Art and Letters
The art of a country is ever in unity with the character of the people. It
reflects their ideas and sentiments; their history is marked in its
progress or decline; and it shows forth the influences that have been at
work in the minds and very life of the nation from which it springs. If
this is true of all countries, it is nowhere so visibly true as in
Holland. There art underwent the most decided changes during the various
periods of war and armed peace through which the little country passed. It
may truly be said that 'the first smile of the young Republic was art, for
it was only after the revolt of the Dutch against the Spanish ... that
painting reached a high grade of perfection.' One is accustomed to take it
for granted too readily that the glory of Dutch art lies in the past; that
the works and fame of a Van Eyck, a Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and
Ruysdael sum up Holland's contribution to the art of the world, and that
this chapter of its history, like the chapters which deal with its
maritime supremacy, its industrial greatness, and its struggles for
liberty, is closed for ever. Nothing could be farther from the fact. Dutch
art was never more virile, more original, more self-conscious than to-day,
when it is represented by a band of men whose genius and enthusiasm
recall the great names of the past. Professer Richard Muther has well
said, in his 'History of Modern Painting,' that, 'so far from stagnating,
Dutch art is now as fresh and varied as in the old days of its glory.'
The Dutch painters of the present day include, indeed, quite a multitude
of men of the very first rank, and some of them, like the three brothers
Maris, are unexcelled. Jacob Maris, who died so recently as 1890, was
known for his splendid landscapes, and still more for his town pictures
and beach scenes. Willem Maris has a partiality for meadows in which
cattle are browsing in tranquil content. Thys Maris has a very different
style. He paints grey and misty figures and landscapes all hazy and
scarcely visible. His love of the obscure and the suggestive led to the
common refusal of his portraits by patrons, who complained that they
lacked distinctness. No painter, however, commands such large prices as
he, and from £2000 to £3000 is no rare figure for his canvases.
H. W. Mesdag is Holland's most celebrated sea painter. He pictures the
ever rolling ocean with marvellous power, and carries the song of the
waves and the cry of the wild sea birds into his great paintings, which
speak to one of the life and toil of the fishermen, the never weary
waters, and the ever varying aspects of sea and sky. In this domain he is
unrivalled, and he has certainly done some magnificent work. Mesdag has an
exhibition of his own works every Sunday morning in his studio at The
Hague, and any one who wishes is allowed to visit it, while for the
general public's benefit there is the Mesdag Panorama in the same town.
Mauve, who died in 1887, was best known for his pastoral scenes. His
pictures of sheep on the moors and fens recall pleasant memories of
summer days and sunny hours.
Josef Israels went largely to the life of fishermen for his motives,
though one of his best-known works is that noble one, 'David before Saul.'
Bosboom one naturally associates with church interiors, wonderfully well
done; Blommers, Artz, and Bles likewise paint interiors, the first two
choosing their subjects by preference from the houses of the working
classes, while Bles confines himself to the dwellings of the wealthy.
Bisschop is unquestionably the best of the Dutch portrait-painters, though
his still life is considered even more artistic than his portraits. The
foremost of the lady portrait and figure painters is Therese Schwartze,
who, like Josselin de Jong, often takes Queen Wilhelmina as a grateful
subject for her brush.
The foregoing may be regarded as painters of the old school, though every
one has so much originality as to be virtually the initiator of a distinct
direction. The newer schools are represented by men like J. Toorop,
Voerman, Verster, Camerlingh Onnes, Bauer, and Hoytema.
Toorop is the well-known symbolist. His style is Oriental rather than
Dutch, and his topics for the most part are mystical in character. He is
famous also for his decorative art. This many-sided man is probably the
greatest artist soul in Holland. He is expert in almost every domain of
art. Etching, pastel and water-colour drawing, oil-painting, wood-cutting,
lithography, working in silver, copper, and brass, and modelling in clay,
belong equally to his accomplishments, though as a painter he is, of
course, best known.
Voerman, once known for his minutely painted flowers, is now a pronounced
landscape painter. His cloud studies are marvellous, though perhaps the
landscape colours are somewhat hard and overdone in the effort to produce
the desired effects. He paints, as a rule, the rolling cumulus, and is one
of the first of the younger artists.
Verster is known best for his impressionist way of painting flowers in
colour patches, though he has now taken to the minute and mystical method
of representing them.
Onnes, like Toorop, is a decided mystic, and there is a vein of mysticism
in all his paintings. He is famous for his light effects in glass and
pottery, and has especially a wonderful knack of painting choirs in
churches ail in a dreamy light.
Bauer is better known, perhaps, by his drawings and etchings than by his
paintings. He paints with striking beauty old churches, temples, and
mosques, generally the exteriors, and the effect of his minute work is
wonderful. Bauer is also one of the finest of Dutch decorative artists.
Hoytema is known for his illustrations. Animal life is his _forte_,
especially owls and monkeys.
Among other younger painters who, though not yet of European reputation,
may still be classed with many of the older generation, are Jan Veth and
H. Haverman, both of whom excel in portraits. The lady artists who have
best held their own with the stronger sex include, in addition to those
named, Mme Bilders van Bosse, who paints woods and leafy groves with
striking power; and the late Mme. Vogels-Roozeboom, who found her
inspiration in the flora of Nature. In her day (she died in 1894) she was
the first of floral painters, and whenever she raised her brush the finest
of flowers rose up as at the touch of a magic wand. Second to her, though
not so well known by far, came Mlle W. van der Sande Bakhuizen.
The Dutch are not only a nation of painters, but a nation of
picture-lovers, though in Holland, as in other countries, one not seldom
sees upon walls from which better would be expected tawdry art, about
which all that can be said is that it was bought cheap. The country
possesses a number of good public galleries, and much is done in this way
and by the frequent exhibition of paintings to foster the love of the
artistic. The principal exhibitions are those of the Pulchri Studio and
the Kunst-kring (Art Circle) at The Hague, and the 'Arti et Amicitia' at
Rotterdam. To become a working member of the Pulchri Studio is counted a
great honour, for the artists who are on the committee are very
particular as to whom they admit into their circle, and they ruthlessly
blackball any one who is at all 'amateurish' or who does not come up to
their high standard. For this reason it is that so many of the younger
artists give exhibitions of their own works as the only way of getting
them at all known.
Sculpture is not much practised in Holland. It would seem to be an art
belonging almost entirely to Southern climes, although there was a time
when the Dutch modelled busts and heads from snow. The monument of Piet
Hein was originally made of snow, and so much did it take the fancy of the
people of Delftshaven, the place of his birth, that they had a stone
monument erected for him on the place where the one of snow had stood. It
is only recently, however, that sculpture has been re-introduced into
Holland as a fine art, and those artists who have taken it up need hardly
fear competition with their brethren of other Continental countries, for
their names are already on every tongue. The first amongst those who have
shown real power is Pier Pander, the cripple son of a Frisian mat-plaiter,
who came over from Rome (where he had gone to complete his studies) at
the special invitation of the Queen to model a bust of the Prince Consort,
Duke Hendrik of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Other notable sculptors are Van
Mattos, Ode, Bart de Hove, and Van Wyck.
There is also another art which is in considerable vogue, and in which
much good work has been done--that of wood-carving. In this the painter
and illustrator Hoytema has shown considerable skill. Needless to say,
Holland is also as famous now as ever for its pottery. Delft ware was ever
the fame of the Dutch nation, though the Rosenbach and Gouda pottery is
now gaining approval. It may be doubted, however, whether the love for the
latter is altogether without affectation. One is inclined to believe that
many of its admirers are enthusiastic to order. They admire because the
leading authorities assure them it is their duty so to do.
The Netherlands, though very limited in area and small in population, can
also boast of having contributed much that is excellent to the literature
of the world, and in its roll of famous literary men are to be found names
which would redeem any country from the charge of intellectual barrenness.
Spinoza, Erasmus, and Hugo de Groot (Grotius), to name no others, form a
trio whose influence upon the thought of the world, and upon the movements
which make for human progress, has been beyond estimation, and which still
belongs to-day to the imperishable inheritance of the race.
As illustrating the world-wide fame of Hugo de Groot it is interesting to
note that on the occasion of the Peace Conference held at The Hague in
1899 the American representatives invited all their fellow-delegates to
Delft, and there, in the church of his burial, papers were read in which
the claim of the great thinker to perpetual honour was brought to the
memories of the assembled spokesmen of the civilized world.
It is with the modern literature and literary movements of Holland,
however, that these pages must concern themselves, and for practical
purposes we may confine ourselves principally to the latter part of the
completed century. For the early part of the nineteenth century was by no
means prolific in literary achievement, and does not boast of many great
names, if one disregards the writers whose lives linked that century with
its predecessor, like Betjen Wolff and Agatha Deken. When, in 1814-15,
Holland again became a separate kingdom, that important event failed to
mark a new era in Dutch literature. Strange to say, though the political
changes of the time powerfully influenced the sister arts of music and
painting, which show strong traces of the transition of that crisis in the
nation's history, upon literature they had no effect whatever. Before 1840
no very brilliant writers came to the front, though the period was not
without notable names, such as Willem Bilderdijk, Hendrik C. Tollens, and
Isaac da Costa, all of whom possessed a considerable vogue. Bilderdijk's
chief claim to fame is the fact that he wrote over 300,000 lines of verse,
and regarded himself as the superior of Shakespeare; Tollens had a name
for rare patriotism, and wrote many fine historical poems and ballads;
while Da Costa, who was a converted Jew, had to the last, in spite of a
considerable popularity as a poet, to contend with the oftentimes fatal
shafts of ridicule.
A new period opened, however, about 1840, in the _Gids_ movement promoted
by E.J. Potgieter and R.C. Bakhuizen van den Brink, who were editors of
the _Gids_ and the severest of literary critics. The _Gids_ was the Dutch
equivalent of the _Edinburgh Review_ under Jeffrey, and its criticisms
were so much dreaded by the nervous Dutch author of the day that the
magazine received the name of 'The Blue Executioner,' blue being the
colour of its cover. If, however, Potgieter and Bakhuizen were unsparing
in the use of the tomahawk, the service which they rendered to Dutch
letters by their drastic treatment of crude and immature work was healthy
and lasting in influence, for it undoubtedly raised the tone and standard
of literary work, both in that day and for a long time to come, and so
helped to establish modern Dutch literature on a firm basis. Perhaps the
foremost figure in the literary revival which followed was Conrad Busken
Huet, unquestionably the greatest Dutch critic of the last century, whose
book 'Literary Criticisms and Fancies,' which contains a discriminating
review of all writers from Bilderdijk forward, is essential to a thorough
study of Dutch literature during the nineteenth century. Huet also
emancipated literature from the orthodoxy in thought which had
characterized the earlier Dutch writers, especially by his novel
'Lidewyde.'
No novelist has more truly reflected the old fashioned ideas and simple
home life of Holland than Nicholas Beets, who still lives and even writes
occasionally, though almost a nonagenarian. His 'Camera Obscura,' which
has been translated into English, entitles Beets to be recognized as the
Dickens of Holland, and his two novels, 'De Familie Stastoc' and 'De
Familie Kegge,' are familiar to every Dutchman. The historical novelists,
Jacob van Lennep and Mrs. Bosboom Toussaint, should not be overlooked.
One of the foremost Dutch poets of the century is Petrus Augustus de
Génestet. Although he is not free from rhetoric, and frequently uses old
and worn-out similes, his general view of things is wider and his feeling
deeper than those of any of his contemporaries in verse. The contrast, for
example, between him and Carel Vosmaer, though they belong to the same
period, is very striking, for while the poetry of Génestet is full of
feeling and ideality, that of Vosmaer is unemotional; and though he
dresses his thoughts in beautiful words, the impression left upon the mind
after reading his poetry is that which might be left after looking at a
gracefully modelled piece of marble--it is fine as art, but cold and dead,
and so awakens no responsive sympathy in the mind of the beholder.
But the greatest of modern Dutch authors, and the one who may be termed
the forerunner of the renaissance of 1880, was E. Douwes Dekker, who died
thirteen years ago. Dekker had an eventful career. He went to the Dutch
Indies at the age of twenty-one, and there spent some seventeen years in
official life, gradually rising to the position of Assistant Resident of
Lebac. While occupying that office his eyes were opened to the defective
System of government existing in the Colonies, and the abuses to which the
natives were subjected. He tried to interest the higher officials on
behalf of the subject races, but as all his endeavours proved unavailing
he became disheartened, and, resigning his post, returned to Holland with
the object of pleading in Government circles at home the cause which he
had taken so deeply to heart. As a deaf ear was still turned to all his
entreaties he decided, as a last resource, to appeal for a hearing at the
bar of public opinion. He entered literature, and wrote the stirring story
'Max Havelaar,' in which he gave voice to the wrongs of the natives and
the callous injustices perpetrated by the Colonial authorities. The book
made a great sensation, and has unquestionably had very beneficial results
in opening the public's eyes to some of the more glaring defects of
Colonial administration.
In 1880 Dutch literature entered upon an entirely new phase. The chief
authors of the movement then begun were Lodewryk van Deyssel, Albert
Verwey, and Willem Kloos, who in the monthly magazine, _De Nieuwe Gids_,
exercised by their trenchant criticisms the same beneficial and
restraining influence upon the literature of the day as Potgieter and
Bakhuizen did forty years before. The columns of the _Nieuwe Gids_ were
only opened to the very best of Dutch authors, and any works not coming up
to the editors' high ideas of literary excellence were unmercifully
'slated' by these competent critics. Independence was the prominent
characteristic of the authors of the period. They shook themselves free
from the old thoughts and similes, and created new paths, in which their
minds found freer expression. The new thoughts demanded new words, hence
came about the practice of word-combination, which was in direct defiance
of the conservative canons of literary style which had hitherto prevailed,
so that nowadays almost every author adds a new vocabulary of his own to
the Dutch language, so enhancing the charm of his own writings and adding
to the literary wealth of the nation in general.
The poetess whom Holland to-day most delights to honour is Helena Lapidoth
Swarth, whose works increase in worth and beauty every year. Her command
of the Dutch language and her power of wresting from it literary resources
which are unattainable by any other writer have made her the admiration of
all critics of penetration. Louis Couperas is also another living poet of
mark, who, however, does not confine himself to formal versification, for
his prose is also poetry. His best works are 'Elme Vere,' the first book
he wrote, and the characters in which are said to have been all taken from
life, and his novels 'Majesty' and 'Universal Peace,' which have gained
for him a European reputation, for they have been translated into most
modern languages.
Women authors who have written works with a special tendency are Cornelie
Huygens, who is known particularly by her novel 'Barthold Maryan;' Mrs.
Goekoop de Jong, who champions the cause of women's rights; and Anna de
Savornin Lohman, who, in a striking book entitled, 'Why question any
longer?' has written very bitterly against the political conditions of the
circle of society in which she moves.
While the authors of the present day are beneficially leavening popular
opinion by inculcating higher and healthier sentiments, there are also
authors in Holland, as elsewhere, who debase good metal, and write from a
purely material standpoint. To this class of authors belong Marcellus
Emants and Frans Netcher.
Of Dutch dramatic writers, Herman Heyermans is one of the most noteworthy,
and some of his plays have been translated into French, and produced in
Paris theatres.
It is a great drawback to literary effort in Holland that the _honoraria_
paid to authors are so low that most writers who happen not to be
pecuniarily independent--and they are the majority--are unable to make a
tolerable subsistence at home by the pen alone, and are obliged to
contribute to foreign publications, and some even resort to teaching. Many
Dutch authors of high rank write anonymously in English, French, and
German magazines, and probably earn far more in that way than by their
contributions to Dutch ephemeral literature, for the ordinary fee for a
sheet of three thousand words--which is the average length of a printed
sheet in a Dutch magazine--is only forty francs.
The pity is that Dutch literature itself is not known as well as it
deserves to be, for any one who takes the trouble to master the Dutch
language will find himself well repaid by the treasures of thought which
are contained in the modern authors of Holland.