The Oyster Feast and Jan Steen's
Tap-room.
=Description of Jan Steen's Tap-room.=--The latter is not an inn of the
common or rustic type such as is seen in Ostade's or Brouwer's pictures,
for the room is furnished in the best style of the period. In it we see
about twenty figures in several groups. On the left, an old man is
playing with a little child; near him a young girl is kneeling as she
cooks the oysters; and in the centre an old man offers an oyster to a
seated woman. Children are amusing themselves everywhere: here one is
making a cat dance; another is holding a dog; another is carrying a jug
and a basket of fruit. At the table on the right and a little back Jan
Steen sits playing a lute, a young woman is listening to him, a fat
companion with a glass of liquor in his hand is laughing; and in the
background are groups of players and smokers. Above and in the
foreground a large violet curtain is looped and casts its shadow over a
part of the interior. This fine picture is only 2 feet 3 inches by 2
feet 8 inches.
=Description of A Menagerie.=--A Menagerie is nearly four feet square,
and represents the courtyard of a country house--that of William III. at
Honsholredijk, which is seen in the distance. Near the stone terrace,
beneath the steps of which is a pool, a peacock sits on a branch of an
old tree; ducks are swimming in the pool, and hens, turkeys, and pigeons
are picking up grains in the courtyard. A little girl in a pale
straw-colored dress and a white apron is sitting on the steps and giving
a lamb milk out of a cup. A man, carrying a basket of eggs and a green
pot, is laughing and talking with her. Another old farm-servant is also
laughing as he regards his young mistress; another person, who carries a
hen under his left arm and her brood of chickens in a basket, is one of
those dumpy and deformed creatures that Jan Steen likes to paint. Burger
considers the head of the man with the basket of eggs is one of the most
wonderful heads that were ever painted by Jan Steen or any of the Dutch
Little Masters.
=Troost, the Dutch Watteau or Hogarth.=--Cornelis Troost (1697-1750) was
born at the close of the great period of Dutch art. The great painters
were all dead. Dutch painting had lost its originality and native vigor.
Under these circumstances Troost made himself the painter of his period
and of his country. Impelled by a witty and caustic humor, he thought to
bring back in the eighteenth century what Jan Steen had illustrated in
the seventeenth. But, inferior in every way to that master, he saw
contemporary society only on the stage or in books; and, instead of
painting manners, customs, and absurdities of the middle classes by
observing them in nature, he painted them as they were represented on
the stage. Almost all his heroes were characters of the comedy or the
novel. Troost has been called the Dutch Watteau and the Dutch Hogarth.
His pictures may be classified as follows: Conversations, Comic
subjects, Portraits, and Military subjects. The first follow the style
of Watteau; the second, Hogarth; and the last are reminiscent of Frans
Hals.
=His Excellence in Drawing and Color.=--Excellence of drawing and
richness of color distinguish all his works, which are also valuable for
their accurate portrayal of the manners and customs, costume and
furniture of his day. Troost worked in oil, pastel, and gouache with
equal facility; and produced many excellent mezzotints and etchings.
=Blanc on Troost's Style.=--"What we admire in him to-day is the
talent of the painter properly so-called, the art of enlightening and
grouping his figures and placing them on the stage, the brush-work,
the selection and quality of the tones,--in other words, order,
chiaroscuro, color, and touch. A man of wit, he shines in composition;
although adroitly calculated, his own humor always appears spontaneous
and natural. Troost never introduces useless personages nor
superfluous ornaments into his pictures. He clearly sets forth what he
wants to show; and, contrary to the habits of the other masters of his
nation who take pleasure in the accumulation of accessories, he only
puts into his interiors necessary furniture and significant utensils;
and in his open-air Conversations the surroundings are not overloaded
with detail, but simple and agreeable, being calculated to achieve the
idea of the picture, so admirably are they connected with the action
of the figures. Troost and Terburg, of all the Dutch masters of
_genre_, are the ones who best understood the concentration of the
interest of a picture, and what is called the repose of the
composition."[18]
=A Picture Illustrative of the Concentration of its Interest.=--"On
looking over his pictures in the little room devoted to his work in
the Mauritshuis, we find more than one example of this intelligent
sobriety. Take for instance _L'Amour mal assorte_. Here we have an old
man declaring his love to a young widow. He has thrown on the floor
his cane, hat, and gloves; and, in his senile ardor, he clasps the
facilely chaste Susanna. What a pretty interior! A Slingelandt, a
Gerard Dou, or a Mieris would have multiplied here the details of
domestic comfort; here there is not a detail, not a single piece of
furniture too much; but yet there is nothing lacking that should be
there,--neither the clock, the canary in its cage, the portrait of
the deceased husband whose place the guest desires to fill, nor the
flower-vase with its full-blown rose, like the charmer whom the
admirer wants to gather."
=Pictures of Love and Intrigue.=--"Again we have The Deceived Tutor, a
scene anticipated from 'The Barber of Seville.' Here we see coming
down the street a maiden led prisoner by her tutor, a jealous bear
clothed all in black. While she occupies his attention with a sweet
smile, her little hand receives the kiss of a lover whom chance has
led that way. Other scenes of similar intrigue treated in this light
vein are The Lover in Disguise and The Lover Artist. The scenes are
taken from the comedies and vaudevilles of Langendijk, Lingelbach,
Asselijn, Van der Hoeven, Van Paffenrode, and D. Buysero."
=The Dispute of the Astronomers.=--"A picture that does not deal with
love and intrigue, but is full of a different kind of humor is The
Dispute of the Astronomers, from a comedy by P. Langendijk, in which
two astronomers in the heat of their discussion on the systems of
Copernicus and Ptolemy make use of the plates and bottles on the
supper table to illustrate the sun and the planets. Another
interesting pastel is one depicting the old Dutch custom of a band of
men and children singing hymns before the doors of the village on
Twelfth Night, carrying a huge paper star, lighted within."
=Hondecoeter, Painter of Living Birds.=--The great Melchior
d'Hondecoeter (1636-95) began his career with marines; but it was not
long before he acquired celebrity as a painter of birds only, which he
represented not exclusively like Fyt, after a day's shooting, or as
stock in a poulterer's shop, but as living beings with passions of joy
and fear and anger. Though without Fyt's brilliant tone and high finish,
his birds are always full of action. William III. employed him to paint
his menagerie at Loo, and this picture shows that he could overcome the
difficulty of painting India's cattle, elephants, and gazelles.
Hondecoeter's best pictures have remained in Holland, and The Hague and
Amsterdam galleries possess his most interesting canvases. The four at
the Mauritshuis are: Geese and Ducks, Hens and Ducks, The Menagerie of
William III. at Loo, and The Jackdaw Stripped of his Borrowed Feathers.
All these are worthy of study, although Hondecoeter's most celebrated
picture, The Floating Feather, hangs in the Rijks.
Blanc says:
"In one of these the artist has amused himself with making his usual
heroes play a scene of human comedy; and, as a professional fabulist
would have imagined it, he has shown a jackdaw stripped of the
borrowed plumes with which he had adorned himself in his vanity. This
is a very fine picture, although it has somewhat blackened in certain
parts. Hondecoeter seems to us to have been happier in another canvas
in which he has grouped various birds. It seems as if on this occasion
he wanted to prove what prodigies he was capable of in the touch of
divers plumages; and the effect he has obtained is, in truth,
astonishing. We could not find the equivalent of this lightness of
touch and of this coloring either in Gryff[19] or in the two Weenixes,
or in any of the masters who have tried to paint birds, with the
possible exception of Giacomo Victor."[20]
=His Preparation for Bird-painting.=--"It is true that before having
succeeded so well in the representation of the bird, Hondecoeter made
a long study, not only of its external form, but of its habits,
customs, and manner of life. His studio had been turned into a
menagerie, or, rather, a game preserve. He had paid particular
attention to the education of a handsome cock, which seemed to
comprehend every word and gesture of his master; and who, at the
slightest sign, came near the easel and posed, often in very fatiguing
attitudes, for hours."
=Hondecoeter's Skill in painting Farmyard Scenes.=--"In painting,
Melchior d'Hondecoeter was a very able man without leaving the poultry
yard, and was satisfied with painting on the spot either the bloody
dramas or the peaceful scenes of the farmyard--the hen teaching her
chickens to scratch for grubs, the duck giving her little ones their
first swimming lesson, the superb cock keeping watch over his
seraglio, the peacock spreading his magnificent tail, and those
memorable combats in which for a fine-plumaged Helen, two rivals spur
one another while awaiting the hawk's talons. He painted 'the crested
gentry' and knew how to interest us in them by means of picturesque
truth, rustic grace, color, and spirit.
"Melchior, after the death of his father, found an excellent guide in
his uncle, J. B. Weenix, and followed his manner till his death in
1660 without servility."[21]
Burger says:
=His Pictures of Bird Families.=--"No one has painted better than he
cocks and hens, ducks and drakes, and particularly little chicks and
ducklings. He has understood such families as the Italians have the
mystical Holy Family; he has expressed the motherhood of the hen as
Raphael has the motherhood of the Madonna. In fact, the subject is
more naturally treated because it has less sublimity. Hondecoeter
gives us here a mother-hen, who could face the Madonna of the Chair.
She bends over with solicitude, with outspread wings, beneath which
peep the excited heads of the little chickens; while on her back is
perched the privileged _bambino_: she does not dare move, the good
mother!"
A picture of Cock and Hens by his father, Gijsbert d'Hondecoeter
(1604-53), was acquired in 1876. He was the teacher of his more talented
son, who also studied with his uncle, Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-60), no
pictures of whom are owned by the Mauritshuis.
=Jan Weenix's Tasteful Compositions.=--Two pictures of Jan Weenix
(1640-1719) hang in this gallery and are good examples. One is The Dead
Swan, the other is Game. Though Weenix painted portraits, landscapes,
and even seaports, his chief works represent dead animals, the size of
life. Peacocks, pheasants, partridges, geese, and most frequently swans,
figure in his pictures. Sometimes, too, he introduces a living dog and
paints it in the most spirited manner. Weenix had great taste in
composition and arranged his models (more often dead than living) around
the base of a handsome vase or urn in a beautiful park.
=Reynolds and Blanc on Jan Weenix's Paintings.=--"What excellence in
coloring and handling is to be found in the dead game of Weenix!"
exclaimed Sir Joshua Reynolds, who declared that he saw no less than
twenty dead swans by this painter during his walks through the Holland
galleries. "In his works of small dimensions," says Blanc, "his
execution is delicate and caressing; but it is broad and accentuated in
his decorative paintings. At his best he was the equal of his father,
which is no small praise."