THE OLD ORDER CHANGES
The forty-five years, following the abdication of Charles V, yielded no
indication of the harvest of painting that was to signalize the
succeeding century. The earlier half of the period embraces the work of
Pieter Aertz, first of the distinctively Dutch genre painters, and the
latter half sees the growth to manhood of the portrait-painters Michiel
Jansz van Mierevelt and Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn, while the whole
period covers the active life of Jan de Bray. He, like the other two,
was an honest but entirely uninspired portrait-painter; and it was not
until nearly the end of the century that three men were born who were
subsequently to become notable. These are Frans Hals, Jan van Goyen, and
another landscape-painter, less well known, Hercules Seghers.
It was a period, indeed, solely of upheaval and preparation, during
which the ground was plowed, harrowed, and fertilized, while its old
landmarks were being removed, new boundaries established, and a new
proprietorship asserted and exercised. It covered, moreover, the whole
of Philip the Second’s miserable reign.
This monarch, tiring of the atmosphere of the Netherlands, soon withdrew
to Spain, whence for the remainder of his life he attempted to govern
the distant provinces as a satrapy, through vice-regents, military
commanders, and bishops. His aim, as became his father’s son, was
autocracy over the lives, fortunes, and consciences of his subjects.
But, to do him justice, it was their own good, as he saw it, that he
labored and intrigued for: to purge them of heresy and retain them
within the fold of the Roman communion. For nothing is to be gained in
the way of understanding the temper and conditions of that day by
regarding Philip as an inhuman monster. Judged by the manner of our own
time, he may seem to have been; but, judged by the tenacity and
unscrupulousness with which men still cling to what they believe to be
their rightful privileges and pursue what they are convinced is the
dictate of their conscience, he is seen to be but a natural product of
the mental and social conditions of his day. He was a recognizable and
for a time even tolerated part of a system that men as yet had not
thought of disturbing.
It was so, at first, that the citizens of the Netherlands, even William,
Prince of Orange, regarded him. They held his overlordship sacred, even
while they opposed the acts of his official representatives. They
expected to be roundly taxed, but at the same time to have the machinery
of their local government of free cities and Estates-General unimpeded;
and it was against the interference with this on the part of Philip’s
mercenaries that they first remonstrated. For, in the pursuance of his
policy of riveting Roman Catholicism upon the Netherlands, Philip had
induced the Pope to create more bishops and archbishops, to uphold whose
hands in the extirpating of heresy four thousand Spanish troops were
to
[Illustration: COUPLE DRINKING JAN STEEN
RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM]
be retained in the country at the expense of the Estates. The latter and
the cities remonstrated, and the troops were withdrawn, though the
Inquisition continued its fell work. So matters drifted until 1566, a
memorable year in the story of the rise and growth of Holland.
The Flemish nobles, though Roman Catholic to a man, drew up a
“Compromise” and pledged themselves to resist the Inquisition. William
of Orange, also a Catholic, though he had married a Protestant princess,
Anna of Saxony, and would later change his profession of faith,
instituted a secret system of espionage in Madrid over the acts and
counsels of Philip. Then the League of Nobles, Orange assisting in the
wording of the document, presented a “Request” to the vice-regent,
praying that the edicts against heresy and the Inquisition might be
withdrawn and the management of affairs restored to the Estates-General.
Its presentation drew from one of the vice-regent’s counselors,
Berlaymont, the expression: “Is it possible that your Highness can be
afraid of these beggars?”
Three days later the dissentient nobles were entertained at a feast by
Brederode. When the enthusiasm was at its height, and the guests were
debating on a name and a watchword, the host let drop among them
Berlaymont’s contemptuous phrase. At the same moment he produced a
beggar’s wallet and bowl; and, slinging the one over his shoulder and
filling the other with wine, called upon all present to drink to the
Beggars. The word was caught up, and from man to man the wallet and bowl
were passed round, until all had enrolled themselves in the Beggars’
ranks. Then, at the height of the excitement, the counts Orange, Horn,
and Egmont entered the room. They were compelled to drink to the pledge
and, although they immediately retired, were henceforth marked for
Philip’s special revenge.
Later in the same year the “Image-breaking” occurred in Antwerp. It was
unpremeditated and in its occurrence unguided: the spontaneous explosion
of latent passions smoldering in the mob; the spark that kindled it, the
annual procession and parade of the image of the Virgin. Scoffs and
ribaldry were succeeded by horse-play, which involved a rough-and-tumble
fight among some of the mob that filled the cathedral. The excitement
grew. The mob, surging in and out of the building, began to mock an old
woman who sold images of the Virgin at the cathedral door. She
retaliated in kind, and from the bandying of words the mob and their
victim proceeded to the hurling of missiles. A riot was averted for the
moment by the arrival of the margrave and senators; but, when evening
came, the cathedral was still occupied by a mob, now bent on mischief.
The image of the Virgin was the first object of its fury, which,
however, soon spread to a wholesale wrecking and desecration. The sacred
vessels, the glory of stained glass, and the intricate beauty of carved
work--every object of beauty that had made this one of the richest
shrines of religious art in Christendom--were irretrievably destroyed.
The blind, unreasoning fury, thus aroused, spread to other cities.
Philip retaliated with another fury, coldly and calculatingly horrible.
Alva was despatched with ten thousand troops, and the so-called Spanish
Fury was inaugurated.
Its first victims were the counts Horn and Egmont, William of Orange
escaping into exile. A Council of Troubles, or, as the Netherlanders
called it, of Blood, was established, and in the six years of Alva’s
stay eighteen thousand six hundred persons were put to death. These were
irrespective of those who fell in armed resistance. For in 1572 the
Beggars of the sea took Brill, and a little later drove the Spanish
garrison out of Flushing. It was the signal for revolt. Nearly all the
cities of Holland and Zeeland declared for William of Orange, and, in an
assembly of the Estates at Dort, voted funds for a war, directed,
however, even then, not against the sovereignty of Philip, but to the
expulsion of his soldiery. The fortunes of the patriots were checkered
with more defeats than victories, but meanwhile the Spanish operations
were impeded by lack of money; the troops depending upon the pillage of
an impoverished country and the occasional sack of a city, while the
treasure-ships of Spain were being intercepted and her commerce
continually harassed by the Beggars of the sea. So Philip sparred for
breath, and through his vice-regent agreed to the withdrawal of his
troops, a treaty to this effect being signed at Brussels in 1577.
William, however, was too convinced of the duplicity of Philip to be a
party to the treaty, and persuaded the northern provinces to refuse
their assent. The struggle was continued, punctuated by the Union of
Utrecht, in which the Estates agreed upon a Dutch republic; by Philip’s
rejoinder in the shape of a ban declared against the life of Orange,
with a price of twenty-five thousand golden crowns upon his head; and by
the counter-movement of the patriots. This was the declaration of Dutch
independence, formally issued at The Hague on the 26th of July, 1581.
To ideas that had been slowly but steadily accumulating under the
pressure of dire facts a formulation had at last been discovered and a
name given. A new word had been uttered in the world, that was, as the
centuries advanced, to be echoed and reëchoed and to be fruitful in
newly advancing ideas. Comparable only to it, in modern history, was the
word spoken sixty years before by Luther at the Diet of Worms. And now
the doctrine of the responsibility to itself of the conscience, with its
allied doctrine of religious freedom, had been completed by the
political doctrine of the responsibility of government to the governed,
and its allied doctrine of a nation’s right to the choice of its own
form of government. But, just as the idea must be in labor until the
word for it is delivered, so the word itself is but a battle-cry, the
fruits of which are painfully and slowly won. The labor of Holland’s
actual independence, begun fifteen years before, had yet to be
protracted sixty-seven years.
Hitherto all the hope of the patriots had centered in William of Orange.
In declaring their independence, they offered him the crown. Partly to
prove the disinterestedness of his motives, still more perhaps because
he believed that the final release from Spain could be effected only by
putting the new state under the protection of France or England, he
refused the dignity. Fortunately, however, France continued to be a reed
on which no dependence could be placed, and the English help, when it
did come, was indirect. Meanwhile, Philip’s ban was still out against
the Stadtholder, and an attempt was made upon his life. He was shot in
the face, but recovered from the wound, to fall a victim, however, two
years later, to the pistol of one Balthasar Gerard. The tragedy occurred
on July 10, 1584.
It had removed the chief obstacle to Philip’s success. Maurice would
worthily succeed his father in the generalship of the war; but the brain
and conscience, the unswerving patience and unselfishness, that had
given some reality of union to the rival elements of the United
Provinces, were buried with William the Silent. The exaggerated
individualism of the several provinces and cities would have put them at
the mercy of Philip, had he not himself been distracted from any
singleness of purpose by the same cause. His own exaggerated egoism,
inflated with the ambition to be a world-power, prevented him from
concentrating his efforts upon the subjugation of the republic. He still
strove to force his influence upon the affairs of France, and meanwhile
made preparations to subdue England.
Thus Elizabeth, much as her Tudor instinct may have shrunk from the idea
of encouraging rebellion against kingship, was induced by her advisers
to make common cause with the Dutch against Spain. She refused their
offer of the crown, but lent them money and some troops under the
command of Leicester. He proved inefficient as a general, and, while a
few names, such as that of Sir Philip Sidney, stand out heroically,
England’s real contribution to Dutch independence was indirect. It was
Drake’s incessant harrying of Spanish ships and ports and the
destruction of the two Armadas that distracted Spain, broke her power
of offense, and hastened the exhaustion of her waning resources. Thus
the struggle with the provinces continued on land, but became more
desultory, while of the sea the Dutch had practically undisputed
mastery. The result was an accession of adventurous spirit that, while
it failed in the attempt to discover a Northwest Passage, established
settlements in the East Indies, wore down the competition of the
Spaniards in the trade of those regions, and inaugurated a condition of
extraordinary commercial prosperity.
Meanwhile Philip’s long reign of forty-three years was drawing to a
close. In May, 1598, he handed over the Netherlands to his daughter and
son-in-law, the Archduke Albert, and a few weeks later died. It is
sufficient for our present purpose to recall that the prolongation of
the war on behalf of the archduke by various generals, including
Spinola, was stopped by the bankruptcy of the attacking parties. A truce
of twelve years was agreed to in 1609.
Such was the background of events that preceded the birth of a new art
in Holland. A new nation had been formed, and the circumstances which
attended its formation had a direct influence in shaping the character
of the new art. That it involved a departure from the decorative
grandeur and the religious motive of Italian art was an incident of the
Dutch having repudiated alike the Roman Catholic form of worship and the
ceremonies of a regal court. Almost equally incidental was the fact that
the artists were limited to subjects drawn from the personages and
conditions of life within their own borders; were influenced, in fact,
to become realists. This, I repeat, was incidental and not unexampled,
for realism was at the same time revived in Italy and continued in
Spain. The fundamental thing was to be the character of Holland’s
realism; and this was a direct product of the national events we have
been describing. For it was a symptom of the general character that the
people had been forming in itself during more than half a century of
nation-building. It was essentially a moral character.
I need hardly say that I do not use the word “moral” in its narrower
sense, but to the full extent of its suggestion of a stout fiber of
conviction and purpose that habitually promotes integrity of conscience
and determines the conduct of a nation or an individual. It is nearer to
our borrowed word, “morale.” It is the product, I take it, primarily of
a great and worthy pride in self, and then of loyalty to the best in
one’s self that such pride engenders and makes necessary. It is what an
artist, least of all men, can afford to be without; for his work is
necessarily an expression of himself, and, if he has not morality in the
sense we have been describing, his work will inevitably betray the fact
and prove the weaker for it. No artist in any medium can maintain a
bluff. Even if it hoodwinks his contemporaries, posterity will “call
it.”
Now, in the case of Holland, the struggle for a great principle,
persevered in against all discouragements, had gradually established in
the nation just such a morality, which during the years of the truce and
for some thirty years later was to demonstrate its value in practically
every department of human activity. To higher learning and research, to
the practical affairs of life, such as manufactures, commerce, banking,
engineering, agriculture, and dairy-farming, to questions of disease and
hygiene, and to the systematizing of the legal relations as well of
nations as of individuals, the Dutch brought the application of a new
principle, substituting for empiricism and _laissez-faire_ the method of
approach and treatment that we now call scientific.
It is a term, by the way, that from time to time has been assumed to be
antagonistic to morality; whereas, if properly considered, it should and
does surely represent a morality of the most exacting and, frequently,
the most disinterested kind. One after another, then, the Dutch in those
days of newly realized nationality confronted the problems of
intellectual, material, and social progress, bringing to their study a
keen analysis, and handling their solution with integrity and
thoroughness. With morality such as this conspicuously abroad in the
community, it would have been strange if her artists had not reproduced
it in their own special field; if to directness and sanity of vision
they had not brought a scrupulous artistic conscience, that resulted in
integrity and thoroughness of craftsmanship. That certain of them at
some period of their careers deviated, as we shall see, from this high
standard does but emphasize the existence of the latter, which, too, was
reached, not by a few individuals, but by the artists as a body; so that
in no other school of painting can you find such wide-spread excellence
of technique. This, indeed, if we may anticipate the sequel, proved to
be one of the causes of the school’s subsequent decline. Technique came
to be pursued as a
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST GERARD TERBORCH
HAGUE MUSEUM]
motive. But this was itself a symptom of a deeper cause--the freshness
of the original motive had been outworn, its vigor slackened. The nation
itself had by that time lost the simple directness of its early ideal
and become enamoured of the sophistries of a world-wide ambition.
But to resume the thread of the story. At the commencement of the new
century Hals was sixteen years old; Daniel Seghers, eleven; Van Goyen
and the portrait-painter Thomas de Keyser, four. The train, in fact, was
already laid for a new kind of portraiture and for a new motive in
painting--that of naturalistic landscape. Otherwise the men destined to
be the most representative of the new school were as yet unborn. With
the opening of the century, however, their names appear thick and fast,
and continue to arrive for forty years; after which the list of those
conspicuous in the annals of the Dutch seventeenth-century school
ceases. Dating, therefore, from Hals’s birth in 1584, the period covered
is fifty-six years.
It is perhaps convenient for the purpose of assisting the memory to
divide the first forty years of the new century into two parts: the
first ending in 1621, with the conclusion of the twelve years’ truce;
and the second with the marriage, in 1641, of the Prince of Orange’s
son, William, to the eldest daughter of Charles I of England. The
historical aspect of these two periods in relation to the story of art
may be considered after we have reviewed the names of the principal
artists whose births they contain.
The earlier division, then, includes the greatest name in the art of
Holland, one of the greatest in all art, that of Rembrandt, who was
born in 1606. The latter is the birth-year also of the flower-painter
Jan van Heem, while the preceding years of the century disclose the
names of the marine-painter Simon de Vlieger and the landscape-painters
Salomon Ruisdael and Aert van der Neer, and Palamedesz, painter of
genre. The year 1610 gives us Van Ostade and the landscape-painter
Johannes Both; 1611, Ferdinand Bol and Willem van de Velde the Elder;
1613, Wouwerman and Gerard Dou; and 1615, Govert Flinck and Jan Wynants.
Here we may check the routine of enumeration to note another great name,
one of the most distinguished of the Holland School. It is that of
Gerard Terborch, born in 1617. He is followed, in 1619, by the
landscape-painter Philips Koninck and the portrait-painter Bartholomeus
van der Helst. To them succeed in 1620 Aelbert Cuyp and Nicolaes
Berchem, followed in 1621 by Eeckhout and Allart van Everdingen.
This enumeration does not pretend to be exhaustive. The aim has been
rather to include as few names as possible, so as to simplify the study
by concentrating attention from the start on those which are most
representative and most often met with. After familiarizing one’s self
with these, it is comparatively easy to add to their number and to place
the newly acquired ones in their chronological relation to this
preliminary list. The same motive determines the selection for the
second period.
It begins in 1624 with Carel Fabritius; but the following year discloses
a name that in the Holland School stands very close to Rembrandt, Jacob
Ruisdael, and another name of great reputation, Paul Potter. To 1626
belongs Jan Steen. After the birth of this artist there is a pause of
four years, when Gabriel Metsu and the still-life painter Kalf appear,
to be followed two years later, in 1632, by a notable trio, Nicolaes
Maes, Pieter de Hooch, and the most distinguished, Jan Vermeer of Delft.
With 1633 comes the marine-painter Willem van de Velde the Younger, and
with 1635 Frans van Mieris; while 1636 yields Adriaen van de Velde,
landscape-and figure-painter, and the painter of birds and poultry,
Melchior d’Hondecoeter. Finally, the painter of architecture, Jan van
der Heyden, is born in 1637; Hobbema in 1638, and in 1640 the painter of
animals and dead game, Jan Weenix.
If one glances back over the names of these two periods, it is to note
some interesting suggestions. In the first place, one of the earliest
names, Van Heem, and the last of the list, Weenix, represent painters of
still-life. The fact emphasizes the hold which this branch of painting
had upon the interest alike of the painters and their public, and the
part it plays in the general work of the school. In our own day there is
perhaps a tendency to underestimate the interest of still-life. “Only a
picture of flowers or fruit or game,” represents the feeling of many
people on the subject. It is an attitude of mind, resulting from the
habit of relying on the mind to appreciate a picture. Thus, as a subject
for mental study, a bunch of flowers, a mass of vegetables, pots and
pans and the like, may not be interesting. On the other hand, I think it
would be a mistake to assume that the Holland public of the seventeenth
century were free from this tendency; or to suppose that they regarded
a picture as a thing to be viewed and to be appreciated solely through
the abstract pleasure that is communicated by the joy of sight. As a
matter of fact, they were actually interested in the objects represented
in the still-life pictures. They were enthusiastic cultivators of
flowers and vegetables, keen sportsmen, and shared with the women of
their families a pride in all the objects of decoration and utility in
their homes, so that even utensils of ordinary use were made and kept in
a state of being ornamental. Accordingly, with that simple directness,
characteristic of the race, they took a positive interest in the
representation of such things. The latter were subjects of importance in
life; accordingly, since their art was so intimate an expression of
their life, they were welcomed as subjects for pictures.
The public also applauded the skill with which such subjects were
rendered by the artists, and the latter, since still-life presented
excellent opportunities for the display of craftsmanship, were glad
enough to reciprocate the popular taste. Thus resulted what one notes as
a second point in the consideration of Holland still-life painting:
namely, that the artists freely introduced objects of still-life into
their portraits. I cannot cite a more typical instance than the earliest
military group-picture by Frans Hals in the Haarlem Museum. Here the
viands and furnishings of the banquet are rendered with at least as much
gusto as the heads, and for the present with more assurance. Thirdly, it
is easy to trace the influence that this joy in the representation of
still-life had upon the evolution of genre painting in the Holland
School and upon the particular character that it assumes. In fact, the
interest in still-life subjects, with the influence it had upon the
methods of the artists, was a most important factor in the development
of the Holland School. Closely allied to it is the interest in
portraiture.
How radically this interest affected the art of Holland may be gathered
from another glance at the foregoing list of names. It is in the
beginning of the new era, in the earlier division of names, that all the
famous portrait-painters appear. Not to mention Rembrandt, whose genius
was of the universal kind, embracing in its single scope the separated
motives of other artists, we find the names of Hals, Mierevelt,
Ravesteyn, Van der Helst, Terborch, De Keyser, Cuyp, Bol, and Flinck. On
the other hand, among the names in the second list, selected without any
_parti pris_, there is not one of first or even second rank as a
portrait-painter; only men like Maes and Netscher, who were primarily
and far more worthily genre painters.
For it is the genre painters who form one of the chief distinctions of
the later generation. It is true that Dou belongs with the earlier, and
he was and still remains popular. But he is not in the same class as
Vermeer and Steen, nor as Maes, Metsu, and De Hooch, scarcely as a
painter even to be reckoned with Ostade. Indeed, he is nearer to Van
Mieris and Netscher, the men in whose hands genre sank to a distinctly
lower level. The only example in the earlier generation of a great genre
painter is Terborch, who presents the exception, and a brilliant one, to
the generalization I have suggested.
Another point of interest to be derived from this summary is the place
that landscape takes among the motives of the Holland School. We see, in
fact, that it figures at the beginning of the new era and continues to
the end. Seghers and Van Goyen precede the century, which immediately
opens with Salomon Ruisdael and Aert van der Neer, followed in the
earlier division by Both, Wouwerman, Koninck, Cuyp, Berchem, and Van
Everdingen. Then the second period opens with the birth of Jacob
Ruisdael, and, including Potter, Adriaen van de Velde, and Vermeer (the
last named with one known example), ends with Hobbema. Similarly, in the
allied department of marine-painting, the century opens with Simon de
Vlieger; Willem van de Velde the Elder follows, and in the later period
the art is represented by Bakhuysen and Willem van de Velde the Younger.
As a matter of fact, in each field of motive the seed was laid in the
beginning of the period under examination. What followed was a rotation
of crops and an enriched development of each variety.