painter of exteriors, Gerrit Adriaensz Berck-Heyde (1638-98), is noted
for his faithful representations of the principal towns of Germany and
Holland. His perspective is extremely fine. The Rijks owns: View of the
Dam at Amsterdam; View of the Heerengracht (1685); The Flower-Market,
Amsterdam; The Ruins of the Castle of Egmont, near Alkmaar; and three
Views of the Town-hall. In some of his works he was assisted by his
brother.
=J. A. Berck-Heyde.=--Job Adriaensz Berck-Heyde (1630-93) was a pupil of
Frans Hals and Jacob de Wet. He is represented in the Amsterdam Museum
by The Spaarne at Haarlem, Interior of a Church (1674), and Interior of
the Old Bourse at Amsterdam.
=J. van der Ulft the Versatile.=--The works of Jacob van der Ulft, so
remarkable for his versatility, are rare. The Rijks, however, owns two
pretty cabinet-pictures by him, representing an Italian town and an
Italian port. A very interesting and valuable picture by him,
representing the Town-hall on the Dam, completed in 1667, is in the
present Town-hall.
=Other Painters of Exteriors.=--Among the other artists and pictures
represented are: Kornelis Beelt (seventeenth century), Dutch Flotilla at
the Herring Fishery and View of the Haarlem Market; Anthonie Beerstraten
(seventeenth century), View of Regulierspoort in Amsterdam in Winter,
and Interior of a Town in Winter; Johannes Bosboom (1817- ), Notre-Dame,
Breda, Great Church, Edam, and Aire in Guelders; F. der Braekeleer,
Ruins of the Citadel of Antwerp (1832); Hendrik Gerrit Ten Cate
(1803-56), The Tower, Jan Rodenpoort in Amsterdam (1829), and the City
in Moonlight; Jan Ten Compe (1713-61), View of the Quay called
Keizersgracht, in Amsterdam; Constantinus Coene (1780-1841), the Porte
de Hal in Brussels (1823); Croos (seventeenth century), View of the
Castle of Egmont, near Alkmaar; Claes Dircksz van der Heck (seventeenth
century), The Castle of Egmont and The Abbey of Egmont (1638); Edward A.
Hilverdink, View of the Singel in Amsterdam; Johannes Janson (1729-84),
The Chateau de Heemstede (1766); Kasparus Karssen (1810-?), Interior of
the Old Bourse at Amsterdam (1837); J. C. K. Klinkenberg (1852- ), The
Market at Nimeguen; Everhardus Kloster (1817- ), Amsterdam; Dirk Jan van
der Laen (1759-1829), View of a Town: A Snow Scene; Francois de Momper
(1603-60), The Valkenhof at Nimeguen; Isaac de Moucheron (1670-1744),
View of Tivoli, near Rome, and View in the Hortus Medicus at Amsterdam;
Isaak Ouwater (1747-93), Unfinished Tower of the New Church at Amsterdam
and Le Poids St. Anthony at Amsterdam; Antoon Sminck Pitloo (1791-1837),
St. Georgis Church, Rome (1820); P. J. Poelman (1801-?), The Town Hall
at Oudenarde (1824); J. H. Prins (1758-1806), View of a City (1793);
Cornelis Springer (1817-91), Town-hall and Vegetable Market at Vere
(1861), and Town-hall, Cologne (1874); Abraham Storck (1630?-1710?),
View of the Dam; Pieter George Westenberg (1791-1873), View of Amsterdam
in Winter (1817); and Jan Wildens (1586-1653), View of Amsterdam (1636).
=Painters of Interiors--P. H. van Steenwyck.=--Turning now to those
painters who devoted their attention chiefly to interiors, the first to
be noticed is Pieter Hendrik van Steenwyck the Elder (1550-about 1604),
the pupil of Jan Vredeman de Vries, who has never been surpassed in this
particular field. He usually painted the interiors of Gothic churches
and other buildings. He also won distinction with torchlight effects.
The figures were usually supplied by the Franckens and others. Van
Steenwyck lived in Antwerp and also in Frankfort. The Interior of a
Catholic Church, in the Rijks, is a good example of his style.
=His Pupil, Pieter Neeffs the Elder.=--Among his pupils was Pieter
Neeffs the Elder (1577-between 1657-61), who followed his master
closely, but with a heavy touch. His colors are not so pleasing as
Steenwyck's, but his mechanical skill is great. F. Francken, Teniers,
Velvet Brueghel, and Van Thulden are responsible for the figures in his
pictures. In the Rijks we may study him by his Church of the Dominicans
in Antwerp (1636), A Church: Effect of Candle-light (1636), and Interior
of a Church.
=P. J. Saenredam, Painter of Church Interiors.=--Next must be mentioned
Pieter Jansz Saenredam (1597-1665), who painted the interior of churches
in a large and luminous manner. His pictures were highly esteemed, but
are now very rare. The Rijks owns: two Interiors of the Church of St.
Bavon, Haarlem; three Interiors of St. Mary's, Utrecht; and View of the
Church in Assendelft. Adriaen van Ostade contributed the figures in the
latter. Pieter Saenredam was a pupil of his father, a celebrated
engraver, and of Frans de Grebber in Haarlem.
=Emanuel de Witte's Beautiful Work.=--Emanuel de Witte (1617-92), a
pupil of Evert van Aelst, bears the same relation to the representation
of interiors that Ruisdael does to landscape, and Willem van de Velde to
marine painting. Beautiful modelling, fine color, linear and aerial
perspective, masterly treatment of chiaroscuro, and animated figures are
all at his command. The Vestibule in the Prinsenhof in Delft and two
Interiors of a Church are picturesque canvases that exhibit the rich
talents of this painter.
=H. C. van Vliet.=--Hendrik Cornelisz van Vliet (1608-66?), a pupil of
his father, Willem van Vliet (1584-1642), paints under the influence of
De Witte as is shown in the Interior of Part of the Old Church at Delft,
signed "H. van Vliet, 1654." Here the treatment of sunlight is very
reminiscent of Emanuel de Witte.
=Egbert van der Poel.=--In this connection may be mentioned Egbert van
der Poel (1621-64), whose specialty was conflagrations. The effects of
lurid light are seen in his Ruins in Delft after the Explosion of a
Powder Magazine (1654) and Interior of a Farm-house (1646).
=Collections on the Ground-floor and Basement.=--After lunching in the
pleasant little restaurant in the west wing on the ground-floor we take
a rapid view of the collections here. The East and West Courts contain
military, naval, and colonial collections, weapons, uniforms, and models
of ships, which need not detain us long; nor will the department of
Ecclesiastical Architecture and the Hall of the Admirals, where there is
a collection of modern French paintings. In the western half of the
building there are splendid collections of engravings, porcelain,
lacquer, and textiles, two seventeenth century rooms furnished by the
Antiquarian Society, and in the basement a collection of old Dutch
costumes, carriages, and doll houses. On the east side are a number of
correctly furnished Dutch rooms, one a "Chinese Boudoir" from the
Stadtholder's Palace at Leeuwarden (seventeenth century), and a great
collection of civic and industrial domestic art. Silver occupies a
conspicuous place, and one of the cases contains drinking-horns, among
which is the original drinking-horn of the Guild of St. Joris, which
appears in Van der Helst's painting.
The visitor will seldom see a more wonderful collection of glass of all
shapes and forms, and beautifully engraved, cut, and mounted; and the
display of jewelry, trinkets, and children's toys will also claim
attention.
=The Garden.=--We now enter the garden at the south side of the
building. This is laid out in the Dutch style of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, with clipped hedges of beech and box, and adorned
with flowers, vases, statues, and busts. There is also a maze, and
fragments of old Dutch buildings, such as the old Bergpoort of Deventer
(1619) and the Heerenpoort of Groningen (1621). Various old gables,
pilasters, columns, walls, tympanums, and gates have been grouped; and
in the eastern part of the garden is the house of the Director of the
Museum.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] J. F. White.
[24] Burger.
[25] J. A. Crowe.
[26] Blanc.
THE STEDELIJK MUSEUM
=Ground-floor of the Stedelijk Museum.=--A short walk from the Rijks
down Paulus Potter Straat brings us to the Stedelijk (Municipal) Museum,
built in 1892-95. The ground-floor is devoted to uniforms, weapons, and
pictures of the Schutterij of Amsterdam, and a series of rooms furnished
in the style of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries,
including an old Dutch kitchen.
=Its Pictures of the History of the Netherlands.=--An extraordinary
collection of pictures by Allebe, Israels, Rochussen, and other
well-known painters, treating of the history of the Netherlands,
deserves a passing glance, for there are no less than 250 small
canvases, all of the same dimensions and similar treatment. A more
curiously monotonous effect would be impossible to imagine; but, to use
a Dutch term, they are decidedly _symmetrisch_.
=The Gallery of Modern Pictures.=--Ascending the stairs we reach the
gallery of modern pictures. The collection consists of about 200
paintings gathered by a society founded in 1874, and is very rich in
fine examples of the modern Dutch school.
=Mauve's Sheep on the Dunes.=--One of the gems of the modern landscapes
is Mauve's Sheep on the Dunes. The sheep, all of which have their backs
to the spectator, the rolling dunes with their tall, waving grass, the
shepherd boy and his dog, are all painted with equal skill; and over the
still landscape hovers a poetic feeling that communicates itself
instantly to the spectator.
Mauve is also represented by A Fold and Woodmen.
=Anton Mauve.=--Anton Mauve (1838-89) was a native of Zaandam, and the
son of a clergyman. He studied under the cattle-painter, Van Os, who was
not particularly pleased with his pupil. After his apprenticeship was
over, he began to paint little pictures in the neat manner and
conventional style of his master. Mauve lived in Oosterbeck, "the
Barbison of Holland," for a time, and at a later period spent his
winters in Amsterdam and his summers in The Hague, where he could enjoy
Scheveningen and the dunes.
A Dutch writer, A. C. Loffelt, says:
=His Style.=--"The poetry of Mauve's art, its tenderness, the
unobtrusive, quiet sadness of the scenery and people which attracted
him most; the homeliness, humor, and domestic happiness which he
interpreted in his interiors and scenes of country and village life,
can only be appreciated by people of the same descent."
The same critic tells us that Mauve lived for a time in a farm-house,
near Dekkersdinn.
=His Favorite Themes.=--"Here Mauve found some of his most important
and favorite themes, such as poor cots built in or near the downs,
where slender, poorly nurtured women tended a few sheep or a goat, or
occupied themselves in bleaching linen. His painting had not yet
gained that transparency and brilliancy of tone which the artist
acquired in subsequent years. At this time his work was gray, but not
always pellucid or silvery. Thus it came to pass that critics and
public began to talk of 'The Gray School,' for a few other artists
painted in the same neutral scale of tints.
"As we walk in the rural lanes, beneath the slender birches wrapped in
their mantle of silver-gray haze, or watch the chequered sunlight
dancing into the secluded nooks of some emerald meadow, when we hear
the echoes of the tinkling sheep-bells on the moors, we think 'There
lives Mauve!'"
[Illustration: MAUVE
Sheep on the Dunes]
=His Truthful Painting of Sheep and Cattle.=--Mauve is, perhaps, best
known by his flocks of sheep painted under all conditions and at all
seasons and times of day; but not less true to nature are his cows in
the _Melkbocht_, that paddock or reserved spot in the meadow where the
cows are gathered for milking. His horses ploughing, or at rest, and his
coast scenes, showing Dutch fishing-boats about to be pulled across the
sands by teams of horses, are no less remarkable performances.
=The Early Training of Josef Israels.=--For a whole generation Josef
Israels has stood at the head of modern Dutch art. Born in 1827, at
Groningen, the son of a money-changer, he carried money-bags in his
early years to the banking-house of Mesdag. He studied under Jan Adam
Kruseman, and at first painted historical pictures; lived in the Ghetto
in Amsterdam, and nearly starved in Paris, where he studied in the
Delaroche school.
=The Themes of his Paintings.=--It was in Zandvoort, near Haarlem, that
he discovered his true bent, and began to depict the seafaring man and
the peasant in their homely every-day life. His people are all humble,
and most of them are broken by poverty and sorrows. For more than thirty
years his pictures have occupied the place of honor in all the Dutch
exhibitions; and on his seventieth birthday he was made Commander of the
Order of Orange-Nassau, and was the recipient of many gifts and
congratulations. In this gallery hang a number of pictures dating from
various periods. Among them are Fisherman's Children, Rustic Interior,
After the Storm, Passing the Mother's Grave, Margaret of Parma and
William of Orange (one of his earliest efforts), Old Jewish Peddler, and
a Study of a Head.
[Illustration: ISRAELS
Fisherman's Children]
=Veth's Appreciation of Israels.=--The artist himself is represented in
a statuette by F. Leenhoff, which stands in one of the rooms, and also
in a portrait by J. Veth, who sympathetically writes:
"The choicest pictures by this master are painted in a truly
mysterious way, simply by the nervous vigor of an untaught hand with
heavy, sweeping shadows and thick touches of paint, which stand out
in a wonderful mixture of sharp relief and dim, confused distance;
with soft hesitation and touches of crudely decisive certainty; with
broad outlines and incisive emphasis. Ruggedness and tenderness,
corruption and sweetness, whimsicality and decision, are magically
mingled there in dignified depth, with the most refined feeling--the
most ductile language of the brush that is known to me.
"And yet, notwithstanding, all this exists, as far as possible, in the
clear, simple execution of the old Dutch painters, and there is one
great family resemblance between the nineteenth century master and
those who are the classics among the _petits maitres_."
=Each of his Pictures a Harmonious Whole.=--"The resemblance--the
revived tradition--is to be seen in the fact that Israels, like the
old Dutch painters, nay, even more than they, always aims at the
sober, general harmony of the whole work. It is wonderful how discreet
the effect is of a picture, for instance, by Pieter de Hooch, with all
its elaborate execution; how splendidly it holds together, how strong
yet delicate the construction is. It is this great quality of
presenting an absolutely organic whole at one impulse which seems to
have passed into Israels from his precursors, who otherwise painted so
utterly differently. Indeed, it is in this concentrated power, in this
self-contained harmony, the outcome of one glance, as it were, and of
one impetus, that we may discern one of the principal features of
Israels's art. There is nothing in his work that asserts itself alone,
nothing detached, nothing that plays any part but that of
strengthening the whole."
=His Aim to paint the Truth, rather than to produce Studied
Effects.=--"Those who really understand the sincerity of his art know
that he rejects everything approaching to working for
effect--everything that looks like rule of thumb; and that he in fact
never consciously troubles his head about studied effects or beauty.
Beauty to him lies in the silent woe with which the survivors stand in
a house of death; in the attitude of the old wife left alone, who
spreads her hands stiffly out to the fire, as though she might win a
spark of life from the smouldering hearth; in the way in which the
decrepit old man sits with resigned dejection in his gloomy hovel,
staring into his old dog's eyes; in the stupefied wretch who sits on a
broken bench, where, behind him, his dead wife lies stretched on her
bed; in the woful gleam in the eyes of the huckster who sits in front
of his dirty booth, with a motley collection of rags above his head,
watching us so mysteriously; in the sad old woman who, with elbows
wide apart on her table, her hands quietly folded, sits weary and
alone in front of her meal; in the kindly but hard-set woman, who,
through wind and weather, tramps along field and road by her jolting
dog-barrow, in a cruel struggle for existence; in the business of the
fisherman and seafaring folk and their hard and simple labor; in the
dignity of the patriarchal peasant family that gathers round the dish;
he sees beauty in everything which lays bare what lies mysteriously
latent in poverty and privation and suffering, at the very roots of
human life."
=Roelofs, Painter of A Marshy Landscape.=--Familiar to the Holland
traveller is the Marshy Landscape, so true to nature and so charming in
color.
[Illustration: ROELOFS
Marshy Landscape]
If he had painted nothing else, Willem Roelofs (1822-97) would deserve
his reputation because of this work.
This painter was born in Amsterdam and was a pupil of H. van de Sande
Bakhuijzen for about a year; then he remained for six years in Utrecht;
and settled in Brussels, where he remained forty years, finally
returning to Holland. This painter's chief desire is to express himself
poetically.
=The Inexhaustible Supply of His Favorite Subjects.=--"His pictures
are truly beautiful: cattle standing up to their knees in rich green
pasture land; luxuriant meadows; secluded pools reflecting the blue
sky and the moving clouds; lakes with floating lilies; rivers,
streams, noble trees, canals, and the thoroughly Dutch windmill.
Roelofs may be called the pioneer in our country of a broader school
of painting, especially that pertaining to landscape. Much of this he
may be said to have taken from the French.... Of late years he has
added more cattle to his pictures; but whether cattle or trees, land
or water, they are painted with the firm belief that they needed no
embellishment, but were good enough to be represented exactly as they
were. For Roelofs will not invent a subject. And why, indeed, should
he do so? Is the supply exhausted? _He_ does not think so, for no
summer passes but he packs up his paint-box and with his little stool,
his easel, and his umbrella, goes off either to Noorden, or Abcoude,
or to Voorschoten, to study nature again and again, as if he did not
know her well already."[27]
=J. Maris, Skilful in producing Ethereal Effects.=--Of Jacob Maris,
Zilcken writes:
"No painter has so well expressed the ethereal effects, bathed in air
and light, through floating silvery mist, in which painters delight,
and the characteristic remote horizons blurred by haze; or again the
gray yet luminous weather of Holland, unlike the dead gray rain of
England, or the heavy sky of Paris."
This artist may be studied in this gallery by A Beach, two Views of a
Town, The Ferry, and The Two Windmills, which latter represents two
windmills standing as sentinels over a rather dreary landscape at the
edge of a river and a canal.
=His Training and his Aim in Art.=--Jacob Maris (1837-99) was born in
The Hague and was sent to Stroebel's studio, and later studied in the
Antwerp Academy of Drawing. He was also a pupil of Louis Meyer in The
Hague, and in 1865 went to Paris and studied with Hebert. Returning to
The Hague, he devoted himself to landscape. He painted views of streets,
country lanes, small hamlets, windmills, canals, rivers, and, sometimes,
_genre_ pieces. In all his work his aim was to make an impression. One
day he said: "A picture is finished as soon as you can see what it is
intended to represent."
=Marius on the Beauty of his Work.=--The Dutch critic, G. H. Marius,
writes:
"If you stand before one of Maris's pictures for a long time you
discover many objects which you had not noticed at first--houses,
bridges, trees, all looming out of the mellow misty light which is
diffused over the entire canvas.... What an endless variety of
windmills he immortalizes! Some of his canvases have but a small
solitary windmill, while others have a crowd of these gigantic,
cumbersome structures. Some pictures have a fringe of them upon the
horizon.
"However simple the subject, it is ofttimes made almost dramatic by
the rays of the setting sun, or by the brilliancy of a silver-lined
cloud. These effects of light and shade are rapidly passing, and we
gaze with admiration upon the skilful work of a man who can produce
such a faithful picture, which his eye could have seen but
momentarily. Sometimes he paints a canal with a barge pulled by a
weary-looking horse, tramping along the muddy road the ruts of which
are filled with water from recent rain (his horses are generally
white). Or it is a bit of rich agricultural land, the long furrows
stretching into the far distance; against a wonderful sky you see the
profiles of distant houses, trees, mills, etc., all dying away into
the horizon, showing the flatness of our Dutch landscape, where there
is nothing to impede or obstruct the eye for miles."
=Willem Maris's Relish for painting Cows.=--Willem Maris (1844- )
studied with his brothers Jacob and Matthys, and all three worked
together. As early as 1868 he sold a picture which found its way to The
Hague Gallery. This, representing cattle in a green meadow, at once
showed his talent for painting warm sunlight. A typical picture of
Cattle hangs in this gallery; for the chief subjects of Willem Maris's
pictures are cows in meadow lands; sometimes they are waiting to be
milked, or are being milked; sometimes they are standing or lying under
the trees; and sometimes they are knee-deep in one of the lakes.
Mr. Marius says:
=Willem's Style contrasted with his Brother Jacob's.=--"The two
brothers Maris [Jacob and Willem] treat their skies in exactly
opposite manners. The one depicts clouds, threatening storm, and
changeable weather, whereas the younger brother gives us only sunshine
and a sky of turquoise blue; if, however, clouds are introduced, they
are like small white feathers or like the petals of a white rose. Each
in his own way true to nature, and beautiful to gaze upon, yet
methinks that we must give the preference to the one who gives us that
greatest of all blessings, sunshine.
"A very favorite aspect of his is a cloudless sky, the brightest of
suns, and part of the canvas thrown into deep shade, producing a
wonderful contrast.
"Another bewitching feature, so truly Dutch, in Maris's landscapes, is
the rising mist after the heat of the day. It rises from the meadows
at sunset and covers the land like a cloak, especially after a hot day
when the ground has been baked."
=A Socialistic Artist with Romantic Visions.=--Matthys Maris, the second
of the three, joined his brother Jacob in Paris, and eventually he
settled in London.
"Thys Maris found rest and isolation in a suburb of London; a few
faithful friends, such as Swan (the animal painter) and Van
Wisselingh, break in occasionally upon his solitude. But his ideas are
still socialistic, not only theoretically, but materially; and,
without looking around, he gives what he receives. On this point he is
likewise very sensitive. To be waited on by another, although that
service is paid for, he considers humiliating; and, in order to avoid
such a possibility, he lives without the comfort of attendance.
"Many might pass by the works of Maris without even noticing them;
many may consider them impossible and inexplicable, and pass on,
almost out of humor, perhaps even angry with them; the rational
spectator will put questions to which he will receive no satisfactory
replies.
"Though in his early years he painted still-life pieces, his fame
rests chiefly on his visionary women seen in his romantic dreams, and
portrayed with the clouds and mists of dreamland about them."[28]
In this gallery The Bride represents him worthily.
=Two Pictures representing Albert Neuhuys.=--Albert Neuhuys, born in
Utrecht in 1844, studied in the Academy of Drawing in Antwerp, and
settled in Amsterdam, the painter of landscapes and scenes from homely
and humble life. He is represented by The Doll's Dressmaker and By the
Cradle, which represents a mother leaning over the cradle of her baby
lying comfortably on pillows. It is interesting to note how thickly the
artist has spread the paint on the canvas.