(1903). There was no catalogue, and while the nature of this great
gift to the city was felt it was not until a second visit (in 1909)
that its extraordinary value was realised. The catalogue numbers three
hundred and forty-four pictures by modern artists, and there is also a
valuable collection of objects of art, bronzes, pottery, furniture,
and tapestries. Philip Zilcken (a well-known Dutch etcher) in his
introduction calls attention to the rare quality of the Mesdag Museum
and tells us that Mr. and Mrs. Mesdag van Houten bought for their own
pleasure without any thought of forming a gallery for the Dutch
nation. That came later. W.H. Mesdag is the well-known marine painter
whose paintings may be seen in almost every gallery on the Continent.
A native of Groningen (1831), he studied under Roelofs and while in
Brussels lived with his relative, Alma-Tadema; the latter is a
Frieslander. Mesdag excels in marines, painting great sweep of waters
with breadth and simplicity. His palette is cool and restrained, his
rhythmic sense well developed, and his feeling for outdoors truly
Dutch. He belongs to the line of the classic Dutch marinists, to Van
der Velde, Backhuizen, and Van Goyen. His wife, a woman of charm and
culture, died in the spring of last year. She signed her work S.
Mesdag van Houten. Her gift lies in the delineation of forest views,
interiors, portraits, and still-life. Her colour is deep and rich.
A cursory walk around the various rooms on the Laan van Meerdervoort
impresses one with this idea: with what envy must any curator of any
museum in the world study this collection. Mesdag began gathering his
treasures at a time when the Barbizon school was hardly known; when a
hundred other painters had not been tempted by the dealers into
overproduction; when, in a word, fancy prices were not dreamed of. The
Alma-Tademas are among his best, little as we admire his vital marbles
and lifeless humans. An early portrait of his wife is here.
Bastien-Lepage has a preparatory sketch for Les Foins. Indeed, the
Mesdag Museum is rich in _frottis_, painted-in pictures, by such men
as Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Vollon, Millet, Dupré. As we admire the
etchings of Mari Bauer, it was a new pleasure to see half a dozen of
his paintings, chiefly scenes in the Orient. The same misty, fantastic
quality is present; he manipulates his colour, thinly laid on, as if
it were some sort of plastic smoke. Impressionistic as are these
canvases, there is a subdued splendor in them all. Bauer feels the
East. His etchings recall Rembrandt's line; but his paintings are
miles away in sentiment and handling. Bisschop (1828-1904) is
represented by a fine still-life, and among the various Blommers is
one with children playing in the water and on the sands; vividly
seized, this example.
The late Théophile de Bock was an interpreter of nature and his
brush-work was fat and rich. His work is well known in America and
gains in value every day (he died in 1904). There are fourteen
specimens here of his best period. The Emile Bretons are early and
therefore different from his commercial productions. Of the Corots,
twelve in number, we did not see an insignificant one, not a weak one.
The famous Early Morning and View at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon are hung.
The first depicts a group of trees; to the right a narrow stream in
which is reflected a cloudless sky. In the centre two women in white
caps. The second is more elaborate in composition. The middle distance
is occupied by picturesque buildings dating probably from the Middle
Ages. In the foreground four persons are under the shadow of some
trees. An unusual scheme for Corot. His well-known characteristics are
present in the dozen; the tremulous leafage, the bright, pure light,
the Italian softness. And what do you say to a half-dozen Courbets,
all of his strong period, landscapes, still-life, a nude study, a dead
roe, a sunlit path, and a lake scene! Good Courbets are not numerous,
and these are good. The nude is a woman recumbent upon draperies. The
_pâte_ is heavy but vital, the flesh tones glowing, and the silhouette
firm, yet delicate. The portrait of the artist by himself is massive.
It was probably painted in Ste. Pélagie.
Coutures two, twenty-five Daubignys, and one of his son Karl. Daubigny
the elder is here in all his manners, dark pictures with big
foregrounds, intimate bits of wooded interiors, sand-hills,
streamlets, moonlights, coast scenes, evening effects, sunsets at sea,
twilights, sheep, broken rocks, and a study in crayon.
Decamps and Delacroix come next in order. There are three of the
former, among the rest his Poacher, and three of Delacroix, one a
portrait of himself. Seven of Diaz, painted when his colour was most
sonorous and brilliant, are here, with a study of an undraped female
figure. La Mare is a sunlight effect in the forest of Fontainebnleau.
Dupré has seven to his account, several of great tonal beauty. The one
Fortuny is an elaborate etching of his Anchorite. The Josef Israels
are strong. Jacque pigs and sheep; Klinkenberg's view of the
Binnenhof; Mancini's bewildering chromatic blurs and sensuously rich
gamut, and seventeen in number. This painter is seldom encountered in
America. He should be better known; while his ideas are not
particularly significant he is colourist for colour's sake, as was
Monticelli. The three brothers Maris, Jakob, Willem, and Matthys (the
latter living in London), are to be seen here in unexampled states.
Mauve, too, with fourteen pictures. Both the Mesdags, Taco Mesdag, a
brother and his wife are present. Also Ter Meulen, a gifted Dutch
artist. We have seldom seen better George Michels. The Monticelli
up-stairs is an unusual subject. It is a mountain path in the south of
France. The sun is disappearing behind a cluster of trees. Rocks in
the foreground. The scheme of colour is low for Monticelli, the forms
sharply accented. He could see line when he wished. The smaller
example is an interior, as rich as Monticelli knew how to lay the
colours on.
Seven Millets, one the large exhibition picture Hagar and Ishmael,
another the wonderful Resting Vintager. Alone these Millets would
cause a sensation if exhibited elsewhere. The Hagar seems a trifle too
rhetorical for the simple-minded painter. Brown predominates in the
colour scale, the composition is rather conventional, an echo,
perhaps, of the artist's Delaroche apprenticeship, but the Vintager is
a masterpiece. Seated among the vines in the blaze of the sun, he is
resting and has removed his heavy sabots. The relaxed attitude after
arduous labour is wonderfully expressed. The atmosphere indicates
stifling sultriness.
Ricard, Roelofs, Theodore Rousseau--halt! There are twelve of this
French master, dramatic and rich. Descente des Vaches dans le Jura is
the celebrated canvas refused at the Salon, 1834. But it is too
bituminous in parts. A greater composition, though only a drawing, is
Les grands chênes du vieux Bas-Bréau. Four large trees illumined by
sun-rays. Two Segantinis, a drawing in chalk and pastel; Storm Van's
Gravesande; seven Troyons, one, Le retour du Marché, a masterpiece;
Vollon, still-life, fish, ivory goblets, violets; Weissenbruchs;
Zilcken etchings and two De Zwarts. There is old Rozenburg pottery,
designed by Colenbrander, scarce to-day; Dutch and Gothic brass,
Oriental portières and brass, old Delft, Japanese armour, various
weapons and lanterns, Gobelin tapestry, carved furniture, Dutch and
Scandinavian, and a magnificent assortment of Satsuma pottery, Cmail
cloisonné, Japanese bronzes, Persian pottery, Spanish brasses,
majolica and bronzes and sculptures by Mattos, Constantin, Meunier,
and Van Wijk--the list fills a pamphlet. Next door is the studio of
the aged Mesdag, a hale old Dutchman who paints daily and looks
forward to seeing his ninety years. In Holland octogenarians are not
few. The climate is propitious; above all, the absence of hurry and
worry. To see The Hague without visiting this collection would be a
regrettable omission.
HALS OF HAARLEM
In writing of Holland more is said of its windmills than its flowers.
It is a land of flowers. Consider the roll-call of its painters who
their life long produced naught but fruit and flower pieces. Both the
De Heems, the cunning Huysums, whose work still lives in the
mezzotints of Earlom--like David de Heem, he was fond of introducing
insects, flies, bees, spiders, crawling over his velvety peaches and
roses--Seghers, Van Aelst and his talented pupil Rachel Ruysch, Cuyp,
Breughel (Abraham), Mignon, Van Beyeren, Van den Broeck, Margaretha
Rosenboom, Maria Vos, Weenix, A. Van der Velde, Kalf, and many others
who excelled in this pleasing genre. Their canvases are faded, the
colours oxidised, but on the highways and by-ways the miracle is daily
renewed--flowers bloom at every corner, fill the window-boxes of
residences, crowd the hotel balconies, and are bunched in the hands of
the peddlers. A cart goes by, a gorgeous symphony of hues. Roses,
chrysanthemums, dahlias, daisies, tufts of unfamiliar species, leaves
that are as transparent lace, blushing wild roses, and what not. Ivy
is used for practical purposes. On the steam-yacht _Carsjens_ at
Leyden a wind screen is composed of ivy; you feel enclosed in a
floating garden. Along the Vivjer berg, fronting the house of Baron
Steengracht, is a huge boat-shaped enclosure of stone. It is full of
ivy growing low. Dutch landscape gardeners are fertile in invention.
They break the flat lines of the landscape with all sorts of ingenious
surprises; bosky barriers, hedges abloom, elm-trees pared away to
imitate the processional poplars of Belgium and France, sudden little
leafy lanes--what quips and quirks we have come across a few miles
away from the town! To see Haarlem and its environs in June when the
bulb farms are alight with tulips must be a delightful spectacle. In
the fall of the year you are perforce content to read the names of the
various farms as the train passes. The many-coloured vegetable carts
remind you that Snyders and Van Steen painted here.
The Groote Kerke, St. Bavo, at Haarlem, is a noble pile with a tall
tower. One of its attractions is the organ (built in 1735-38) by
Christian Müller; it was until a few years ago the largest in the
world. Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops and five thousand
pipes (thirty-two feet the longest) when manipulated by a skilful
organist produce adequate musical results. We had the pleasure of
hearing the town organist play Bach for an hour. He began with a few
Bach chorales, then came A Mighty Fortress is Our God; followed by the
A minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge fugue. The general diapasonic
quality is noble, the wood stops soft, the mixtures without brassy
squealing, and the full organ sends a thrill down your spine, so
mellow is its thunder. Modern organs do not thus sound. Is the secret
of the organ tone lost like the varnishing of Cremona fiddles and the
blue of the old Delft china? There are no fancy "barnyard stops," as
John Runciman has named the combinations often to be found in
latter-day instruments. You understood after hearing the Haarlem organ
why Bach wrote his organ preludes and fugues. Modern music, with its
orchestral registration, its swiftness and staccato, would be a
sacrilege on this key-board.
The bronze statue of Coster did not unduly excite us. The Dutch claim
him as the inventor of printing, but the Germans hang on to Gutenberg.
At Leyden there is a steam train to Katwyk-aan-See; at Haarlem you may
ride out to Zandvoort, and six miles farther is the North Sea Canal.
But as the Katwyk and Zandvoort schools flourish mightily in the
United States we did not feel curious enough to make the effort at
either town. Regrettable as was the burning of the old church at
Katwyk, perhaps its disappearance will keep it out of numerous
pictures painted in that picturesque region. Of course it will be, or
has been, rebuilt. We walked in the forest of Haarlem and did not once
think of 125th Street; the old town is slightly unlike its modern
namesake. What a charm there is in this venerable forest. The Dutch of
Amsterdam, less than half an hour away, come down here on Sunday
afternoons for the tranquillity and the shade. You must know that the
sun-rays can be very disturbing in July. The canals intersecting the
town are pretty. They may be sinks of iniquity, but they don't look
so. Naturally, they exhale mephitic odours, though the people won't
acknowledge it. It is the case in Venice, which on hot August
afternoons is not at all romantic in a nasal sense. But you forget it
all in Haarlem as you watch a hay barge float by, steered by a blond
youngster of ten and poled by his brothers. From the chimney comes a
light smoke. Soup is cooking. You remember the old sunlit towpath of
your boyhood; a tightening at your heart warns you of homesickness, or
hay fever. Oh, to be on the Erie Canal, you exclaim, as you sneeze.
But the Town Hall Museum is hard by. It is the glory of Haarlem as the
Rijks Museum is the glory of Amsterdam and Holland. A pull at the bell
and the door is opened, a small fee is paid, and you are free to the
room where are hung ten large paintings by the inimitable Frans Hals.
Here are the world-renowned Regent pictures set forth in chronological
order. Drop the catalogue and use your own eyes. The first impression
is profound; not that Hals was profound in the sense of Rembrandt's
profundity, but because of the almost terrifying vitality of these
portraits. Prosaic men and women, great trenchermen, devourers of huge
pasties, mowers down of wine-bottles and beer-tankards, they live with
such vitality on the canvases of Hals that you instinctively lower
your voice. The paint-imprisoned ghosts of these jolly officers,
sharpshooters, regents, and shrewd-looking old women regents are not
so disquieting as Rembrandt's misty evocations. They touch hands with
you across the centuries, and finally you wonder why they don't step
out the frame and greet you. Withal, no trace of literalism, of
obvious contours or tricky effects. Honest, solid paint, but handled
by the greatest master of the brush that ever lived--save Velasquez.
How thin and unsubstantial modern painting is if compared to this
magician, how even his greatest followers, Manet and Sargent, seem
incomplete. Manet, with his abridgments, his suppressions, his
elliptical handling, never had the smiling confidence of Hals in
facing a problem. The Frenchman is more subtle, also more evasive; and
there is no hint in him of the trite statement of a fact that we
encounter in Bartholomew Van der Heist--himself a great painter. Hals
had not the poetic vision of Rembrandt, but he possessed a more
dexterous hand, a keener eye. Judged according to the rubric of sheer
paint, sheer brush-work, not Rubens, not Van Dyck, was such a
virtuoso. Despite his almost incredible swiftness of execution, Hals
got closer to the surfaces of what is called "actual" life than any of
the masters with the exception of the supreme Spaniard.
At Haarlem you may follow his development; his first big picture
painted in 1616; his last in 1664. He died at eighty-four. But at
eighty odd he painted two important canvases, the portraits of the
regents and of the lady regents. More summary as regards the
execution, with a manifest tendency toward simplifications, these two
pictures are very noble. The group of ladies, each a portrait of
character, pleases some more than the male group. They are not so
firmly modelled, and into them all has crept a certain weariness as of
old age; but what justness of expression, what adjustment of puzzling
relations! One lady follows you over the gallery with her stern gaze.
It recalls to us the last judgment look which a maiden aunt was wont
to bestow upon us years ago. The men regents will live into eternity
if the canvas endures. The shiny varnish is not pleasing, yet it
cannot destroy the illusion of atmosphere that circulates about the
vigorously modelled figures at the table. What a colourist! What
nuances he produces on a restrained key-board! The tones modulate,
their juxtaposition causes no harsh discords. The velvet black,
silvery grays, whites that are mellow without pastiness, and the reds
and yellows do not flare out like scarlet trumpets; an aristrocratic
palette. Really you begin to realise that what you formerly considered
grandfather tales are the truth. The great painters have been and are
not with us to-day. It is not a consoling pill to swallow for apostles
of "modernity." Hals is more modern than Sargent.
These corporation and regent pieces are chronologically arranged. No.
88 is considered the masterpiece. It shows the officers of the
Arquebusiers of St. Andrew, fourteen life-sized figures. Again each
man is a portrait. This was painted in 1633. The Regents of the
Elizabeth Hospital (1641) has been likened to Rembrandt's style;
nevertheless, it is very Halsian. Why, that chamber is alone worth the
journey across the Atlantic. Hals shows us not the magic of life but
the normal life of daylight in which move with dignity men and women
undismayed by the mysteries that hem them about. He has a daylight
soul, a sane if not poetic soul, and few painters before him so
celebrated the bravery of appearances, the beauty of the real.
PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM
I
The wonderful Rijks Museum is the representative home of old Dutch
art. The Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery excel it in variety,
but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The Syndics and The Night
Watch are worth a wilderness of other painters' work. The Night Watch
has been removed from the old room, where it used to hang, facing the
large Van der Heist, Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is only
in temporary quarters; the gallery destined for it is being completed.
We were permitted to peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in one
gallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De Stallmeesters. Better
lighted than in its old quarters, The Night Watch now shows more
clearly the tooth of time. It is muddy and dark in the background, and
the cracks of the canvas are ill-concealed by the heavy coating of
varnish. If all the faults of this magnificent work are more plainly
revealed its excellences are magnified. How there could have been any
dispute as to the lighting is incredible. The new catalogue, the
appendices of which are brought down to 1908, frankly describes the
picture thus:
"The Night Watch, or the Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and of
Lieutenant van Ruytenburg. The corps is represented in broad daylight,
leaving the Doele of the Arquebusiers. At their head, standing in the
foreground about the centre, are the Captain and his Lieutenant
conversing. The former wears a dark dress, the latter a yellow costume
with a white sash, causing a brilliant effect of light. Near the
Captain, also standing out in full light, is a little girl, a dead
white cock hanging from her waistband."
Then follow the names of the other personages in this strange scene.
A commonplace happening is transfigured by the magic of a seer into a
significant moment arrested in eternity. Rembrandt is a window looking
out upon eternity. It was quite like the logical minded Frenchman,
Eugène Fromentin, himself an admirable painter, to pick this canvas
full of flaws. The composition is, true enough, troubled and confused.
The draughtsmanship leaves much to be desired; hands are carelessly
painted, the grouping haphazard, without symmetry, the general rhythm
full of syncopations, cross accents, and perverse pauses--empty
spaces, transitions not accounted for. And yet this painting without
personal charm--it is almost impersonal--grips your soul. It is not
alone the emotional quality of the paint. There are greater colourists
than Rembrandt, who, strictly speaking, worked in monochrome,
modelling with light. No, not the paint alone, not the mystery of the
envelope, not the magnetic gaze of the many eyes, but all combined
makes an assault upon nerves and imagination. You feel that Captain
Cocq is a prosaic personage and is much too tall in proportion to the
spry little dandy Lieutenant at his side. Invested with some strange
attribute by the genius of the painter, this Dutchman becomes the
protagonist in a soundless symphony of light and shadow. The waves
that emanate from the canvas suffuse your senses but do not soothe or
satisfy. The modern nervous intensity, missing absolutely in Hals and
his substantial humans, is present in Rembrandt. We say "modern" as a
sop to our vanity, but we are the "ancients," and there is no mode of
thought, no mood that has not been experienced and expressed by our
ancestors. Rembrandt is unlike any other Dutch painter--Hals, Vermeer,
Teniers, Van der Heist--what have these in common with the miller's
son? But he is as Dutch as any of them. A genius is only attached to
his age through his faults, said a wise man. Rembrandt is as universal
as Beethoven, a Dutchman by descent, as Bach, a Hungarian by descent,
as Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. But we must go to Leonardo da Vinci
if we wish to find a brother soul to Rembrandt's.
There is a second child back of that iridescent and enigmatic girl
with the dead fowl. And the dog that barks as Jan Van Koort ruffles
his drum, what a spectre dog! No, the mystery of The Night Watch is
insoluble, because it is the dream of a poet. Its light is morning
light, yet it is the mystic light of Rembrandt, never seen on sea or
land. In The Syndics, that group of six linen-drapers, Rembrandt shows
with what supreme ease he can beat Hals at the game of make-believe
actuality. Now, according to the accustomed order of development, The
Night Watch should have followed The Syndics. But it preceded it by
two decades, and the later work contains far better painting and a
sharper presentment of the real. The Night Watch is Rembrandt's Ninth
symphony; but composed before his Fifth, The Syndics. One figure in
this latter picture has always fascinated us. It is of the man,
Volkert Janz, according to Professor J. Six, who stoops over, his hand
poised on a book. Rembrandt has seldom painted with more sensitiveness
eyes, subtle corners of the mouth, and intimate expression. This
syndic is evidently superior to his fellows, solid, sensible Dutch men
of affairs.
There is a landscape, purchased in 1900, a stone bridge, lighted by
rays darting through heavy storm clouds. It is the Rembrandt of the
etchings. Lovely is the portrait of a young lady of rank, though the
Elizabeth Bas, in another gallery, will always be the masterpiece in
portraiture if for nothing else but the hands. The Jewish Bride is
bulky in its enchantments, the phosphorescent gleams of the apparel
the chief attraction. The Toilet is heavy Rembrandt; while the
anatomical lecture is repulsive. But the disembowelled corpse is more
corpse-like than the queerly foreshortened dead body in the picture on
anatomy at The Hague. The warrior's head, supposed to be a portrait of
his father, is an ancient copy and a capital one. Old dame Elizabeth
Bas, with her coif, ruff, and folded hands, holding a handkerchief, is
a picture you return to each day of your stay.
Hals at Amsterdam is interesting. There is the so-called portrait of
the painter and his wife, two full-length figures; the Jolly Toper,
half-length figure, large black hat, in the left hand a glass; and the
insolent lute-player, a copy, said to be by Dirck Hals, the original
in the possession of Baron Gustave Rothschild at Paris. And a fine
copy it is.