Rembrandt’s magnificent portrait,[13] with the characteristics of his
art. It is a face in which, for all its obvious strength, there is a
want of gentleness, fineness, impressibility; a type of nature that
succeeds easier in life than in art: for the qualities which count for
strength in the world count often in art for weakness. And weak, in
truth, is Berchem the artist.
With his paintings we are not now concerned. Through them he rivalled
Both in popularity, and for facility and complacency it is hard to say
which bears the palm. Berchem is quite content to paint the gnarled
trunk of an oak, the hairy leaf of a burdock, the moss on a stone and
the stone itself, grass and leaping water, as of the same polished, one
might almost say, “slimy” texture. So long as he has produced an
agreeable composition, he is content.
In his etchings, this insensibility to the fine differences in the grain
and moulding of things, all that goes to give trees and rocks and plants
the charm and interest of character, is less obviously disclosed. At
first sight the plates have a pleasant look, they are touched by a
cunning hand which has attained no common skill in distributing light
and in grouping. But one has not to look at them long before wearying of
their emptiness. Berchem etches cows, and sheep, and goats, because they
make pretty groups in composition--they add to the effect of a pastoral
landscape; but in themselves he shows no real interest whatever. His
goats pose; his cows have a look of faded human sentiment; his very
sheep are foolishly self-conscious. Though they are drawn with a certain
spirit and with a “touch” that mediocre artists and their admirers
mistake for an evidence of genius, the main truths in the lines of these
animal forms escape him.
In fine, Berchem was one of those men who have little of the artist in
them but skill of hand and facility in assimilation. Having invented or
concocted a recipe for producing a chosen class of subjects, he is
perfectly happy in repeating himself as long as the demand continues.
Berchem lived sixty-three years, and worked hard.
III
Who that has seen it can forget the portrait of Paul Potter by his
friend Van der Helst? The most beautiful portrait of that accomplished
painter, it has also an impalpable attraction that comes wholly from the
sitter, and of the many choice pictures in that choice gallery of the
Hague, the Mauritzhuis, its charm is not the least enduring.
The picture was painted in 1654, when Potter was already near death. A
certain drooping of the eyelids, a pallor of the face, indicate the
fatigue which was overmastering his powers. He was not yet thirty when
he died, but his production had been immense. And in him, as sometimes
happens, Nature, as if by a kind of anticipation, had brought the inborn
gift to early flower, a compensation in some sort to the world for its
early loss.
It was at Enkhuisen, a village on the extreme point of jutting land
[Illustration: _Fig. 24.--The Bull. By Paul Potter. B. 1._]
that looks out upon the Zuider Zee, that Paul Potter was born, Nov. 20,
1625. But only his early boyhood was passed there, for in 1631 his
father Pieter, also a painter, removed to Amsterdam. From his father the
boy first learnt to draw, and perhaps from him also inherited the love
of animals which was so strong in him. M. van Westrheene, in his life of
Potter, conjectures that he was influenced by two artists, Aelbert
Klomp and Govert Camphuisen, who painted pictures of the kind that
Potter made famous. But these men appear to have begun painting too late
for this to have been possible. Dr. Bredius thinks Claes Moeyart was a
more likely source of influence. It is known also that at a certain
period, about 1642, Potter was in the studio of Jacob de Wet at Haarlem.
But whoever may have taught him, his early ripeness and the strong
sincerity of his nature assure us that Potter derived little from any
teacher. With vivid preferences, a habit of subtle observation, and an
extraordinary skill of hand, he would have been content to repeat no
master’s formulas, however popular. His first signed picture and his
first signed etching bear the same date, 1643. He was eighteen years
old. The etching (B. 14) shows already skill in grouping and a hitherto
unknown knowledge in etching of animal forms. Its fault is over-much
elaboration. Three years later Potter was at Delft, and there in 1647,
at the age of twenty-two, painted his most famous picture, _The Young
Bull_, now at the Hague. It was one of the pictures carried off by
Napoleon, and of all those masterpieces from all countries which were
restored by France in 1815, this was esteemed the second in value. Since
then its fame has fallen, but with all its obvious demerits it has
suffered more--to borrow an expression applied by Mr. Swinburne to
Byron’s Address to Ocean in _Childe Harold_--from praise than from
dispraise. In 1649 Potter removed to the Hague, and it was here that he
met his wife, Adriana Balcheneynde, daughter of an architect in that
town. They were married in the following year. His marriage did not stop
the artist’s ceaseless industry, but rather increased it by his desire
to provide for his household. Thinking perhaps to find more patrons
there than at the Hague, he was induced by Dr. Tulp, the professor of
anatomy, famous from Rembrandt’s picture, to come to Amsterdam. In a
letter by a Frenchman who was in Amsterdam at this time, looking for
pictures on behalf of Queen Christina of Sweden, we have a glimpse of
Potter in his studio, working with prodigious assiduity. The Frenchman
found Potter at work on a painting which had already cost him five
months of continuous toil. “Rien ne se peut voir plus curieusement
fait,” says the Frenchman. When we consider that the painter produced
considerably over one hundred pictures in his brief life, it is amazing
to realise his powers of work. He was only to live two years longer.
IV
The etched work of Potter that has come down to us consists of eighteen
plates; not many, considering how prolific he was as a painter, but all
the plates are important.
Taking them in chronological order, we have first the etching already
spoken of, done when the artist was only eighteen, _The Cowherd_ (B.
14). In 1649, six years after its original execution, the plate was
reduced in length by Potter and the new date affixed. A reedy hollow,
with a pool, was substituted for the group of three cows at the left;
and an alteration was also made in the feet of one of the cows
descending the hill on the right. The etching, we know, was popular.
For, after it had been cut down, it was issued by at least three
publishers in turn; by F. de Wit, by P. Schenk, and by an anonymous
publisher who effaced the two former names. Probably in the first
instance it was issued by Potter himself, as was the series of cattle
published in 1650.
Full of skill in grouping and knowledge of form as this plate is, it is
certainly inferior to the later etchings. Already, by the next year,
Potter was able to produce a print, _The Shepherd_ (B. 15) which
surpasses it in every way, and which to more sound drawing adds a
pastoral atmosphere of lightness and sunshine and repose.
Berchem, Potter’s senior by five years, was at Haarlem in 1642, when
Potter, as we know, was in De Wet’s studio. We may assume, therefore,
that the two met. Perhaps it was in emulation of Berchem’s set of
etchings, published in 1644, that Potter produced his _Cowherd_ and
_Shepherd_. If so, he succeeded in surpassing them.
There now occurs an interval of some years in Potter’s etched work. His
next publication, so far as we know, was the series of eight plates (B.
1-8) representing cattle, and beginning with the fine _Bull_ (Fig. 24).
This title-piece is dated 1650, so that we may refer the production of
the plates to 1649, and possibly the year or two immediately preceding.
However, the fact that 1649 is the date of the revised _Cowherd_ seems
to point to Potter’s having resumed his interest in etching in that
year, and to his having executed the whole set after the re-publication
of that plate.
[Illustration: _Fig. 25.--Studies of a Dog. By Paul Potter. British
Museum._]
He would hardly issue an immature work, when he had by him much more
triumphant specimens of his skill.
As studies of animals, these eight little plates are as good as they can
be. But they are not more than studies. As we saw, it had become a
fashion for artists to etch such studies, and so spread their fame among
those who could not buy their pictures. This at once suggests the reason
of Potter’s deficiency as an etcher. Strictly speaking, he was not an
etcher at all. He used etching because it was the favourite medium for
multiplying sketches of his time. But one feels that the burin would
have been the apter instrument for that sure and cunning hand. There is
a deliberation, a want of immediacy in these designs, that are not of
the born etcher. Between the treatment of cattle in these etchings and
their treatment in line-engraving by Lucas van Leyden there is no
essential difference.
But we must take things as they are, and as specimens of subtle and
certain drawing, the plates are astonishing. The attitudes and movements
of oxen have never been better given. But it is not in mere correctness
of drawing that Potter excels his rivals. Berchem was only interested in
animals so far as they helped him in the composition of a landscape, but
with Potter they were the main interest, he loved them for themselves.
And in expressing that vague inarticulate soul that is in the look of
cattle, that mildness and acquiescence which are in their attitudes and
motions, he is a master, greater than any.
There is something in Dutch landscape, so open, tranquil, large, which
seems to look for the presence of these peaceful creatures as its
natural complement; their spirit is so entirely in harmony with the
spirit of their pastures. Not accidental, perhaps, nor without its due
effect, was the Dutch strain of blood in the American poet who seems to
have first suggested in words what Potter expressed in art--
Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain, or halt in the leafy shade,
What is it that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.[14]
Like Whitman, Potter is possessed by the fascination of animals; he,
too, “stands and looks at them long and long.” And with a feeling so
reticent that its intensity escapes a superficial notice, he puts into
these etched lines the breath that moves their bodies, and the dumbness
that looks out of their eyes.
V
Two years after the publication of the cattle series, appeared the five
larger plates of horses. These have less the air of being mere etched
studies for pictures; they seem to have been made for their own sake,
and make a kind of history, such as Tolstoi in the strange story of
Kohlstomir has written; a kind of Horse’s Progress.
The fourth (B. 12), the _Two Plough Horses_, is reproduced on Plate III.
This and the _Horse Whinnying_ (B. 10) seem to the writer the finest of
the series, and the finest of all Potter’s etchings. The work is
entirely simple and unaffected: there is immense skill, but no apparent
consciousness of it, still less parade of it. Nothing adventitious is
brought in, no artifice is used of setting or surrounding: bathed in
light and air, on their own level pastures, the horses stand clearly
outlined. But what a feeling of morning freshness, of careless and free
joy, is in the breeze that tosses the mane of the whinnying horse, and
makes him tremble with felt vitality! It is a triumph of the untamed
energy of life. How different a picture from this of the two tired
creatures, set free from their heavy labour at the plough, but no longer
rejoicing in their freedom, except as a respite. By some magic of
sympathy Potter makes us feel the ache of their limbs, stiff with
fatigue, just as he expresses the patience in their eyes. Yet tender as
is the feeling of the drawing, it is so restrained that “pity” seems a
word out of place. It is rather the simple articulation by means of
sensitive portrayal, of an else inarticulate pathos. Such drawing as
this is in a true sense imaginative.
The studies of dogs, reproduced in Fig. 25 are an admirable example of
Potter’s gift. It is interesting to compare them with a drawing by
Berchem, also in the British Museum, representing a hunting scene, with
the boar at bay and dogs springing at him or struggling in the leash.
Unfortunately, it has been impossible to find room for a reproduction
of it; but whoever looks at it will perceive at once a vital difference
between such drawing and that of Potter’s. Berchem sketches the scene in
a rapid, summary manner, using a few strokes only for each figure. It is
Rembrandt’s method; but what a difference in the result! There is a
sketch by Rembrandt of a lion springing at and seizing a man on
horseback. Only a few lines are used, but the whole action of each
figure is expressed perfectly. Berchem thinks to do the like, but his
[Illustration: _Fig. 26.--The Cow. By Paul Potter. B. 3._]
lines are all just beside the truth. His mind, which has not sufficient
love for things to brood upon their forms, is incapable of the swift act
of sympathy necessary to seize their movement in action; and its power
of reproduction, by nature probably a delicate and precise faculty, has
been warped and blunted by the man’s satisfaction in his own cleverness,
till it gives an inaccurate image.
Berchem’s work is therefore false, and deserves to be called
unimaginative. It convinces only the incompetent spectator of things.
Potter’s work is never false, and its imaginative quality is rather
obscured than absent in his poorer productions. The fact is that, having
[Illustration: _Fig. 27.--Mules. By K. Du Jardin. B. 2._]
given the vital image of an animal, he could not resist the temptation
of adding to it non-essential facts. He had not that transcendent
intelligence which instinctively practises the economy called “style.”
But it was on the side of intelligence, certainly not of tenderness or
sympathy, that he was lacking. He sat down to Nature’s feast, and the
delight of his eyes seduced him.
Before leaving this plate of the _Two Plough Horses_, we may notice a
point which does not seem to have been remarked before, that there was
apparently a kind of tradition of subjects among the animal painters and
etchers. This plate was published, in the set of horses, in 1652. But in
a set of etchings published the year before, 1651, by the artist Dirk
Stoop, this identical subject appears. The horses stand towards the left
of the plate in precisely the position of Potter’s horses.
Stoop, though as good as many of the Dutch etchers, was no consummate
draughtsman, and his horses are not to be compared with Potter’s. Yet
they do not look in the least like a copy, while the dates
discountenance such a supposition. If there be any direct relation
between the two etchings it must have been Potter who took a hint from
Stoop. But it seems equally likely to suppose that the subject, two
plough-horses released from labour, was a traditional one. The life of
cattle and horses does not offer more than a certain number of typical
pictures, and hence the tendency of painters and etchers to repeat the
same subject, always with an eye to improving on the best yet done; just
as earlier painters would choose a _Saint Sebastian_ as the typical
subject in which to display their power of painting the human figure. In
the same way Potter’s fifth etching of horses, where he depicts the
forlorn death that overcomes the worn-out beast, has its prototype in a
similar etching by Pieter de Laer, and the subject is repeated by Du
Jardin.
The etcher mentioned above, Dirk Stoop, Jed a wandering life, went to
Lisbon, became painter to the Court there, and, being brought over to
England with the Infanta, worked also in London. His etchings of horses
and dogs are less good than those of the court _fêtes_, processions, and
spectacles at Lisbon, at Hampton Court, and at London.
VI
If Potter did not produce many etchings himself, Marcus de Bye, who
etched in most cases after Potter’s designs, was comparatively prolific.
He produced over a hundred prints. Some of these,
[Illustration: _Ox and Sheep. From an etching by A. Van de Velde._]
purporting to be after drawings by Potter, are studies, not of cattle
and sheep or horses, but of wild animals--lions, tigers, and wolves. If
these could be taken as fairly representative of Potter’s work, we
should have to infer that Potter was far less fortunate in his drawing
of wild creatures than of tame. And it would be unlike Potter to have
made such studies except from the life. De Bye, however, lost a great
deal of the subtlety and life of his original in working from Potter’s
sketches. Karel du Jardin is a more independent artist. Born at
Amsterdam in 1622, he was trained in Berchem’s studio, but went to Italy
still young. There he found De Laer’s pictures in great esteem, and
developed a manner and a choice of subject very similar to his. Some
time before 1656 he returned to Holland, and remained at the Hague till
1659, when he removed to Amsterdam. There he painted some fine
portraits, quite unlike his ordinary pictures in style, being stirred to
emulation presumably by the superb Corporation pieces then produced
there. In 1675 he started again for Italy, but died three years later in
Venice.
The British Museum possesses a red-chalk drawing of Du Jardin by
himself. It is an agreeable portrait, but the face does not suggest much
power.
Though a pupil of Berchem, Du Jardin in his etchings follows Potter much
more than that artist. Dr. Lippmann, in fact, speaks of him as “Schuler
Potters,” but the expression must only mean a follower, not a pupil, of
Potter.
Twenty-four of Du Jardin’s etchings are dated, the dates being 1652,
1653, 1655, 1656, 1658, 1659, 1660, and 1675. Only one piece belongs to
the last year, while the other years have two, three, four, and five
pieces each. So that, whenever the undated etchings were produced, the
bulk of Du Jardin’s work on copper may safely be assigned to the eight
years 1652-1660; that is to say, to the first years after his return to
Holland, and possibly to the last year or two of his first stay in
Italy. Most of the etchings are from sketches made in Italy. Fig. 27 is
an example, and is a good specimen of Du Jardin as an etcher. There is
nothing very original about such art, but its agreeable qualities will
always give pleasure. Du Jardin, in his drawing and in his painting, has
a light and happy touch; yet beyond such craftsman’s merits there is
little to be said for him. He seems to have painted and etched what was
the fashion with a facile grace and commendable skill, but without any
strong inborn love of the subjects he handled.
As an etcher he is of the same order as Potter. A good many of the
prints are pastoral landscapes; these are less good than those in which
animals are the main subject. To turn from some of these small landscape
[Illustration: _Fig. 28.--Pigs. By K. Du Jardin. B. 15._]
studies of Du Jardin’s, in which nothing is seized strongly while
everything is made a little dull, to an etching of Rembrandt’s, say
_Six’s Bridge_, is to receive a most vivid impression of Rembrandt’s
immense superiority. Rembrandt’s light sketch is instinct with style; Du
Jardin, in these prints at any rate, has no style at all. Such etchings
as that of the pigs (Fig. 28) are of far higher quality.
Another etcher from Amsterdam, Adriaen van de Velde, came strongly under
Potter’s influence. Born in 1635-36 Van de Velde, like Du Jardin,
studied with Berchem. It has sometimes been assumed that he, too,
followed up his studies with a journey to Italy, but Dr. Bredius decides
against this supposition. There is Italian scenery in many of Adriaen’s
pictures, but there were plenty of fellow artists to borrow materials
for such backgrounds from. And with him the landscape is never much more
than a background. His interest lay more in his cattle and his figures
than in their surrounding. It is known, indeed, that he inserted figures
for several of the landscape painters, including Ruisdael and Hobbema.
Van de Velde’s etchings are nearly all of cattle, and here he sometimes
comes near Potter in drawing, while in management of the acid he is
decidedly Potter’s superior. His earliest dated etching of 1653 is a
large plate, which though not powerful has a real beauty. The cow which
forms the centre of the composition is almost identical with that in the
foreground of Potter’s _Cowherd_. Perhaps this was deliberate imitation,
and if so, is evidence of the recognition Potter’s knowledge of animal
form commanded, but it may equally well have been an accident. The whole
plate is bathed in drowsy sunshine, with which the man asleep by the
roadside, drawn with an admirable suggestion of repose, harmonises well.
This print is one of those which must be seen in the silvery earliest
state to be appreciated.
The original design for this plate is in the British Museum. In the same
collection is also the design for _The Cow Lying Down_ (B. 2). On the
same sheet of paper is a study of part of the cow in a slightly altered
position, and this has been adopted in the etching. Except for this
insignificant change, the two etchings are copied from the pencil
studies with entire fidelity. And probably this was always Van de
Velde’s practice, as it was with Potter and Du Jardin. It is, therefore,
strictly speaking, incorrect to describe the drawings as being made for
the etchings. The studies were etched simply that they might be
multiplied.
None of the studies of cattle, etched by the Dutch masters, surpasses
Van de Velde’s set of three, numbered 11, 12, and 13 in Bartsch. The
second is reproduced (Plate IV.). Potter never produced an effect so
delicate and so rich in colour as Van de Velde in these three etchings.
At the same time there is no ostentation of skill; rather there seems a
[Illustration: _Fig. 29.--A Goat. By A. Van de Velde. B. 16._]
kind of modesty in the workmanship that is winning. Equally excellent is
the charming little study of a goat (Fig. 29).
Van de Velde, if not a great artist, was a true one, and his early death
at the age of thirty-seven was a loss to the art of Holland.
INDEX
Altdorfer, 12
Amsterdam Cabinet, Master of, 60
Backhuysen, 53, 54, 55
Bartsch, 5, 23
Bassano, 60
Bega, 26, 31, 32
Berchem, 60, 63-65, 68, 71, 72
Beresteyn, C. van, 50
Bleecker, 63
Bode, 13, 55, 56
Both, A. 13
Both, J. 57, 58, 65
Bray, J. de, 18
Bredius, 8, 37, 63, 67, 77
Breenbergh, 57
Bronchorst, 56
Brouwer, 21
Bye, M. de, 74, 75
Cabel, A. van der, 48, 58
Callot, 12, 13
Campagnola, 35
Camphuisen, 67
Capelle, J. van de, 43, 53
Caravaggio, 13
Claude, 13, 55, 56, 57
Constable, 49
Cornelis Cornelisz, 18
Crome, 49, 50
Du Jardin, 60, 64, 74, 75
Dürer, 11, 35, 60
Dusart, 31, 34
Dutuit, 24, 26, 38
Elsheimer, 13, 14, 37, 55
Everdingen, A. van, 44-46
Fyt, J., 62
Genoels, 58
Glauber, 58
Goltzius, 18, 39
Goudt, Count de, 37
Goya, 32
Goyen, J. van, 42, 43
Gozzoli, 60
Groot, Hofstede de, 8
Grotius, 9
Haeften, N. van, 31
Hals, D., 18
Hals, F., 6, 18, 20
Hamerton, 6, 30
Helst, B. van der, 65
Heusch, W. de, 58
Heyden, J. van der, 52, 53
Hirschvogel, 12
Hobbema, 6, 49, 50, 77
Honthorst, 13
Hooch, P. de, 6, 9, 28
Hopfer, 12
Keene, 31
Klomp, 66
Koehler, 40
Koninck, P. de, 39
Laer, P. de, 57, 63, 74
Lautensack, 12
Leblond, 39, 40
Le Ducq, 5
Leech, 31
Leyden, Lucas van, 62, 70
Lippmann, 43, 75
Matham, 42
Metsu, 9
Miel, 13
Moeyart, 62, 67
Molyn, P. de, 42, 43
Naiwincx, 50
Ostade, A. van, 6, 17-32
Pater, Walter, 9, 38
Patinir, 35, 37
Picart, 25
Potter, 6, 60, 62, 63, 65-75, 77
Rembrandt, 5, 6, 13, 15, 24, 28, 38, 63, 72, 76
Roghman, 50, 52
Rousseau, Th., 49
Rubens, 11, 14, 15, 35, 60, 61
Ruisdael, 6, 7, 46-50, 77
Seghers, H., 36-40
Snyders, 60, 62
Spinoza, 9
Steen, 6, 9
Stoop, 74
Swanevelt, 13, 48, 58
Terborch, 9, 42
Theocritus, 62
Titian, 35
Tolstoi, 71
Uden, L. van, 35
Uytenbroeck, M. van, 55, 62
Vadder, L. de, 35
Vandyck, 15
Velasquez, 13, 60
Velde, A. van de, 60, 77, 78
Velde, E. van de, 18, 41
Velde, J. van de, 41, 55
Velde, W. van de, 44, 53
Verboom, 50
Vermeer, 6, 28
Vlieger, S. de, 43, 53