himself Van Ryn, from the hamlet on the arm of the Rhine which runs
through Leyden. His mother was the daughter of a baker. He was entered
as a student at the University of Leyden, his parents being comfortably
off; but he showed so little taste for the study of the law, for which
they intended him, that he was allowed to follow his own bent of
painting, in the studio of a now forgotten painter, Jacob van
Swanenburg. Here he studied for about three years, after which he went
to Amsterdam and was for a short time with another painter named
Lastman, who was a clever but superficial imitator of the Italian School
then flourishing in Rome.
Returning to Leyden, Rembrandt set up his easel and remained there
painting till 1631, when he went to Amsterdam. His works during this
first period are not very well known in this country, but at Windsor and
at Edinburgh are portraits of his mother, which must belong to it.
The next decade was the happiest and most prosperous in Rembrandt's
career. At Amsterdam he soon found favour with wealthy patrons, and his
happiness and success were completed by his marrying Saskia van
Ulenburgh, the sister of a wealthy connoisseur and art dealer, with whom
Rembrandt had formed an intimate friendship. To this period belong the
numerous portraits of himself and Saskia, alone or together, most of
which are characterized by a barbaric splendour of costume, utterly
different from the profusion of Rubens, but far more intense. Living
among the wealthiest Jews in Amsterdam, he seems to have been strongly
attracted by their orientalism, and while Rubens gloried in natural
abundance of every sort, and painted the bounty of nature in the full
sunlight, Rembrandt chose out the treasures of art, and painted costume
and jewels gleaming out of the darkness. The portraits of himself in a
cap at Hertford House (No. 52), and of the Old Lady in the National
Gallery (No. 775), both painted in 1634, are notable examples of this
period, though they have none of the orientalism to be seen in the
various portraits of Saskia, or in _The Turk_ at Munich. The two double
portraits at Hertford House of Jean Pellicorne and his wife with their
son and daughter respectively, were among the commissions which he
received after he set up at Amsterdam, and are therefore less
interesting as self-revelations. Prosperity is not always the best
condition under which to produce the highest work, and the temperament
of Rembrandt was so peculiar that there is little wonder that the prim
Dutchmen were not entirely captivated by his exuberant sensuality, or
that we ourselves reserve our admiration principally for the more sombre
and mysterious products of his later years after misfortune began to
fall upon him.
[Illustration: PLATE XXVI.--REMBRANDT
PORTRAIT OF HENDRICKJE STOFFELS
_Louvre, Paris_]
In 1642 the beloved Saskia died, leaving an only child, Titus, whose
features are familiar to us in the portrait at Hertford House. As though
this were not affliction enough, Rembrandt had the mortification of
offending his patrons over the commission to paint Captain Banning
Cocq's Company. From this time onward, as the world and Rembrandt
drifted farther and farther apart, his work becomes more and more
wonderful.
Dr Muther, in his _History of Painting_, observes that perhaps it is
only possible to understand Rembrandt by interpreting his pictures not
as paintings but as psychological documents. "A picture by Rembrandt in
the Dresden Gallery," he says, "represents _Samson Putting Riddles to
the Philistines_; and Rembrandt's entire activity, a riddle to the
philistines of his time, has remained puzzling to the present day.... As
no other man bore his name, so the artist, too, is something unique,
mocks every historical analysis, and remains what he was, a puzzling,
intangible, Hamlet nature--Rembrandt." The author's theory of the
psychological document is hardly a solution of the admitted puzzle,
though it is interesting to follow him in tracing it out in Rembrandt's
religious pictures, from the _Samson_ already mentioned to his last
dated work, in 1668, the Darmstadt _Crucifixion_. What distinguishes
Rembrandt from all painters up to, and considerably later than his time,
and in particular from those of his own school, is the mental, as
compared with the physical activity that his pictures represent. Perhaps
this is only another way of stating Dr Muther's theory of the
psychological documents, but it enables us to test that theory by
comparing his work with that of others. In technical skill Beruete
claims a far higher place for Velasquez, going so far as to say that
the _Lesson in Anatomy_ is not a lesson in painting. But the difference
between the two is not as great as that in technique, though infinitely
wider in the mental process which led to the production of a picture. A
reproduction of the _Portrait of an Old Pole_, at S. Petersburg, is in
front of me, as it happens, as I am writing; and I see in this no
inferiority in firmness and precision, in truth and vigour, to any
portrait by Velasquez.
In their technical ability to present the life-like portrait of a real
man, we can place Rembrandt, Velasquez, Hals, and Van Dyck on pretty
much of a level; if we had _Van der Geest_, _Montanes_, the _Old Pole_
and the _Laughing Cavalier_ all in a row, we should find there was not
much to choose between them for downright realization. But while in the
work of Velasquez we see the working of a fine and sensitive
appreciation of his friend's personality, and the most exquisite
realization of what was before him, in that of Rembrandt we seem to see
less of the Pole and more of Rembrandt himself. It is as though he were
singing softly to himself while he was painting, thinking his own
thoughts: while Velasquez was simply concerned with the appearance and
the thoughts of his model.
That Rembrandt's pictures are self-revelations, or psychological
documents, is certainly true; and a proof of it is in the extraordinary
number of portraits of himself. The famous Dresden picture of himself
with Saskia on his knee can only be regarded in that light, and that
brings into the category all the numerous pictures of Saskia and of
Hendrike Stoffels, who formed so great a part of his life. If to these
we add, with Dr Muther, his Biblical subjects, we find that there is
not so very much left, and when we turn to the life's work of Rubens,
Titian, Velasquez, or in fact any of the great painters, the difference
is at once apparent. So that in the pictures of Rembrandt we may expect
to find less of what we look for in those of others in the way of
display, but infinitely more of the qualities which, to whatever extent
they exist in other artists, are bound to be sacrificed to display. When
we are asked to a feast, we find the room brilliantly lit, and our host
the centre of an assemblage for whom he has felt it his duty to make a
display consistent with his means and his station. If we were to peep
into his house one night we might find him in a room illumined only with
his reading-lamp, absorbed in his favourite study; but instead of only
exchanging a few conventional phrases with him, and passing on to mingle
with his guests and to enjoy his hospitality, we might sit and talk with
him into the small hours. That is the difference between the success of
Hals with his _Feast of S. George_, and the failure of Rembrandt with
_The Night Watch_. Hals was at the feast, and of it. Rembrandt was
wrapped up in himself, and didn't enter into the spirit of the
company--he was carried away by his own. That is why his pictures are so
dark--not of deliberate technical purpose, like those of the
_Tenebrosi_, but because to him a subject was felt within him rather
than seen as a picture on so many square feet of canvas. When we call up
in our own minds the recollection of some event of more than usually
deep significance in our past, we only see the deathbed, the two
combatants, the face of the beloved, or whatever it may be; the
accessories are nothing, unless our imagination is stronger than the
sentiment evoked, and sets to work to supply them. It is this
characteristic which so sharply distinguishes the work of Rembrandt
from that of his closest imitators. There is a large picture in the
National Gallery, _Christ Blessing the Children_, catalogued as "School
of Rembrandt," in which we see as near an approach to his manner as to
justify the attribution, but that is all. I do not know why it has never
been suggested that this is the work of NICOLAS MAES, who was actually
his pupil, and who was one of the few Dutch artists to paint life-sized
groups, as he is known to have done in his earlier days when still under
the influence of Rembrandt. _The Card Players_, close beside it, has
marked affinities in style, and especially in the very natural
characterization of the faces, which is also apparent in that of the
child in the other picture, and another on the extreme left of the
picture. That it cannot be Rembrandt's is quite evident; the grouping
and the lighting of it proclaim the picture seen on the canvas, and not
felt within the artist's own consciousness.
The realistic tendency which, as has already been pointed out, was so
characteristic of the whole art of the Netherlands, showed the most
remarkable and original results in the work of an idealist like
Rembrandt. Sandrart, one of the earliest writers on painting, says that
Rembrandt "usually painted things of a simple and not thoughtful
character, but which were pleasing to the eyes, and
picturesque"--_schilderachtig_, as the Netherlanders called it. This
combination of realism and picturesqueness, assisted by his marvellous
technical power, put him far above and apart from all his compeers. In
the absence of any pictures by his masters Van Swanenburg and Pinas, it
is difficult to ascertain what, if anything, he learnt from them. From
Peter Lastman we may be sure he learnt nothing in the way of technique.
Kugler--who in these paragraphs is my principal authority--suggests that
it is highly probable that in this respect he formed himself from the
pictures of Frans Hals, with which he must have been early acquainted in
the neighbouring town of Haarlem. At all events unexampled freedom,
spirit, and breadth of his manner is comparable with that of no other
earlier Dutch master. But all these admirable qualities would offer no
sufficient compensation for the ugly and often vulgar character of his
heads and figures, and for the total subversion of all the traditional
rules of art in costume and accessory, and would fail to account for the
great admiration which his works enjoy, if he had not been possessed,
besides, of an intensely artistic individuality.
In his earliest pictures his touch is already masterly and free, but
still careful, while the colour of the flesh is warm and clear and the
light full. _Dr Tulp's Anatomy_, painted in 1632, is the most famous of
this period. In _The Night Watch_, at Amsterdam, dated 1642, the light
is already restricted, falling only on isolated objects; the local tone
of the flesh is more golden; the touch more spirited and distinct.
Later, that is to say from about 1654 onwards, the golden flesh tones
become still more intense, passing sometimes into a brown of less
transparency, and accompanied frequently with grey and blackish shadows
and sometimes with rather cool lights. The chief picture of this epoch,
dated 1661, is _The Syndics_, also at Amsterdam, a group of six men.
This, in the depth of the still transparent golden tone, in the
animation of the heads, and in body and breadth of handling, is a true
masterpiece.
With respect to his treatment of Biblical subjects, two older writers,
Kolloff and Guhl, accord him an honour which, as we shall see, Kugler
gives to Duerer a century earlier, namely that of being the painter of
the true spirit of the Reformed Church. Though it is certain, Kugler
admits, that no other school of painting in Rembrandt's time--neither
that of Rubens, nor that of the Carracci, nor the French nor Spanish
schools--rendered the spiritual import of Biblical subjects with the
purity and depth exhibited by the great Dutch master. Here the kindly
element of deep sentiment combines most happily with his feeling for
composition, as in the _Descent from the Cross_, at Munich, in _The Holy
Family_, in the Louvre, and above all in _The Woman taken in Adultery_,
in the National Gallery. In this last, a touching truthfulness and depth
of feeling, with every other grand quality peculiar to Rembrandt, are
seen in their highest perfection. Of hardly less excellence, also, is
our _Descent from the Cross_.
Endowed with so many admirable qualities, it follows that Rembrandt was
a portrait painter of the highest order, while his peculiar style of
lighting, his colouring and treatment, distinguish his portraits from
those by all other masters. Even the works of his most successful
pupils, who followed his style in this respect, are far behind him in
energy of conception and execution. The number of his admirable
portraits is so large that it is difficult to know which to mention as
most characteristic. No other artist ever painted his own portrait so
frequently, and some of these may first be mentioned. That in the
Louvre, dated 1633, represents him in youthful years, fresh and full of
hope. It is spiritedly painted in the bright tone of his earlier period.
Another in the same gallery, of the year 1660, painted with
extraordinary breadth and certainty of hand of that later period, shows
a man weighed down with the cares of life, with grey hair and deeply
furrowed forehead.
[Illustration: PLATE XXVII.--REMBRANDT
PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY
_National Gallery, London_]
The one at Hertford House, already mentioned, and two in the National
Gallery, fall between these extremes. Of other portraits we have already
mentioned the two Pellicorne groups in the Wallace Collection; and
another of this earliest period, the very popular _Old Woman_, in the
National Gallery, dated 1634. This is of greater interest as showing, if
anything does, whether it is fair to attribute any of his training to
the influence of Hals. At any rate this picture is a highly important
proof that at the early age of twenty-six, the painter was already in
the full possession of that energy and animation of conception, and of
that decision of the "broad and marrowy touch" which are so
characteristic of him. Of his later period--probably about 1657--a fine
example is _The Jewish Rabbi_, and of his latest the _Old Man_, both in
the National Gallery.
III
PAINTERS OF GENRE
The painters of _genre_, by the number, quality, and diversity of whose
pictures the Dutch School is specially distinguished, may be roughly
divided into three classes; namely, those who studied the upper, the
middle, and the lower classes respectively. But as Holland was a
republic, and the great stream of its art welled up from the earth and
was not showered upon it from above, it will be found convenient to
reverse the social order in considering them, and begin with the
immediate successors of Frans Hals, whose influence was without doubt a
very considerable factor in the development of Adrian Brouwer and Adrian
and Isaac Ostade.
ADRIAN BROUWER, now generally classed under the Flemish School, was
born at Oudenarde in 1606. But he went early to Haarlem, and it was not
until about 1630 that he settled at Antwerp, where he died in 1641. He
was a pupil of Frans Hals, and acquired from him not only his spirited
and free touch, but also a similar mode of life. His pictures, which for
the most part represent the lower orders eating and drinking, often in
furious strife, are extraordinary true and life-like in character, and
display a singularly delicate and harmonious colouring, which inclines
to the cool scale, an admirable individuality, and a _sfumato_ of
surface in which he is unrivalled; so that we can well understand the
high esteem in which Rubens held them. Owing to his mode of life, and to
its early close, the number of his works is not large, and they are now
seldom met with. No gallery is so rich in them as Munich, which
possesses nine, six of which are masterpieces. _A Party of Peasants at a
Game of Cards_, affords an example of the brightness and clearness of
those cool tones in which he evidently became the model of Teniers.
_Spanish Soldiers Throwing Dice_, is equally harmonious, in a subdued
brownish tone. _A Surgeon Removing the Plaster from the Arm of a
Peasant_ is not only most masterly and animated in expression, but is a
type of his bright, clear, and golden tone, and is singularly free and
light in touch. _Card-players Fighting_, is in every respect one of his
best pictures. The momentary action in each figure, all of them being
individualized with singular accuracy even as regards the kind of
complexion, is incomparable, the tenderness of the harmony astonishing,
and the execution of extraordinary delicacy. The only example in the
National Gallery is the _Three Boors Drinking_, bequeathed by George
Salting in 1910; and at Hertford House the _Boor Asleep_, though of
this we may without hesitation accept the description in the catalogue,
"our painting is of the highest quality, and in the audacity of its
realism rises almost to grandeur."
ADRIAN VAN OSTADE, said to have been born at Lubeck, was baptized in
1610 at Haarlem, where he studied under Frans Hals, and he formed a very
good taste in colouring. Nature guided his brush in everything he
undertook; he devoted himself almost entirely to painting peasants and
drunkards, whose gestures and most trifling actions were the subject of
his most serious meditation. The subjects of his little pictures are not
more elevated than those of Brouwer, and considerably less than those of
Teniers--they are nearly always alehouses or kitchens. He is perhaps one
of the Dutch masters who best understood chiaroscuro. His figures are
very lively, and he sometimes put them into the pictures of the best
painters among his countrymen. Nothing can excel his pictures of
stables, in which the light is spread so judiciously that all one could
wish is a lighter touch in his drawing, and a little more height in his
figures. Many of his brother Isaak's pictures are improperly attributed
to him, which, though painted in the same manner, are never of the real
excellence of Adrian's.
The _Interior with Peasants_ at Hertford House, and _The Alchymist_ at
the National Gallery are a characteristic pair of his pictures, which
were sold in the collection of M. de Jully in 1769 for L164, the former
being purchased by the third Marquess of Hertford and the latter passing
into the Peel Collection. _Buying Fish_, at Hertford House, dated
1669--when the artist was nearly sixty years old, is remarkable for its
breadth of effect and brilliancy of colour.
JAN STEEN, born at Leyden about the year 1626, died 1679. He first
received instruction under Nicolas Knupler; and afterwards it is said
worked with Jan van Goyen, whose daughter he married. An extraordinary
genius for painting was unfortunately co-existent in Jan Steen with
jovial habits of no moderate kind. The position of tavern-keeper in
which he was placed by his family, gave both the opportunity of
indulging his propensities and also that of depicting the pleasures of
eating and drinking, of song, card-playing and love-making directly from
nature. He must have worked with amazing facility, for in spite of the
time consumed in this mode of life, to which his comparatively early
death may be attributed, the number of his pictures is very great. His
favourite subjects were groups like the _Family Jollification_; the
_Feast of the Bean King_; and that form of diversion illustrating the
proverb, "_So wie die Alten sungen, so pfeifen auch die Jungen_"; fairs,
weddings, etc.; he also treated other scenes, such as the Doctor's
Visit, the Schoolmaster with a generally very unmanageable set of
boys--of which is a charming example at Dublin. The ludicrous ways of
children seem especially to have attracted him; accordingly, he depicts
with great zest the old Dutch custom on St. Nicholas's Day, September
3rd, of rewarding the good, and punishing the naughty child; or shows a
mischievous little urchin teasing the cat, or stealing money from the
pockets of their, alas!--drunken progenitors.
Jan Steen is the most genial painter of the whole Dutch School. His
humour has made him so popular with the English, that at least
two-thirds of his pictures are in their possession.
A peculiar cluster of masters, belonging to the Dutch
[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII.--TERBORCH
THE CONCERT
_Louvre, Paris_]
School, was formed by Gerard Dou. However careful in execution were such
painters as Terburg, Metsu, and Netscher, yet Gerard Dou and his
scholars and imitators surpassed them in the development of that
technical finish with which they rendered the smallest detail with
meticulous exactitude.
GERARD DOU was born at Leyden on the 7th April 1613, died there 1680. He
entered Rembrandt's school at fifteen years of age, and in three years
had attained the position of an independent artist. He devoted himself
at first to portraiture, and, like his master, made his own face
frequently his subject. Afterwards he treated scenes from the life
chiefly of the middle classes. He took particular pleasure in the
representation of hermits; he also painted scriptural events and
occasionally still life. His lighting is frequently that of lanterns and
candles. Most of his pictures contain only from one to three figures,
and do not exceed about 2 ft. high and 1 ft. 3 in. wide, being often
smaller. His pictures seldom attain even an animated moral import, and
may be said to be limited usually to a certain kindliness of sentiment.
On the other hand, he possessed a trace of his master's feeling for the
picturesque, and for chiaroscuro. Notwithstanding the incalculable
minuteness of his execution, the touch of his brush is free and soft,
and his best pictures look like Nature seen through the camera-obscura.
His works were so highly estimated in his own time, that the President
van Spiring, at the Hague, offered him 1000 florins a year for the right
of pre-emption of his pictures. Considering the time which such finish
required, and the early age at which he died, the number of his
pictures--Smith enumerates about 200--is remarkable. In the Louvre are
the following:--An old woman seated at a window, reading the Bible to
her husband; this is one of the best among the many representations by
Dou of a similar kind, being of warm sunny effect, and marvellous
finish. Also the _Woman with the Dropsy_, which is accounted his
_chef-d'oeuvre_.
Among the scholars of Gerard Dou, FRANS VAN MIERIS, born at Leyden 1635,
died 1681, takes the first place. In chiaroscuro, and in delicacy of
execution he is not inferior to his master. Although his pictures are
generally very small, yet with their extraordinary minuteness of
execution it is surprising that, in a life extended only to forty-six
years, he should have produced so many. The Munich Gallery has most,
then Dresden, Vienna, Florence, and St. Petersburg. The date, 1656, on a
picture in the Vienna Gallery, _The Doctor_, shows the painter to have
attained the summit of his art at twenty-one years of age. Another dated
1660, in the same gallery, executed for the Archduke Leopold, is one of
his best. The scene is a shop with a young woman showing a gentleman,
who has taken her by the chin, various handkerchiefs and stuffs. In the
Munich Gallery is _A Soldier_, dated 1662, of admirable transparency and
softness. Also _A Lady_ in a yellow satin dress fainting in the presence
of the doctor. In the Hague Gallery is _A Boy Blowing Soap-bubbles_,
dated 1663. This is a charming little picture of great depth of the
brownish tone. Also _The Painter and His Wife_, whose little shock dog
he is teasing; very naive and lively in the heads, and most delicately
treated in a subdued but clear tone. In the Dresden Gallery are Mieris
again and his wife before her portrait. This is one of his most
successful pictures for chiaroscuro, tone, and spirited handling.
NICOLAS MAES, already mentioned, born at