VAN GOYEN AND HOBBEMA
The greatest name in Holland landscape, second only to Rembrandt, as
many believe, in Dutch art, is Jacob van Ruisdael. Of the comparative
merits of the other two leaders of Dutch landscape, opinions may differ;
but personally I give the palm to Van Goyen.
Jan Josephsz van Goyen, to give his full name, was born in Leyden, in
1576. He was the pupil of several teachers, including Esaias van de
Velde. At about the age of twenty-one he made a journey to France in the
company of one of his teachers. Later he visited Belgium and the
northern part of France, the sketches of this trip being still preserved
in the Print Collection of Dresden. Moreover, from the subjects of his
pictures, it is evident that he traveled extensively in Holland. Toward
1634 he settled at The Hague, continuing to work there until his death
in 1656. His pictures found ready sale, but he speculated unfortunately
in houses and pictures and was a victim of that Dutch “South Sea
Bubble,” the speculative mania in tulips. Consequently he died poor.
His work embraces three manners. The first, which lasted until about
1630, shows a tendency to brown, with highly colored figures in which
notes of red predominate. This is the period of Esaias van de Velde’s
influence. In the second period he begins to be himself; the color
becomes more subdued, the skies more clear, and the tonality mingles
grayness with the browns or becomes greenish. This lasts for some years,
and then gradually a finer sense of picturesqueness regulates the
compositions; the technique gains in breadth and authority; the tonality
is attained almost without color.
An example of the early method is _View of Dordrecht_, in the Hague
Gallery. The town is seen in the distance across an expanse of water,
furred by the wind; in the left foreground, the harbor bank with figures
and horses; a sail-boat scudding toward the right. It is a gray day,
translated into tones of brown; an exquisitely impressionistic vision of
the occasion and scene.
A very remarkable picture of the transition stage between the first and
second periods is the _Landscape_ (No. 990) of the Rijks Museum,
illustrated in this book. In the coat of the man on the left the vivid
spot of red appears; his companion’s coat is blue; and these two notes
of color vibrate sharply against the drabbish lowering sky. The ground
is buffish green and the oaks brown. It is a picture of extraordinary
dramatic effect.
Two fine examples of the artist’s middle and later period are in the
Berlin Gallery: _View of Arnheim_ (1646) and _View of Nimwegen_ (1649).
The former shows a horseman in the foreground and a cart farther back,
where a gleam of light strikes, while the distant town is in shadow; and
above this striking contrast is a magnificent height of sky filled with
light and scattered with a few loose, well-constructed clouds. The
tonality is composed of cream, gray, brown, and green. The later
example already shows the prevalence of brown. The architecture is
constructed in tones of pale brown and buff; the water in front is
grayish white, and the ample sky admits a little rose amid the grayish
blue. It is a picture of large feeling, and yet the details are still
drawn in with that wriggling stroke of the brown brush which
characterizes Van Goyen’s work, especially in the beginning and more or
less to the end. It exhibits the feeling of one who is an engraver, as
indeed he was; it is drawing rather than painting. The result is that
some of his pictures seem more than a trifle niggling in their method.
On the other hand, while he never gets away from it, he gets the better
of it. He continues to model with these diminutive curlicues of
vermicelli, now brown, now green, but the method disappears in the big
impression aroused by the ensemble. Other notable examples of his later
period are _The River_ and _Banks of a Canal_, in the Louvre.
But in the final analysis it is not the manner of an artist that is of
most account, but the quality of his appeal. In the case of Van Goyen it
is _spirituel_, not infrequently expressive of spirituality. Transmuted
by his vision, the corporeality of the scene has been dissolved into a
spiritual impression. It is, as it were, a mirage of nature that is
offered to one’s imagination. Van Goyen lacks at once the height and
depth of Jacob van Ruisdael; his moods are dreamy rather than poignant,
and he appeals where the other compels. But his moods are those of a
highly rarefied spirit, that seeks to interpret the bigness and the
subtlety of what it feels by means as abstract as possible.
MEINDERT HOBBEMA
HOBBEMA is the very contrary to Van Goyen. A plain, practical,
matter-of-fact man, he is content to paint what he sees, the objective
appearances of the landscape, viewed through the unimaginative medium of
a healthy naturalism. He was as little addicted to moods of feeling as
to dreams; neither curious for new experiences nor moved to artistic
ambition, for, having found a motive to his liking, he repeated it again
and again with slight variations. Gifted with a strong sense of form and
with an unusual faculty of representing it, he learned from Jacob van
Ruisdael to cultivate both, but was too phlegmatic to receive
inspiration from the master’s genius. Now and then he rose from his
usual level to a height of objective grandeur; but for the most part was
a prosy bourgeois, pottering round the parish.
He was born in 1638, his birthplace being variously assigned to Haarlem,
Koevorden, and the village of Middelharnis, though it may have been
Amsterdam, where he spent his life. At the age of thirty he married a
maid-servant four years his senior. She had been in a well-to-do family,
and through the influence of the latter a place was found for Hobbema in
the Wines-customs. It was sufficient to keep him from actual want, but
the fact did not spur him on to artistic effort. He painted, it would
seem, only when he “felt like it,” which was not often, for the number
of his pictures is for a Dutch artist inconsiderable. The earliest date
on any of his pictures is 1650; the last that can be assigned with
certainty is 1670, for though it is generally accepted that the date
[Illustration: THE AVENUE, MIDDELHARNIS, HOLLAND MEINDERT HOBBEMA
NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON]
of _The Avenue of Middelharnis_, in the National Gallery, is 1689, the
“8” is scarcely decipherable. If this date is accepted, it leaves the
last twenty years of his life, for he died in 1709, unproductive. No
reason for this is known, nor whether he retained his official position;
the only fact ascertained being that, like his great master and so many
other Dutch artists, he died in extreme poverty.
Neglected by his own countrymen, his best works found their way into
English private collections, from which they are beginning to emerge
into the hands of American collectors: witness _The Water Mill_, known
as the “Trevor Landscape,” and the _Wooded Landscape_, or “Holford
Landscape,” now owned by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, and the _Wooded Road_,
in the possession of Mrs. William L. Elkins. Meanwhile Hobbema’s
masterpiece is _The Avenue of Middelharnis_, in the National Gallery,
while the Louvre also owns a fine example in _The Water Mill_, and the
popularity and reputation which these works have so worthily obtained
has led to an overestimation of this artist’s rank. He has even been
classed with Van Ruisdael. On the evidence of _The Avenue_ this is
intelligible, but unfortunately this picture is a unique example. The
other pictures mentioned above are also examples to stir enthusiasm, but
they, too, are exceptional. You will not find their equals anywhere in
the galleries of Europe. On the contrary, those which you do find are
dryly objective reiterations of oak-trees, water, mills, and houses,
perfunctorily seen and rendered. They inspire little enthusiasm and
weary by repetition.
_The Avenue_, on the contrary, is an extraordinary instance of a
moment’s heightened vision of the facts, boldly grasped and carried
through unerringly to a grand conclusion. Again, in the other pictures
named, especially in Mr. Morgan’s _The Water Mill_, there is evidence of
something more than talent. A consummate knowledge of forms, skill of
compositional construction, and ability to create an ensemble of
tonality are here reinforced by a comprehension of the feeling of the
scene, that has lifted it out of mere representation and enhanced its
significance. But unfortunately the talent, transfigured in these
examples, is, in the general run of this artist’s pictures, squandered;
used without conscience and permitted to drift into heartless mannerism.
The fact is that, judged by the final test of the quality of the
painter’s mental and artistic attitude toward his subject, the majority
of Hobbema’s pictures rank considerably below par. It is such work as
the generality of his, which makes the student of Dutch art sometimes
pause in his wanderings through the galleries and ask himself whether
there is not a great deal of perfunctoriness and tedious iteration among
these old masters of Holland. There is, and the fact may as well be
grasped first as last. It is a school of great craftsmen, who sometimes
worked indifferently, punctuated with a considerable number who rise
conspicuously above their fellows, but among these exceptions, save on
rare occasions, Hobbema is not to be reckoned.
[Illustration: VIEW OF HAARLEM JACOB VAN RUISDAEL
FROM HILL OF OVERVEEN
RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM]