that is to say, than Rubens. He received his first instruction in the
art of painting from Henry van Balen. His genius at first displayed
itself only in painting fruit. He afterwards attempted animals, in
which kind of study he succeeded so well that he surpassed all that had
ever excelled before him. He stayed for some time in Italy, and the
works he met with there by Castiglione proved a spur to his genius to
attempt outdoing him in painting animals. When he returned to Flanders
he fixed his ordinary abode at Brussels, where he was made painter to
the Archduke and Duchess, and became attached to the house of Spain.
Twenty-two of his pictures are in the Prado Gallery.
When Snyders required large figures in his compositions both Rubens and
Jordaens took pleasure in assisting him, and Rubens in turn borrowed the
assistance of Snyders to paint the ground of his pictures; thus they
mutually assisted each other in their labours, while Snyders' manly and
vigorous manner was quite able to hold its own even when joined with
that of the great master.
ANTHONY VAN DYCK was born at Antwerp in 1599, less than three months
before Velasquez at Seville. Both became so famous in their capacity of
Court painters that the rest of their achievement is popularly regarded
as little more than a bye-product.
In the case of Van Dyck there is the more excuse for the English public,
inasmuch as, like Holbein before him, he was exclusively employed while
in this country in the production of portraits; and as "his works are so
frequent in England," as Horace Walpole observes in the opening sentence
of his memoir in the "Anecdotes of Painting," "that the generality of
our people can scarce avoid thinking him their countryman," it is easy
enough to forget that he only spent the last nine years of his life
here.
Again, the insatiable craze of the English and American public for
portraits has helped to obscure the extent of Van Dyck's capabilities in
other directions, and while the National Gallery contains not a single
subject-piece from his hand, more and more thousands are continually
spent in the acquisition of more and more portraits. The bewitching
_Cupid and Psyche_ in Queen Mary's closet at Hampton Court, painted a
year before his death, is scarcely known to exist!
At the same time it would be useless to deny that Van Dyck's principal
claim to his place among the greatest masters rests chiefly upon
portraiture. The point I wish to make is that portrait painting never
yet made a great master, but that none but a great master ever became a
great portrait painter; and so long as we are only permitted to see the
particular achievement of the artist in our public galleries, so long is
it likely that we shall continue to be flooded with mediocre likenesses
of fashionable people by painters whose highest or whose only
achievement they constitute. Anyone can write a "short story" for the
cheaper sort of modern journal; only writers like Hardy, Stevenson, or
Kipling can give us a masterpiece in little.
It was said that Rubens advised Van Dyck to devote himself to
portraiture out of jealousy: but that is hardly in accordance with what
we know of his generous nature. If the advice was given at all we may be
sure that it was given in a friendly spirit. But there was something in
the temperament of Van Dyck which peculiarly fitted him for the Court,
apart from any question as to his excellence in any particular branch of
his art, and it is evident that the personality of Rubens, and his
connection with the rich and mighty of the earth, influenced him almost
as much as did his art. How much he owed to Rubens, and how much Rubens
owed to him in painting is a matter that is arguable. He had been
several years with Van Balen before he entered the studio of Rubens,
when eighteen years old, not as a pupil but as an assistant. Here he not
only had the practical task of painting Rubens's compositions for him,
in company with numerous others, but had also the advantage of studying
the works of Titian and other of the great Italian masters in Rubens's
famous collection. If the hand of Van Dyck is traceable in some of the
pictures of Rubens at this period, so the spirit of Rubens is very
obvious in those of Van Dyck. The chief thing to be remembered is that
in these early days he was not painting portraits. His earliest works,
in which the influence of Titian is perceptible as well as that of
Rubens, are the _Christ bearing the Cross_, in S. Paul's at Antwerp,
painted in 1618; the _S. Sebastian_ at Munich, and the _Christ Mocked_,
at Berlin. The familiar portrait of _Cornelius van der Geest_ in the
National Gallery, is one of his very earliest, probably before 1620.
Again, on his first visit to Genoa, in 1621, on the advice of Rubens,
his ambition was not to paint portraits, as on his second visit some
years later, but to rival Rubens in the composition of great historical
pieces. It was not until 1627, when he left behind him in Genoa the
superb series of Balbi, Brignole-Sala, Cattaneo, and Lomellini
portraits, and returned to Antwerp to undertake those such as the _Le
Roys_ at Hertford House, or the _Beatrice de Cusance_ at Windsor, that
he had really become a portrait painter. Even then, he was still
determined not to yield to Rubens at Antwerp, and painted, amongst other
subjects, the _Rinaldo and Armida_ for Charles I. It was only at the
solicitation of George Geldorp, a schemer as well as a painter, that he
consented at length, in 1632, to come to England; and it was only the
welcome afforded to him by Charles that induced him to settle here.
Two considerations of personal vanity may be suggested as actuating
Charles to be specially indulgent to Van Dyck--an indulgence of which
the results posterity should not omit to credit to the sad account of
the martyr--first, that his father had failed to retain the painter in
his service, and second, that Velasquez, who had made a sketch of him on
his mad visit to Madrid in 1623, was then immortalising Philip.
Velasquez being out of the question, why not Van Dyck! An excellent
idea! Especially when instead of dwarfs, buffoons, and idiots, the
English Court contained some exceedingly fine material besides the royal
family for the artist to exercise his talent upon.
After this, Flanders knew Van Dyck no more, save for a year or two's
sojourn from 1633-1635 when he painted one or two magnificent portraits,
and then returned to England, where he died in 1641. With the death of
Rubens the year before, Flemish painting had suffered another eclipse;
and though Snyders lived till 1657, and Jordaens and the younger Teniers
continued till late in the century, no fresh seedlings appeared, and the
soil again became barren. Rubens and Van Dyck were both too big for the
little garden--their growth overspread Europe.
_DUTCH SCHOOL_
I
Frans Hals
Meantime we must turn our attention to Holland, where FRANS HALS, who
was born only three years later than Rubens, namely in 1580, was the
forerunner of Rembrandt, Van der Helst, Bol, Lely, and a host more of
greater or less painters, who made their country as famous in the
seventeenth century for art as their fathers had made it in the
sixteenth for arms. Without going into the complications of the
political history of the Netherlands at this period, it is important
nevertheless to remember that while the Flemish provinces remained
Catholic under Spain, the northern states, after heroic struggles,
formed themselves into a Republic; so that while it is difficult to draw
a hard and fast line between what was Dutch and what was Flemish in
estimating the influence of one particular painter upon another, there
is no question at all as to vital difference between the conditions
which led to the production of the pictures of the two schools. The
Flemish pictures were for the Church and for the Court, the Dutch for
the house, the Guildhall, or the bourgeoisie. The former were
aristocratic, the latter democratic. Rubens and Van Dyck were
aristocrats, Hals and Rembrandt democrats. Rubens painted altar-pieces,
for the great churches or cathedrals or for the chapels of his patrons.
Rembrandt painted Bible stories for whoever would purchase them. Van
Dyck painted the portraits of kings and nobles. Hals painted the rough
soldiers and sailors, singly, or in the great groups into which they
formed themselves as Guilds. For the first time in the history of
painting, neither Church nor Court were its patrons.
In any age or under any circumstances Frans Hals would have seemed a
remarkable painter, but to measure his extraordinary genius to its full
height we must try to realise what those times and those circumstances
were. In Florence and Venice, as we have seen, there were great schools
of painting, and in Florence especially, the whole city existed in an
atmosphere of art. There was no escape from it. In Haarlem, where Hals
spent his youth (he was born in Antwerp), there was no such state of
affairs. There were no chapels to be decorated, no courtiers to be
flattered. The country was seething with the effects of war, and the
whole population were ready for it again at a moment's notice. There
were plenty of heroes--every man was one--but not of the romantic sort.
They were all bluff, hardy fellows, who wanted to get on with their
business. Who would have thought that they wanted to have their
portraits painted? And who, accordingly, could have induced them to do
so except a bluff, roystering genius like Hals, who slashed them down on
canvas before they had time to stop him? Once it got wind that Hals was
such a good fellow, and that he dashed off a portrait to the life in as
little time as it took to pass the time of day with him, he had plenty
of business, and from painting single portraits he was commissioned to
glorify the Guilds by depicting their banquets, which he did with
almost as much speed and considerably more fidelity than the limelight
man at a City dinner in these times. His first great group--_The Archers
of S. George_, at Haarlem--has all the appearance of being painted
instantaneously as the banqueters stood around the table before
dispersing.
When we think of the cultured Rubens, brought up in the atmosphere of
Courts, and studying for years among the finest paintings and painters
in Italy, and compare him with this low, ignorant fellow, who had never
been outside the Netherlands, do we not find his genius still more
amazing? Nowadays we see a portrait by Hals surrounded with the finest
works of the greatest painters in all times and in all lands, and see
how well it stands the comparison. But our admiration must be increased
a hundredfold, when we know that he was without any of the training or
tradition of a great artist, and that it must have been by sheer
character and genius alone that he forced his art upon his commercial,
though heroic public.
One thing especially it is interesting to notice about the Dutch
portraits of the early Republican period, namely, that they are
obviously inspired by the pleasure of having a living, speaking likeness
rather than by pride and ostentation. Bluff and swaggering as some of
Hals's portraits of men appear to be--notably _The Laughing Cavalier_,
at Hertford House--that is only because the subjects were bluff and
swaggering fellows--swaggering, that is to say, in the consciousness of
their ability and their readiness to defend their country and their
homes again, if need be, against the tyrant. But these swaggerers are
the exception, and the prevailing impression conveyed is that of
honest, if determined, bluffness. They are not posing, these jolly
Dutchmen, they are sitting or standing, for Hals to paint them just as
they would sit or stand to be measured for a suit of clothes. Look at
the heads of the man and the woman in the National Gallery. Could
anything be more natural and unassuming? Look at the _Laughing
Cavalier_, and ask if it is not the man himself, as Hals saw and knew
him, not a faked up hero? Hals caught him in his best clothes, that is
all. He did not put them on to be painted in--he was out on a jaunt.
Look at Hals's women, how pleased they are to be painted, just as they
are.
Poor Hals, he was a good, honest fellow, though sadly given to drink and
low company. But for sheer genius he has never had an equal. The vast
number of his paintings--many of which now only exist in copies--shows
that with every predilection to ease and comfort, he could not help
painting--it simply welled out of him. It was a natural gift which seems
to have needed no labour and no study.
It is certain that this fecundity was a very potent factor in the
development of the Dutch School of painting. Had Hals confined his
talent to painting the portraits of the highest in the land, which would
never have been seen by the public at large, it is improbable that such
a business-like community would have produced many painters. But Hals
must have popularised painting much more than we generally suppose. An
example occurs to me in the picture of _The Rommelpot Player_, of which
no less than thirteen versions are enumerated by De Groot, none of which
can claim to be the original. One is at Wilton, another in Sir Frederick
Cook's gallery at Richmond, and a third at Arthingworth Hall in
Northamptonshire.
[Illustration: PLATE XXV.--FRANS HALS
PORTRAIT OF A LADY
_Louvre, Paris_]
The subject is an old beggar man playing in front of the door of a
cottage on a ridiculous instrument consisting of an earthen pot covered
over like a jampot with a lid of parchment, on which he makes a rude
noise with a stick, to the intense delight of a group of children. A
picture like this, then, it is evident, instead of hanging in solitary
confinement in the house of a great person, was so widely popular that
it was copied on all sides, and must have been seen by thousands of
people.
Next to Hals, in point of time, was HENDRIK GERRITZ POT, who was born,
probably at Haarlem, in 1585. It is to him rather than to Ostade, who
was a quarter of a century later, that we must trace the origin of
smaller _genre_ pictures of the Dutch School which in later years became
its principal product. Pot's works are neither very important nor very
numerous, but as a portrait painter he is represented in the Louvre by a
portrait of Charles I., which was probably painted when he was in
England in 1631 or thereabouts; while at Hampton Court is a beautiful
little piece by him which is catalogued under the title of _A Startling
Introduction_. This belonged to Charles I., for his cypher is branded on
the back of the panel on which it is painted, and it was sold by the
Commonwealth as "a souldier making a strange posture to a Dutch lady by
Bott." The painter's monogram H.P. appears on the large chimney piece
before which the "soldier" is standing.
GERARD HONTHORST, born at Utrecht in 1590, can hardly be said to belong
to the Dutch School at all. When he was only twenty he went to Rome,
where his devotion to painting effects of candle-light earned him the
sobriquet of "Gherardo della Notte." In 1628 he was elected Dean of the
Guild of St. Luke at Utrecht, but he was in no sense a national painter,
and neither took nor gave anything in the way of national influence. He
was in England for a few months in 1628, to which chance we are indebted
for the picture of the Duke of Buckingham and his family which is in the
National Portrait Gallery, and another group of the Cavendish family
which is at Chatsworth. Pictures of the nobility, or of celebrities like
Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, were more in his
line than those of his republican patriots, and consequently he plays no
part in the development of the school we are now considering.
BARTHOLOMEW VAN DER HELST, born in Amsterdam, 1613, died there 1670. He
is by far the most renowned of the Dutch portrait-painters of this
period. Although nothing is known as regards the master under whom he
studied, it is probable that if Hals was not actually his teacher, his
works were the models whence Van der Helst formed himself. We see this
in the portrait of Vice-Admiral Kortenaar at Amsterdam, where the
conception of forms, and the unscumbled character of the strokes of the
brush, recall Hals. The same may be observed in two larger pictures with
archers in the Town Hall at Haarlem, where the inartistic arrangement
and monotony of the otherwise warm flesh tones point to the earlier time
of the painter. By about the year 1640 his character was more fully
developed. His arrangement of portrait-pieces with numerous figures
became very artistic and easy, his tone excellent, and his drawing
masterly. This standard of excellence he retained till about 1660. The
following are principal pictures of this period:--A scene from the
Archery Guild of Amsterdam in 1639, including thirty figures. The
celebrated picture inscribed 1648, an Archery Festival commemorating the
Peace of Westphalia, and consisting of a party of twenty-four persons,
at Amsterdam. The chief charm of this work consists in the strong and
truthful individuality of every part, both in form and colour; in the
capital drawing, which is especially conspicuous in the hands; in the
powerful and clear colouring; and finally, in a kind of execution which
observes a happy medium between decision and softness. In 1657 he
executed the picture of the Archery Guild known by the name "het
Doelenstueck" at Amsterdam Gallery. This work represents three of the
overseers of the Guild, with golden prize vases, and a fourth supposed
to be the painter himself. It is almost surpassed by a replica on a
smaller scale executed in the following year, which is now in the
Louvre. At all events, this picture is in better preservation, and
offers one of the most typical examples of portrait-painting that the
Dutch School produced.
II
REMBRANDT VAN RYN
But the greatest of all the Dutch painters, in some ways the greatest
painter that has ever lived, was REMBRANDT VAN RYN (1606-1669). Beside
him all the rest seem merely commonplace, and their works the product of
this or that demand, according to their different times and
circumstances, executed with more or less skill. For Rembrandt there
seems no place among them all--he must stand somewhere alone; and there
is no standard by which to judge his perfections and imperfections
except the man himself.
Perhaps the greatest difference between Rembrandt and any other painter
is that he never seems to have tried to please the public, but only
painted to please himself. It is for this reason, no doubt, that he was
never popular with the public, and is never likely to be; but just as
Beethoven is only understandable by the really musical soul, so
Rembrandt's appeal is to those who have the feeling for something in
painting beyond the mere representation of familiar or heroic scenes and
persons on canvas. For the public it is enough that one of his
landscapes should be sold for L100,000, and they all flock to see it;
but put a fine Rembrandt portrait in a shop-window without a name to it,
and there would be little fear of the pavement being blocked.
This failure of Rembrandt to please the public of his own day brings out
the truth that the practice of painting had up to then subsisted only so
long as it supplied a popular demand; and when we come to consider what
that demand was, we find that it is for nothing else but a pleasing
representation of natural objects, which may or may not embody some
sentimental or historical association, but must first and foremost be a
fair representation of more or less familiar things.
The oldest story about pictures is that of Zeuxis and the bunch of
grapes, which relates that he painted the fruit so like nature that the
birds came and pecked at the painting--some versions, I believe, adding
that the fruit itself was there but they preferred the painting. Similar
stories with innumerable variations are told of later artists. Rembrandt
himself is said to have been deceived by his pupils who, knowing he was
careful about collecting money in small quantities, however extravagant
he might be in spending it, painted coins on the floor of the studio,
and enjoyed the joke of seeing him stoop to pick them up. We have heard,
too, of flies painted with surprising skill in conspicuous places to
deceive the unwary. But apart from these little pleasantries, one has
only to remember how the earlier writers on painting have expressed
themselves to see how much importance, consciously or unconsciously, was
attached to life-like resemblance to the object painted. Vasari is
constantly using phrases in which he extols the painter for having made
a figure look like the life, as though that were the real thing to be
aimed at. We remember Ben Jonson's lines under Shakespeare's
portrait----
"Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature to outdo the life."
And though Ben Jonson was not a critic, and if he had been there was
little enough art in his time in England for him to criticize, still he
expresses the general feeling of the public for any work of art.
With the Dutch people this was most certainly the case, and the
popularity of the painters of scenes of everyday life is a proof of it.
That Hals, Brouwer, or Ostade were great painters was not half so
important to them, if indeed they thought of it all, as that they were
capable of turning out pictures which reflected their everyday life like
a mirror.
So long as Rembrandt painted portraits like those of the Pellicornes and
their offspring--the two pictures at Hertford House--or a plain
straightforward group like Dr Tulp's _Anatomy Lesson_ (though in this he
was already getting away from convention), he was tolerated. And it was
not so much his freedom in living and his extravagant notions of the
pleasures of life that brought about his downfall, as his failure to
realize that when he took the money subscribed for the group of Captain
Banning Cocq's Company, the subscribers expected something else for
their money than a picture (_The Night Watch_) which might be a
masterpiece according to the painter's notions, but was certainly not a
portrait group of the subscribers.
Here, then, for the first time in the history of painting, we find an
artist definitely at issue with the public. I do not say that this was
the first time that an artist had failed to please the public, but it is
the first occasion on which it was decided that if a painter was to
undertake commissions, he must consider the wishes of the patron, or
starve. It was something new for a painter of Rembrandt's repute to be
told that not he, but the persons who commissioned the work, were to be
the judges of whether or not it was satisfactory.
The consequences were important. For Rembrandt, instead of taking the
matter as a man of business, devoted the rest of his life to being an
artist, and leaving the business of painting to men like Backer, Helst,
and others, betook himself seriously to developing his art irrespective
of what the public might or might not think of it. As a result, we have
in the later work of Rembrandt something that the world--I mean the
artistic part of it--would be very sorry to do without. Now the meaning
of this is, not that Rembrandt was ill-advised in deserting his patrons,
or in suffering them to desert him, but that for the first time in the
history of painting an artist had the personality--I will not say the
conscious determination--to realize that his art was something quite
apart from the affairs of this world, and that what he could express on
canvas was _not_ merely a representation of natural objects designed to
please his contemporaries, but something more than human, something that
would appeal to humanity for all time. That many before him had felt
that of their art, to a lesser or greater degree, is unquestionable--but
none of them had ever realised it. Duerer, certainly, may be cited as an
exception, especially when contrasted with his phlegmatic and
business-like compatriot Holbein. But then Duerer, a century before, and
in totally different circumstances, was never assured of regular
patronage as was Rembrandt.