LANDSCAPE
In the Berlin Gallery are two small examples of _Holland Landscape with
the Hamlet of Rhenen_. They are by Hercules Seghers, whom Bode points to
as the father of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape. Similar in general
design, they are distinguished by a fine sweep of almost clear sky,
swimming with vapor, from which a level country, dotted with the roofs
and church towers of a hamlet and threaded by a stream, stretches in
pale-yellow tones, broken up with brownish shadows, to the foreground.
The identification of the scene and the assignment of these pictures to
Seghers have been made possible by comparison with some etchings of the
same artist that modern Dutch research has discovered. By the same means
other pictures, including a _Landscape_ in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence,
which used to be attributed to Rembrandt, have been restored to Seghers.
This one again shows a plain, intersected by a stream, but bounded on
the right by the abrupt shoulder of a mountain, whose top is merged in
dark cloud, while the rest of the sky is an open expanse of whitish
light. In the contrast of this with the dark tones of the ground,
weirdly interspersed with fitful gleams, there is an extraordinary
impressiveness. It is no wonder that it was mistaken for a Rembrandt;
and the interest in Seghers deepens when it is ascertained that
Rembrandt himself was strongly influenced during his earlier years in
Amsterdam by the older artist. This has been proved by a comparison of
certain of the etchings of the two men.
Hercules Seghers, in fact, seems to have been in his own day very much
what Michel was to the modern revival of landscape-painting in France.
He was a forerunner of the later movement, but unrecognized by the
world, while almost the only records that exist of him are documentary
evidences of debts. He was born in 1590, probably in Haarlem; worked in
Haarlem, Utrecht, and The Hague, but chiefly in Amsterdam, where he died
about 1640.
In the few examples of his work that still survive, we can trace the
twofold tendency of Dutch landscape: in one direction its note of simple
truthfulness to the facts of nature, and in the other the tincture of
these facts with a romantic spirit. And, in addition to thus setting the
motive, Seghers proclaimed the Dutch artist’s fondness for effects of
sky, for tonalities of grays and browns, sparingly enlivened with
greens.
For the Dutch landscapists were tonalists. With the single exception of
Jan Vermeer, who approximated the _plein-air_ of modern art, they
transposed the hues of nature into a scheme of color which is none the
less arbitrary and unnatural, although it preserves the values of
nature’s coloring. In comparison with the naturalistic achievements of
the modern artist, who studies nature in her own environment of light
and renders her hues as actual light affects them, the Dutch artist was
a composer on the theme of nature, but not a naturalist. The same,
however, in only a less degree, is true of the Barbizon artists. They,
too, were composers of schemes of tonality, so that, students of nature
though they were, their landscapes will not compare in naturalness of
suggestion with the work of many a modern man who will probably never
enjoy their fame. Let me add that I do not mean to imply by this the
essential superiority of the modern landscape-painter. That is another
question, and only to be decided by each person for himself, according
as he selects or does not select naturalistic representation as the
standard of his taste. To one who does not the tonal transposition may
seem preferable. Both methods, indeed, have their warrant in art.
But I press the distinction because, unless it is recognized, Dutch
landscape-painting cannot be properly appreciated. If people approach
it, and it is my experience that many do, with modern _plein-air_
achievements in their eye and basing their judgment upon them, they can
only suffer disappointment. The Dutch paintings will seem
“old-fashioned,” false to nature, and uninspired. On the other hand,
once the necessary attitude is assumed of accepting this transposition
of color and light phenomena of nature into an equivalent of tonal
values, proper appreciation is possible. Then one begins to study the
examples partly for the quality of their tonality, partly for the degree
in which they embody the character and spirit of the landscape, and
partly, and probably chiefly, for the quality of the artist’s
personality infused into them.
REMBRANDT
REMBRANDT was a master of both landscape motives, able alike to record
with truthfulness the physical aspects of a scene or to infuse it with
romantic suggestion; and nowhere more remarkably than in his etchings.
In these, with a few lines that summarize the salient features of the
scene, or with tonal effects of light and shade that elaborate and
enrich the facts, he executed plates of pure landscape or of landscape
as a setting for the figures. Among his paintings the examples of pure
landscape are rare. The beautiful _Tobit and the Angel_ of the National
Gallery may be considered one, as the figures are insignificant, and
another, which, however, is a sea-piece, is in the Liechtenstein Gallery
(No. 606): water, dotted with a boat and a few distant sails, stretching
back to a low horizon, over which spreads a vast open creamy sky, with
some finely buoyant clouds. It is as a setting to figures, especially in
the Biblical subjects, that Rembrandt’s use of landscape may best be
studied. Here it serves as an orchestration to the theme, enriching it
with sensuous and emotional suggestion, and giving a free range to the
artist’s romantic and dramatic imagination.
PHILIPS KONINCK
REMBRANDT’S best-known pupil in landscape was Philips Koninck, who was
born in Amsterdam, 1619, and died there in 1688, some of his career
being spent abroad. The character of his work suggests that he, too,
may have been influenced directly by Hercules Seghers, for he affected
far-reaching panoramas of flat country, interrupted by occasional low
hills and traversed by streams. A fine sky extends above the ground,
which is constructed in tones of warm pale yellow, olive green, and
reddish brown. Notwithstanding the comparatively large size of the
canvases and the extent of the scene included, the latter has been felt
so synthetically, as well as comprehensively, that there is no lack of
unity. An excellent example is _The Dunes_, “The Valley of the Rhine
near Arnheim,” owned by Sir William van Horne of Montreal. Another
memorable example is in the Dresden Gallery, _Dutch Landscape_, a view
from the dunes looking across the level country. This canvas is scarcely
so large, but involves the same sense of bigness. The foreground, which
shows some red-roofed cottages amidst the olive greens, is constructed
in an ample way; a river occupies the middle distance, and the further
plain is dotted with little trees. Overhead is a sky of drabbish gray
and rosy cream. The Berlin Museum owns a handsome example with figure
and cattle in the foreground, and the Rijks Museum contains two. Here
also are to be seen four portraits by Koninck of _Joost van den Vondel_,
two at the age of seventy-eight and two at eighty-seven; the subject
evidently being a friend of the artist, for on the back of one of the
pictures is a dedicatory inscription.
* * * * *
THE great nursery of Holland landscape was the city of Haarlem. Van
Goyen, it is true, belonged to Leyden, while Amsterdam, which produced
Seghers and Koninck, in course of time claimed many others. But the
majority were citizens of Haarlem or at least spent a portion of their
working life in that city. They include Salomon van Ruisdael and his
nephew Jacob; Pieter Molyn, Jan Wynants, Allart van Everdingen, and the
painters of landscape with animals and figures, Philips Wouwerman,
Adriaen van de Velde, and Nicolaes Berchem.
* * * * *
SALOMON VAN RUISDAEL (about 1600-1670), it has been conjectured, may
have been a pupil of Van Goyen’s because of a similarity between the
early work of both, that has lead to their pictures being attributed to
each other. But later the similarity disappears, Van Goyen displaying an
ampler and more poetic style, while Salomon van Ruisdael continues to be
the industrious painter of landscapes that, while admirably faithful to
the appearance of nature, are comparatively prosaic in feeling. While he
was a member of the Guild of St. Luke in Haarlem and lived there
continuously, he visited other cities, for some of his pictures exhibit
views of Leyden, Dordrecht, and Nimwegen. The characteristic of his work
is a quiet, homely dignity, that, while it gives a pleasant record of
the Holland of his day, seldom stirs one to enthusiasm. Perhaps his
chief claim to recognition is that he was the teacher of Jacob van
Ruisdael.
* * * * *
PIETER MOLYN (about 1600-1661) was a successful teacher, who had the
capacity to foster the individuality of his pupils. Among these the most
famous was Gerard Terborch, who occasionally collaborated with his
master by introducing figures into his landscapes. Molyn’s own pictures
were inclined to be meager in composition, and dryly precise in
execution.
* * * * *
JAN WYNANTS (about 1605-1679), again, was fortunate in having a
collaborator, for more than one hundred and fifty of his pictures were
enlivened with figures by that skilful and attractive artist, Adriaen
van de Velde. They add brilliance and animation to landscapes that in
themselves are painstaking but apt to be monotonous.
* * * * *
ALLART VAN EVERDINGEN (1621-1675) is not to be confounded with his
brother Cæsar, who was a rather indifferent painter of portraits, genre
and historical pictures. Allart was a pupil of Pieter Molyn and then
worked in Sweden, subsequently spending seven years in Haarlem and the
last twenty-two years of his life in Amsterdam. His fame also rests on
his connection with Jacob van Ruisdael, who was induced by the success
of Everdingen’s Swedish landscapes to abandon the direct study of nature
and to invent scenes of romantic impressiveness. In the Rijks Museum
there is a chance, in Nos. 2078 and 907, to compare side by side the
work of these two men. The result, I think, is to discover that, while
they may use practically the same material in the same way, Ruisdael
gives a character to each object, that makes you feel as if he had
penetrated into the heart as well as the marrow of the scene, while
Everdingen remains merely a lover and recorder of the picturesque.
AERT VAN DER NEER
VAN DER NEER was born in Gorkum in 1603, and died in poverty at
Amsterdam in 1677. In his youth he was steward in the family of the Van
Arkels, and at this time only occasionally indulged his love of
painting. Later he devoted himself to art, but found few purchasers for
his pictures and was continually harassed by creditors, and at one time,
like Jan Steen, kept a tavern. He is distinguished particularly for his
winter and moonlight scenes, the best of which date from about 1646.
They exhibit not only a close study of nature but a poetic feeling,
which is deep and sincere and often very impressive. He was a painter of
moods, expressing the sentiment usually in delicate tonalities, so
delicate, indeed, that his pictures, hidden away in the corners of
galleries or confronted with more robust pictures, seem at first
monotonous and cold. It is not until, as Bode points out, they are
isolated in a good light that their merit becomes apparent. This famous
expert also compares the method of Van der Neer’s moonlight scenes with
that of Rembrandt’s interiors. The latter projects a shaft of light into
the hollow gloom, while Van der Neer represents a concavity of light,
the luminosity of which is heightened by the shadows. His method, in
fact, is the exact reverse of Rembrandt’s.
Two memorable examples of his moonlight scenes appear in the Berlin
Gallery, where one is impressively somber, while the other is
dramatically stirred by the yellow and red flare and turbid smoke from a
burning house, and figures in movement agitate the foreground. Others
are in the National Gallery and in the Imperial Art Museum at Vienna.
The example in the latter shows a darkened canal, with a boat,
stretching back to a town that broods beneath a sky in which the moon
rides at full, surrounded by fleecy clouds.
In the Vienna Gallery also is an example of one of his winter scenes,
others appearing in the National Gallery and in the Wallace Collection.
In these the artist indulges in a freer and livelier use of color,
though the animation of the ground and its group of figures does not
interfere with the delicate observation and sensitive feeling, that
still regulate his treatment of the skies. It is on this that Van der
Neer, like all painters of poetic moods, relies chiefly for expression.
In one of Van der Neer’s landscapes in the National Gallery, cattle were
painted by Cuyp. The reminder may serve at this point of our story for
an introduction to the important part played in Holland landscape by
those artists who enlivened it with figures and animals.
LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES AND ANIMALS
THE popularity of this branch of painting in the seventeenth century can
be explained by its affinity to genre painting. It is but a step from
depicting a party of people in an interior to showing them engaged in
some sport or occupation in the open air. The same tendency to depict
the incidents of Dutch life, or to use such incidents as the theme of a
pictorial presentation, appears in both; and some of the artists of
this out-of-door genre, Wouwerman, Adriaen van de Velde, Cuyp, and
Berchem, reached proficiency that compares favorably with the
masterpieces of interior genre. As for the fondness for depicting
cattle, we may recollect how Troyon, after visiting Holland, turned from
pure landscape to cattle studies, while every observant visitor to that
country has enjoyed the spots of rich color which the grazing herds make
in the far stretches of green pasture. They form one of the notable
features of the Holland landscape, and it would have been surprising if
the painters, so intent on the study of their home surroundings, had
overlooked it. The signal member of this group of painters is Paul
Potter.
PAUL POTTER
POTTER is the prodigy among Dutch artists. At the age of twenty-two he
produced a masterpiece that, despite its shortcomings, has compelled the
admiration of the world. This is a work of trenchant, even brutal force,
while the majority of his work, especially in his later years, wins by
its charm of persuasiveness. He is personally known to us through the
beautiful portrait by Van der Helst. It was painted in the year of
Potter’s death, and shows him a man of distinguished mien, with soft
auburn hair curling upon his shoulders, and a face that is marked by a
high forehead, heavy-lidded eyes, a strong nose, and full, impulsive
lips; a face upon which consumption has set the impress of fell
refinement.
[Illustration: THE YOUNG BULL PAUL POTTER
HAGUE MUSEUM]
The son of an obscure painter, Potter was born at Enkhuizen in 1625.
From 1646 to 1648 he resided at Delft, where his masterpiece, _The Young
Bull_ of the Hague Gallery, was painted. In 1649 he moved to The Hague
and married the daughter of an architect, Adriana Balckeneijnde. In 1652
he moved to Amsterdam and continued to reside there until his death in
1654.
_The Young Bull_ is an amazing achievement of self-discipline and almost
passionate pursuit of truth. It suggests the attitude of the painter to
have been that once and for all he would master the creature’s
appearance. He set himself a great task of prolonged endurance and has
carried it through to an extraordinary realization. The character of the
beast, as it shows itself to the eye; the incidents of its form and
carriage; the glossy pelt with its actual surface of hair, the brilliant
eye, the damp nozzle--every detail is of life. Having completed this
study, which established for himself the knowledge and skill he had
sought and became a model for the instruction of other artists, he
filled in the rest of the canvas in a somewhat perfunctory manner. The
sky has good quality, but remains a background in the rear of the
composition; the intermediate landscape, overspread effectively with a
pale light, does not maintain its proper plane. The beasts in the
foreground are as hard as wood, the details of the tree niggling, and
the figure of the man ill drawn and tamely comprehended. In fact, it is
not as a picture that the canvas is remarkable, but for its consummately
realistic treatment of the one overpowering detail.
Other large canvases, also products of the artist’s extreme youth, are
the _Bear Hunt_ of the Rijks Museum and the _Boar Hunt_ in the
Carstanjen Collection of the Berlin Gallery. They are open to the same
general criticism, without the wonderful exception. They are evidences
of a young man’s exuberant indiscretion, though he was probably induced
to it by the high value that clients set upon such pictures. Meanwhile,
as early as 1646, that is to say, when he was twenty-one, he was
settling down to the smaller pictures, artistically felt and rendered,
that mark the end of his career. One of the earliest of these, dated
1648, is the scene of _Cattle and Bathers_, in the Hague Gallery; finely
composed and full of happy observation of country life, but somewhat
hard in texture. Yet the previous year had produced the _Horses at the
Door of a Cottage_ of the Louvre, where the scene is enveloped in the
soft half-light of a glowing evening sky. Another beautiful evening
scene is _Landscape with Cattle_ of the National Gallery.
PHILIPS WOUWERMAN
THIS charmingly original and versatile artist, whose works abound in
public and private collections, was born in Haarlem in 1619 and died
there in 1668. He studied landscape with Jan Wynants, but the teacher
who set the tenor of his career was Frans Hals. It was from the latter
that he derived his skill in handling figures, composing them in groups,
placing them in space, and rendering them with fluency and vitality of
brushwork; and the principles thus acquired were applied by him also to
the treatment of the landscape. On his own part he brought to his work a
singularly alert observation, that was happy in hitting upon the
fugitive and accidental aspects of a scene, and a fancy that invests his
subject with a lyrical grace.
His fecundity was such that it is estimated he left some seven hundred
examples, which may be divided into those of his early period, which
extended through the forties, and those of his maturity, which belong to
the fifties and early sixties. He was brought up during the vicissitudes
of the Thirty Years’ War, and the impressions of soldiering suggested
many of his subjects of cavalry, skirmishing, on the march, or halting
at an inn. Elsewhere it is hunting parties, riding parties, gay
cavalcades of ladies and gentlemen; then, again, scenes of farming life:
the bringing home of hay, watering of horses, scenes in the smithy--an
inexhaustible array of incidents in which figure men and women and their
friends, the horse and dog. With such unusual productivity it is not
strange that some of his pictures suffered by haste of execution. This
is especially true of his latest pictures, where the shadows have come
through and destroyed the brilliance of the colors. For, though
Wouwerman was not a colorist, he was an adept at suggesting the gaiety
of color, and his best pictures are bouquets of animated brilliance.
AELBERT CUYP
SON of a prosperous portrait-painter of Dordrecht, Aelbert Cuyp enjoyed
ample means, married a widow, rich and well connected, was highly
esteemed and held public offices in his own community, and throughout
the eighteenth century continued to be prized by collectors as the
“Dutch Claude.” The result was that he could paint to please himself. It
is true that occasionally he was persuaded to paint portraits of his
wife’s aristocratic connections, some on horseback, but these less
characteristic pictures are exceptions. Living far from the centers of
artists, he was devoted to country life, making visits occasionally
along the Maas to Nimwegen or up the Rhine as far as Bergen, but for the
most part indulging his love of nature in the neighborhood around his
native city. The happiness of the man and the artist’s joy in the life
of simple things--his ample means made possible the simple life--are
reflected in the sunniness of his landscapes, and in the big, lazy,
comfortable kine that graze and bask and chew the cud beside slowly
moving waters in the neighborhood of pleasant homesteads, steeped in the
warmth of sunshine. “Only in his own home on the lower Maas,” writes the
modern artist, Jan Veth, himself a native of Dordrecht, “only near
Dordrecht, could he find this happy country, where a delicate vapor from
the rich marshy lands lies over the meadows, which in the morning and
evening hours are covered with a peculiar golden veil.”
His best pictures are in private collections in England and Paris and in
the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection, and the galleries of St.
Petersburg and Budapest. They number nearly fifty that can be regarded
as masterpieces. On the other hand, the pictures by which he is
represented in many galleries will disappoint the student who has formed
a high expectation of this artist’s merit. For he was as unequal in his
manner as he was varied in his choice of subjects, which, besides
landscape and portraiture, included also genre, still-life, church
interiors, and historical paintings.
He was born in Dordrecht in 1620 and died there in 1691. Besides the
instruction that he received from his father, he is supposed to have
been influenced by Van Goyen, for his early work shows a recollection of
the latter’s grayish tones.
ADRIAEN VAN DE VELDE
IN the Rijks Museum is a portrait by Adriaen van de Velde that
represents himself and his family. In a country spot they have alighted
from their carriage, and while a groom attends to the handsome horses,
the artist and his young wife, a little child, and a nurse with the baby
in her arms are grouped in the road. The artist is of refined and
gracious mien, while the spirit of the whole scene breathes prosperity
and happiness. The portrait is indicative of his art, of the gracious
freshness, joyousness, and sweet tranquillity that characterize his
landscapes. For, though he painted some Biblical and historical
subjects, his true métier was landscape, with the ingratiating addition
of groups of figures and animals. So highly appreciated was his gift of
treating these groups that many of the landscape artists of Amsterdam
employed him to introduce them into their pictures. Hobbema was among
the number, as may be seen in that artist’s picture, _The Water Mill_,
owned by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, where the cow and the figures of the
man and woman are by Van de Velde.
Born in Amsterdam in 1636, Adriaen belonged to the Van de Velde family
of artists, his earliest teacher being his father, the naval painter,
Willem the Elder. Then he studied with Jan Wynants at Haarlem and later
with Philips Wouwerman. He was also influenced by Potter and Nicolaes
Berchem, perhaps gaining from the latter his occasional fondness for the
Italianized kind of landscape. But this is mere supposition.
Even Berchem (1620-1683) is only supposed to have visited Italy, because
of the character of the subjects he represented. All that is definitely
known about him is that he resided in Haarlem and Amsterdam. His
treatment, however, of the Italianized landscape, with its goats and
cows and peasants, is inferior to the art of Van de Velde. It charms at
first by its sunny picturesqueness; but it is discovered by degrees to
be a product of routine and mannerism. A studied affectation becomes
apparent in the arrangement of the groups, and a monotonous reiteration
of the effects of light: some object always placed near the center to
catch the chief illumination, while a corresponding formality is
repeated again and again in the distribution of the light and shade.
But such mechanics of picture-making never occur in Van de Velde’s
landscapes. There is always a freshness of vision, characterized,
moreover, by delicate observation, that puts him on a par with
Wouwerman, though the sentiment of his pictures is his own.
THE NAVAL AND MARINE PAINTERS
IT has already been remarked that the naval and marine pictures are an
exception to the general rule that Dutch painting reflects nothing of
the war and the turbulence of the times. The headquarters of the craft
was naturally the great shipping and commercial center, Amsterdam. Here
in the early part of the seventeenth century lived Hendrick Cornelisz
Vroom. Born in Haarlem in 1566, he had, previously to his settling down
in the Dutch capital, visited France, England, and Italy, while there is
good reason to believe that shipwreck had increased his experiences by
enforced sojourn on the west coast of Africa. He makes a brave showing
in the Rijks Museum with records of Dutch vessels running down Spanish
galleys and a sea-fight on the Haarlem Meer, and always his signature
appears proudly on a pennon at the masthead of a winning ship.
Simon de Vlieger, a native of Rotterdam, where he was born in 1693, is
another painter of stirring sea-fights, though he also represents the
peaceful side of shipping; witness _A River Scene_, in the Rijks Museum,
where a big-sailed merchantman from the Indies lies near some little
boats on the wind-flecked water, a picture full of bracing suggestion.
Lieve Verschuier (1630-1686), also a native of Rotterdam, could present
with vigorous effect the busy aspect of the harbor, as may be seen at
the Rijks Museum in his _Charles II Entering Rotterdam, 24 May, 1660_.
But the greatest of this stalwart group were Willem van de Velde the
Elder, and his son, Willem the Younger. Both were born in Leyden, the
former in 1611, the younger in 1633, and, after a period in Amsterdam,
settled in England, where the father died in London, 1693, and the son
at Greenwich, in 1707. The characteristic of these men is their
treatment of the shipping; for with them, as with the others, the
shipping and the sky are of more concern than the water. They give the
great galleons and bulky Indiamen the personality almost of sentient
things: creatures of power and importance, swelling with the pride of
consequence.