THE INFLUENCE OF HALS AND REMBRANDT
Both Hals and Rembrandt, each in his different way, have influenced the
art of modern times much in the same way in which they influenced their
contemporaries. Hals was and still remains a great exemplar of technical
method which may be practically adopted, while Rembrandt, with a
technique that defies imitation, has influenced his own times and ours
by inspiring principles not only of technique but of motive. The
difference is inherent in their characters--Hals the raconteur;
Rembrandt the thinker.
Hals, with his masterful gift of summarizing the incidents and accidents
of an occasion or a personality, resembles the best examples of the
modern journalist and magazine writer; keenly alive to the temper of his
own time; reflecting everything vividly, as in a mirror, yet with a
discrimination for effects. Rembrandt, on the other hand, so absorbed in
his own contemplation as to be an enigma to the man who runs and reads,
is yet so passionately human that the place he by degrees makes for
himself in the imagination and the heart of those who learn to know him
expands and deepens. The difference between them is epitomized in their
respective kinds of technique. While Rembrandt is a constructor, Hals is
a “follower of surfaces.”
[Illustration: THE SUPPER AT EMMAUS REMBRANDT
LOUVRE, PARIS]
This may possibly explain the immediate and direct hold that Hals has
exerted upon modern art. The latter has been mainly concerned with
imitation, casting around for borrowed motives and for an appropriate
method of expressing them. In portraiture especially it has been
confronted with the problem of catering to the luxurious and extravagant
superficialities of a society largely composed of _nouveaux riches_. For
such the grave intellectuality of that other example of our day,
Velasquez, was inappropriate, but Hals’s glib, effective following of
surfaces, just the thing. It has authority and style, while its
essential commonness of feeling is discreetly veiled by a veneer of
aristocratic suggestion, and its evasion of the problems of construction
is disguised beneath a handsome showing of virility. His, in fact, was
precisely the style that met the demands and suited the temperament of
society in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Many, I suppose, will repudiate the notion that Hals was either
commonplace or faulty as a constructor of form. He is so much a man of
our own time, and in consequence has been so belauded, that to some it
may sound like _lèse-majesté_ to dispute his position in modern
estimation. On the other hand, if one tries to get beyond the barrier of
approbation with which artists and the public have blocked the free view
of Hals in relation to other portrait-painters of his own school, such
as Rembrandt or Terborch, or of other schools or periods, the suspicion
of his comparative commonness of feeling may grow into a conviction.
Whether it does so or not is so purely a question of individual point of
view and feeling that it would be futile to try to reason the matter
out. I can scarcely explain my own conviction. Perhaps I have hinted at
the basis of it in applying to Hals the term a raconteur, and in
likening his style to that of a brilliant newspaper man. It is the
function of both of these latter to make an immediate appeal, not
necessarily flashy but certainly striking, to a mixed gathering of
listeners or readers, whose first and sole demand is that the gist of
the matter shall be hit off attractively. Each in a greater or less
degree is addressing a crowd, and, since the latter’s aggregate of
mentality and feeling is of a lower order than the mentality and taste
of some, at least, of the individuals composing it, the speaker or
writer, to prove attractive, must, consciously or unconsciously, adjust
his thought and expression to this lower level. Such is the suggestion
of Hals and his modern imitators, when their work is compared with that
of the great portrait-painters, whose feeling and style are the products
of their own high-bred aloofness and self-sustained individuality. The
work of the former, by comparison, seems designed to attract, as
directly as possible and in a way to make the least demand upon
reflection. It skims the surfaces and summarizes the most obvious of
their features in the raciest of ways.
On the other hand, it is easier to transmit the conviction that Hals was
a follower of surfaces, for one’s eyesight here assists one’s feeling.
Look at one of his portraits and observe the fluent skill with which the
several planes of the features are rendered; the finesse with which a
glove is fitted to the hand, the folds of a costume are expressed, and
even protuberances of the form suggested. It is admirable, marvelous!
When painters can achieve such magic, it is no wonder that we have a
phrase, “as clever as paint.” But compare this portrait with one of
Rembrandt’s, and the latter’s superiority in the matter of solidity and
structural strength becomes apparent. The suggestion of form in Hals’s
is altogether slighter; you will not be convinced of bone and muscle
structure beneath the surfaces, and, if you continue the comparison from
gallery to gallery or choose to vary it by comparing Hals with Van Eyck,
Dürer, Holbein, and the great portrait-painters of the other schools,
will hardly fail to be convinced of his inferiority as a constructor.
On the other hand, it was his skill in following the surface that made
his influence so valuable to his contemporaries. The sense of structural
form cannot be imparted. It is constitutional; a man has it or he has
not. But it is possible to teach efficiency in brushwork; and Hals, one
of the most brilliant painters who ever lived, set a standard of
painter-like craftsmanship that, passed on by his immediate pupils to
others, gave to Holland the merit of producing the most efficient school
of painters in the world. The most important of his pupils were
Terborch, Metsu, Wouwerman, and Adriaen van Ostade, the last named the
teacher of Jan Steen. It is a noticeable fact that all these men were
genre painters, for even Wouwerman, by a slight straining of the word,
can be included, since the individual charm of his landscapes consists
in their animated groups of figures, and it was in his treatment of
these that he was especially indebted to Hals. In fact, the latter’s
influence on the men of his own day was directly and most
characteristically and emphatically shown, not, as in our day, in
portraiture, but in genre; in shaping, refining, and giving new
distinction to the tendency for genre pictures that the Hollanders had
inherited from the united School of Flanders.
In a previous chapter we have spoken of the encouragement which Hals’s
example gave to the still-life painting; it was no less effective in
encouraging the use of still-life in genre. The motive of the new genre
became less that of depicting an incident than of picturing the
environment of home life, its accompaniments of furniture and
belongings; and these were made contributory to recreating the spirit of
the life.
Immediately from this proceeds the second point which the genre painters
gained from Hals: namely, an inspiration for the composition of their
pictures. It is marked no less by naturalness than propriety, and by an
extraordinary feeling of unity. There is an excellent discretion alike
in the choice and in the arrangement of details; everything is
characteristic and made subservient to the general harmony.
The latter results from the third point enforced by Hals’s example: the
principle of relativity in the use of values. Color became the basis of
the new genre, and color treated from the point of view of tone; hence
again the incomparable unity of impression which examples of the best
genre artists exhibit. Some mass of local color, either cool or warm in
hue, affords a dominant note. To this, by means of contrasts and
repetitions, the whole scheme is tuned. The contrasting values of other
local colors are opposed to that of the dominant mass, and higher and
lower values of all these colors repeated throughout the scheme. The
harmony that ensues may be rich and low or high in key and sprightly,
but in the finest examples, and they are very numerous, is always
characterized by a choice refinement.
This quality is due in no slight measure to the fourth way in which
these artists were indebted to Hals, namely, their skill in brushwork.
For they learned from him to lay the color on frankly and directly,
without fumbling or indecision. They constructed their forms in color,
building them up with layers of modulated values, working generally with
a small brush, but one that was fully charged with pigment which was
floated on to the surface. Thus the color has not only body and
substance, but also a limpid transparency, a quality as of liquidized
gems. It is this blend of lightness of touch, of purity of pigment, and
withal of solid underpainting, that gives breadth and dignity to the
delicacy of these harmonies. To assure one’s self of this it is but
necessary to compare a Vermeer or Terborch with a Netscher. The last is
felt at once to have less breadth and dignity, and altogether slighter
charm; and an examination of his technique helps to explain the reason.
There is less underpainting, and in the minute and dainty passages the
pigment has not been floated but stippled over the surface. The result
is a comparative tightness of feeling and, in place of limpid
transparency, a suggestion rather of thinness and hardness.
The influence exerted by Hals in these four directions--namely, in the
treatment of still-life, in composition, in regard for values, and in
the habit of skilful brushwork--was supplemented by that of Rembrandt,
which dates from 1632, the year in which he moved to Amsterdam. The
latter also affected the development of genre, but not in the line of
direct suggestion. Rembrandt’s technique in its most characteristic
aspects was and still remains too personal an expression of his own
attitude of mind and of its changes of mood, varying according to the
nature of each subject interpreted, to permit of imitation. Rembrandt
contributed ideas. He enlarged the scope of genre by the suggestion, on
the one hand, of a further range of subject, and, on the other, of a new
motive in technique. It was especially the example of his religious
pictures that affected the idea of subject, either directly leading
other artists to a similar treatment of religious themes or indirectly
encouraging them to include some kind of sentiment in the domestic
scenes they depicted. Meanwhile, by the example of his own use of
chiaroscuro, he encouraged a more subtle study of values, at once more
intimate and varied and more expressive.
An admirable epitome of the character of Rembrandt’s influence upon his
contemporaries is in the old Pinakothek in Munich. In the first place
there is a _Holy Family_, painted in 1631, the year before he moved from
Leyden. It is about six feet high, the figures being life-size; but the
conception and treatment of the subject are thoroughly in the way of
genre. The picture presents a glimpse of the interior of a Dutch home:
the tools hanging on the walls, the face, figure, and costume of the
mother, the Child swathed in a shawl, and the familiar accompaniment of
the cradle--all are distinctively Dutch in character. The mother, with a
pretty gesture of tenderness, is fondling one of the Baby’s feet,
looking down at it with a gentle smile, while the father bends forward
over the cradle in an attitude of reverent solicitude. The whole scene
breathes the quiet happiness of domestic life. In its character the
picture is essentially a genre subject. At the time it was painted Dou
was working in Rembrandt’s studio, and to its influence it is not
unreasonable to trace at least some of the tendency that Dou exhibited
in later years to introduce just such tender and reverential sentiment
into his own work, as witness _The Young Mother_ at the Hague Gallery
and _The Old Woman Saying Grace_ in the Pinakothek in Munich. In fact,
_The Holy Family_ is already characteristic of the sentiment that became
infused into genre by the example of Rembrandt.
Intimately connected with this is the example of Rembrandt’s technical
use of chiaroscuro, used either for the purpose of interpreting
sentiment or of simply adding to the interest of the color-scheme. The
foretaste of this is given in a series of six pictures of Biblical
subjects in the Pinakothek, painted for the Stadtholder, Frederick
Henry: two of them, _The Descent from the Cross_ and _The Elevation of
the Cross_, in 1633; _The Ascension_, 1636; _The Burial_ and _The
Resurrection_, 1639; and _The Adoration of the Shepherds_, 1646. About
three feet high, they approximate to the familiar size of genre, and are
distinctly genre in conception and treatment. Moreover, they are arched
over at the top, a device that became popular with Dou and other genre
painters, who frequently substituted for the formal arch a draped
curtain, the result being to set the main part of the scene back, and
thus increase the effect of looking into it. This, however, is not
merely to suggest more vividly the third dimension. For Rembrandt in
these pictures has set the example of concentrating the high light on a
few features of the composition, surrounding these with lighted objects
of lower value, and finally inclosing all in a ring of shadow, so that
one seems to be looking into a circular concavity out of the gloom of
which certain objects emerge into view with greater or less
distinctness. The device is used by Rembrandt to heighten the dramatic
and emotional significance of the composition, and was so applied by
some of his followers, notably by Maes, while by others the principle
was adopted as a means of giving force, variety, and added charm of
mystery to their color-schemes. It became, in fact, one of the most
characteristic of the technical methods of Holland genre.
Apropos of this series it is interesting to note, as a side-light on
Rembrandt’s use of models, that one, _The Elevation of the Cross_,
contains a striking figure of an Oriental. It was transferred in reduced
size from a picture of the same subject painted in the preceding year,
1632, which is now owned by the New York collector Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt.
Moreover, the head and bust of this man appear as the subject of another
picture, painted in the same year as _The Elevation_, which now hangs in
the Munich Pinakothek.
To recapitulate, then, in this series of the Old Pinakothek we have a
striking example of Rembrandt’s motive in the treatment of Biblical
subjects, developed during the period from 1633 to 1646 of his greatest
popularity in Amsterdam. It involved, as we have seen, the translation
of the heroic and grandiloquent style of religious subjects, as
practised by the Italians, into the homelier poignancy and intimate
personal suggestiveness of meaning that commended themselves to the
simple directness and home-love of the Hollanders. It practically
converted the religious picture into one of genre; and its example led
to a similar treatment of these subjects by other painters, notably
Carel Fabritius, Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, and Gerbrandt van den
Eeckhout, while to the painters of domestic genre pure and simple it
also supplied the motive of sentiment and a new motive of technique.
It is true that sentiment plays a comparatively small part in Holland
genre. Dou has been mentioned as following the example of Rembrandt in
this respect, and the other prominent instance is Nicolaes Maes, who
entered the master’s studio in 1648, that is to say, two years after the
completion of _The Adoration of the Shepherds_, the latest of the Munich
series. How far Rembrandt had influenced the bias of Maes’s temperament
toward sentiment is conjectural, but that he supplied the younger man
with a technical principle for its expression is certain. Maes
discovered the possibilities of emotional suggestion that existed in the
device of heightening the luster of certain parts of the composition by
the contrast of veiled and shadowed color elsewhere. With him it does
not reach the dramatic force or depth of emotional appeal that the
master’s use of it involves, but nevertheless becomes the expression of
a sentiment that, as Bode remarks, is nearer to the sentiment of
Rembrandt than that of any other artist of the school.
On the other hand, by those genre artists of the period who were not
given to sentiment, the principle of Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro was adopted
for the sake of æsthetic considerations, founded upon the facts of
sight. It may or may not be true that Rembrandt himself derived it from
his observation of the light in the dim recesses of his father’s mill,
but at any rate the artists of genre interiors soon saw its application
to their subjects, and were led by it to study with more discrimination
the infinite variety of light value. The result was twofold. Their
color-schemes grow more subtle and refined, and the tonality becomes
impregnated with the suggestion of atmosphere. Thus the example of
Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro wedded to that of Hals’s facile craftsmanship
developed the inimitable perfection of technique which characterizes the
best works of Holland genre.
It is the latter, one may observe in conclusion, that has most affected
the modern revival of painting in Holland. While foreign painters, in
portraiture especially, have been disposed to follow the direct example
of Frans Hals, the Hollanders themselves, both in landscape and genre,
have been influenced by the so-called “little masters,” and, in the case
of Josef Israels, by Rembrandt himself. And the result of this influence
has been to make modern Dutch painters, as a group, the best brushmen of
their age.