woman reading a letter; she is seen in profile, standing near a table,
and is dressed in a white skirt and blue loose jacket. The Letter
shows us in the centre of a paved room a seated lady, lute in hand.
She has been interrupted in her playing by a servant bringing a
letter. To the right a tapestry curtain has been looped up to give a
view of the scene. The new Vermeer--purchased from the Six gallery in
1908--is now called The Cook; it was formerly known as The Milkmaid. A
stoutly built servant is standing behind a table covered with a green
cloth, on which are displayed a basket of bread, a jug of Nassau
earthenware, and a stone pot into which she is pouring milk from a
can. The figure, painted almost full length, stands out against the
white wall and is dressed in a lemon-coloured jacket, a red-brown
petticoat, a dark-blue apron turned back, and a white cap on the head.
The light falls on the scene through a window to the left, above the
table.
This masterpiece is in one of the cabinet galleries. It displays more
breadth than the Lady Reading a Letter, and its colouring is
absolutely magical. The De Hoochs are of prime quality. Greater art is
the windmill and moonlit scene of Hobbema, as great a favourite as his
Mill, though both must give the precedence to the Alley of
Middleharnais in the Royal Academy, London. But where to begin, where
to end in this high carnival of over three thousand pictures! The
ticketed favourites, starred Baedeker fashion, sometimes lag behind
their reputation. The great Van der Helst--and a prime portraitist he
is, as may be seen over and over again--is The Company of Captain
Bicker, a vast canvas. When you forget Hals and Rembrandt it is not
difficult to conjure up admiration for this work. The N. Maes Spinner
is very characteristic. Cuyp and Van Goyen are here; the latter's view
of Dordrecht is celebrated. So is the Floating Feather of
Hondecoester, a finely depicted pelican. The feather is the least part
of the picture. Asselijn's angry swan is an excellent companion piece.
We wish that we could describe the Jan Steens, the Dous, the Mierises,
and other sterling Dutch painters. There is the gallery of Dutch and
Flemish primitives about which a volume might be written; their
emaciated music appeals. In expressiveness the later men did not excel
them. The newest acquisition, not mentioned in the catalogue
supplements, is the work of an unknown seventeenth-century master,
possibly Spanish, though the figures, background, and accessories are
Dutch. Two old men, their heads bowed, sit at table. Across their
knees are napkins. The white is from a Spanish palette. A youth
attired in dark habiliments, his back turned to the spectators, is
pouring out wine or water. The canvas is large, the execution flowing;
perhaps it portrays the disciples at Emmaus.
The portraits of Nicholas Hasselaer and his wife Geertruyt van Erp, by
Hals, in one of the cabinets, are painted with such consummate
artistry that you gasp. The thin paint, every stroke of which sings
out, sets you to thinking of John Sargent and how he has caught the
trick of brush-work--at a slower tempo. But not even Sargent could
have produced the collar and cuffs. A Whistler, a full-length, in
another gallery, looks like an unsubstantial wraith by comparison. Two
weeks' daily attendance at this excellently planned collection did no
more than fix the position of the exhibits in the mind. There is a
goodly gathering of such names as Israels, Mesdag, Blommers, and
others at the Rijks, but the display of modern Dutch pictures at the
Municipal Museum is more representative. The greatest Josef Israels we
ever saw in the style is his Jew sitting in the doorway of a house, a
most eloquent testimony to Israels' powers of seizing the "race" and
the individual. Old David Bles is here, and Blommers, De Bock,
Bosboom, Valkenburg, Alma-Tadema, Ary Scheffer--of Dutch
descent--Roelofs, Mesdag, Mauve, Jakob Maris, Jongkind, and some of
the Frenchmen, Rousseau, Millet, Dupré, and others. The Six gallery is
not so accessible as it was some years ago. No doubt its Rembrandts
and Vermeers will eventually find their way into the Rijks Museum.
II
Who was Herri met de Bles? Nearly all the large European galleries
contain specimens of his work and in the majority of cases the
pictures are queried. That fatal (?) which, since curators are more
erudite and conscientious, is appearing more frequently than in former
years, sets one to musing over the mutability of pictorial fortunes.
Also, it awakens suspicions as to the genuineness of paint.
Restorations, another fatal word, is usually a euphemism for
overpainting. Between varnish and retouching it is difficult to tell
where the old master leaves off and the "restorer" begins. Bles, for
example, as seen in the Rijks Museum, is a fascinating subject to the
student; but are we really looking at his work? The solitary picture
of his here, Paradise, is so well preserved that it might have been
painted a year ago. (It is an attribution.) Yet this painter is
supposed to have been born at Bouvignes, 1480, and to have died at
Liège, 1521. He was nicknamed Herri, for Hendrick, met de Bles,
because he had a tuft of white in his hair (a forerunner of Whistler).
The French called him Henri à la Houppe; the Italians
"Civetta"--because of the tiny owl he always introduced into his work.
He was a landscapist, and produced religious and popular scenes. Bles
has had many works saddled upon him by unknown imitators of Metsu,
Joost van Kleef, Lucas, and Dürer--who worked at Antwerp between 1520
and 1550. Thierry Vellert was also an imitator. In the old Pinakothek,
Munich, there is a Henricus Blesius, which is said to be a
counterfeit, and others are in Karlsruhe, Milan, Brussels, and at the
Prado.
The circular picture in the Rijks shows us in various episodes Adam
and Eve in the Garden of Eden from the Creation until the Fall. Around
the edge are signs of the zodiac. The colour is rich, the figures
delicate. The story is clearly told and is not unlike a "continuous
performance." You see Adam asleep and over him stoops the Almighty;
then Eve is shown. The apple scandal and the angel with the flaming
sword are portrayed with a vivid line that recalls the miniaturist. A
rare painter.
Roeland Savery is an artist whose name, we confess, was not known to
us until we saw his work in the Rijks. The rich _pâte_ and
bouquet-like quality of his colour recall Monticelli. His compositions
are composed, like Monticelli's, but much more spirited than the
latter. A stag hunt, a poet crowned at the feast of animals, Elijah
fed by the ravens, and the fable of the stag among the cows prove the
man's versatility. He was born about 1576 and died at Utrecht, 1639. A
pupil of his father, he first worked in Courtrai. The Bronzino Judith
holding the head of Holophernes is a copy, the original hanging in the
Pitti Palace. At Vienna there is a replica. Among the Bols (Cornelis,
1613-66) the portraits of Roelof Meulenaer and his wife, Maria Rey,
attract because of their vitality and liberalism. Then we come across
the oft-engraved Paternal Advice, by Gerard ter Borch (1617-81). Who
doesn't remember that young lady dressed in white satin and standing
with her back to you? The man in officer's uniform, admonishing her,
is seated next to a woman drinking from a wine-glass. The texture of
the dress and the artfully depicted glass are the delight of amateurs.
As a composition it is not remarkable. The man is much too young to be
the father of the blond-haired lady, and if the other one is her
mother, both parents must have retained their youth. The portrait of
Helena van der Schalcke is that of a quaint Dutch child standing; a
serious little body carrying a basket on her right arm like a good
housewife. It is a capital Ter Borch. Two beautiful Albert Cuyps are
painted on the two sides of a copper panel. On one side two merchants
stand at a wharf; on the other two men sit sampling wine in a cellar.
The colour is singularly luminous.
Let us pass quickly the Schalckens and Gerard Dous. Dou's
self-portrait is familiar. He leans out of a window and smokes a clay
pipe. The candle-light pictures always attract an audience. Govert
Flinck (1615-60, pupil of Rembrandt) is a painter who, if he lived
to-day, would be a popular portraitist. Wherever you go you see his
handiwork, not in the least inspired, but honest, skilful, and genial.
Look at the head of the tax-collector Johannes Wittenbogaert, covered
with a black cap. So excellent is it that it has been attributed to
Rembrandt. Boland, we believe, engraved it as genuine Rembrandt.
Gerard van Honthorst's Happy Musician is another picture of prime
quality, and a subject dear to Hals. Hoogstratten's Sick Lady is an
anecdote. The young woman does not seem very ill, but the doctor
gravely holds up a bottle of medicine and you feel the dread moment is
at hand. How to persuade the patient to swallow the dose? She is
stubborn-looking. The Pieter de Hoochs are now in the same gallery
with Rembrandt's Jewish Bride. These interiors, painted with a minute,
hard finish, lack the charm and the colour quality of Vermeer. With
sunlight Hooch is successful, but his figures do not move freely in an
atmospheric envelope, as is the case with Vermeer's. The Small Country
House is the favourite. In front of a house a well-dressed man and
woman are seated at a table. She is squeezing lemon juice into a
glass. Behind her a servant is carrying a glass of beer, and farther
away a girl cleans pots and pans. The composition is the apotheosis of
domestic comfort, conjugal peace, and gluttony. We like much more The
Pantry, wherein a woman hands a jug to her little girl. The adjoining
room, flooded with light, is real.
There is one Van der Helst we could not pass. It looks like the
portrait of a corpulent woman, but is that of Gerard Bicker, bailiff
of Muiden. A half-length figure turned to the left, the bailiff a
well-fed pig, holds a pair of gloves in his right hand which he
presses against his Gargantuan chest. His hair is long and curly. The
fabrics are finely wrought. Holbein the younger is represented by the
portrait of a young man. It is excellent, but doubtless a copy or an
imitation. To view five Lucas van Leydens in one gallery is not an
everyday event. His engravings are rare enough--that is, in good
states; "ghosts" are aplenty--and his paintings rarer. Here they are
chiefly portraits. Rachel Ruysch, the flower painter, has a superior
in Judith Lyster, a pupil of Frans Hals. She was born at Haarlem, or
Zaandam, about 1600, and died 1660. She married the painter Jan
Molener. Her Jolly Toper faces the Hals of the same theme, in a
cabinet, and reveals its artistic ancestry. Judith had the gift of
reproducing surfaces. We need not return to the various Maeses;
indeed, this is only a haphazard ramble among the less well-known
pictures. Consider the heads of Van Mierevelt; those of Henrick Hooft,
burgomaster of Amsterdam, of Jacob Cats, and of his wife Aegje
Hasselaer (1618-64). Her hair and lace collar are wonderfully set
forth. Must we stop before Mabuse, or before the cattle piece of the
Dutch school, seventeenth century? A Monticelli seems out of key here,
and the subject is an unusual one for him, Christ With the Little
Children. The Little Princess, by P. Moreelse, has the honour, after
Rembrandt, of being the most frequently copied picture in the Rijks.
The theme is the magnet. A little girl, elaborately dressed, is
seated. She strokes the head of a spaniel whose jewelled collar gives
the impression of a dog with four eyes. In Vermeer's Young Woman
Reading a Letter is a like confused passage of painting, for the
uninstructed spectator. She wears her hair over her ear, an ornament
clasping the hair. At first view this is not clear, principally
because this fashion of wearing the hair is unusual in the eyes of a
stranger.
Jan van Scorel was born at Schoorl, near Alkmaar, 1495. He studied
under Jacob Cornelis at Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge at
Utrecht. He died at Utrecht, 1562. When travelling in Germany he
visited Dürer at Nuremberg; resided for a time in Italy. The Italian
influence is strong, particularly in his Mary Magdalen, which formerly
hung in the town-hall of Haarlem. A replica is in the residence of the
head-master of Eton College, England. Mary is shown seated, richly
attired. She holds in her right hand a box of perfume, her left hand,
beautifully painted, rests on her knee. Behind is a mountainous
landscape, distinctly Italian, beside her a tree. The head is north
Lombardian in character and colouring, the glance of the eyes
enigmatic. A curiously winning composition, not without _morbidezza_.
Scorel has five other works in the Rijks. The Bathsheba is not a
masterpiece. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is conventional, but the
Harpsichord Player was sold at Paris as late as 1823 as a Bronzino.
Perhaps it is only attributed to Scorel. It is unlike his brush-work.
The Painting of a Vault, divided into nine sections, five of which
represent the Last Judgment, is a curiosity. The portrait of Emperor
Charles V. as Pharaoh is pointed out by the gallery attendant, who
then retires and diplomatically coughs in the middle distance.
The Mancini (pupil of Morelli and W.H. Mesdag) is entitled Poor Thing.
A little girl stands in a miserable room; mice run over the floor. The
colouring is rich. There are admirable Jakob Marises; but we wish to
follow in the track of the old fellows. Adrian van Ostade's Baker is
so popular that it is used for advertising purposes in Holland. The
baker leans out of his door, the lower half closed, and blows a horn.
Palamedes evidently repainted the same picture many times. An interior
with figures, seated and standing; same faces, poses, accessories.
Same valet pouring out wine; variants of this figure. A Merry Party is
the usual title. At The Hague in the Mauritshuis there is another such
subject; also in Antwerp and Brussels. But a jolly painter. Steen and
Teniers we may sidestep. Also the artificial though graceful
Tischbein. There is a Winterhalter here, a mannered fashionable
portrait painter (he painted the Empress Eugénie), and let us leave
the Titians to the experts. When you are in Holland look at the Dutch
pictures. A De Vos painted topers and fishermen with gusto, and there
is Vinckboons, who doted on scenes of violence. Fancy Vollon flowers
in the midst of these old Dutchmen. The Frenchman had an extraordinary
feeling for still-life, though more in the decorative Venetian manner
than in Chardin's serene palette, or the literalism of Kalf.
Whistler's Effie Deans, presented by the Dowager Baroness R. van
Lynden in 1900, is not one of that master's most successful efforts.
It is a whole-length figure painted in misty semi-tones, the feeling
sentimental, un-Whistlerian, and, as we before remarked, wraith-like
and lacking in substance when compared to Hals.
There is actually a Wouverman in which no white horse is to be
discovered. On Van der Werff and the romantic landscapist Wynants we
need not dwell. The miniatures, pastels, and framed drawings are of
goodly array. Of the former, Samuel Cooper (portrait of Charles II.),
John Hoskins, Peter Oliver, Isaac Oliver, Laurence Crosse, and others.
English, Dutch, and French may be found. The Liotard and Tischbein
pastels are charming. In the supplements of the catalogue we find
underscored a Descent from the Cross, an anonymous work of the Flemish
school (fifteenth century, second half). The dead Christ is being
lowered into the arms of his mother. It is evidently a copy from a
lost original in the style of Rogier van der Weyden. There are such
copies in Bruges and elsewhere. Another composition is labelled as an
anonymous work of undetermined school. The Christ hangs on the cross,
on His right are the Virgin Mary, the holy women and St. John; on His
left jeering soldiers and scribes. On either side of the composition
is the figure of a saint much larger in size than the other figures;
St. Cosmus on the left, St. Damian on the right. The background is a
hilly landscape. An authority ascribes the work to the Catalonian
school, date about 1440. There were giants in those days. Antonello da
Messina has the portrait of a young man. It is an attribution, yet not
without some claim to authenticity. The Jan Provosts are mostly of
close study, especially The Virgin Enthroned. A certain Pieter
Dubordieu, who was living in Amsterdam in 1676 (born in Touraine),
painted the portraits of a man and a woman, dated 1638. Vivid
portraits. We must pass over the striking head of Hanneman, the Lucas
Cranach (the elder), and the thousand other attractive pictures in
this gallery. The Rijks Museum could be lived with for years and still
remain an inexhaustible source of joy.
ART IN ANTWERP
After passing Dordrecht on the way down to Antwerp the canals and
windmills begin to disappear. The country is as flat as Holland, but
has lost its characteristic charm. It has become less symmetrical;
there is disorder in the sky-line, more trees, the architecture is
different. Dutch precision has vanished. The railway carriages are not
clean, punctuality is avoided, the people seem less prosperous, few
speak English, and as you near Antwerp the villas and roads tell you
that you are in the dominion of the King of Belgium. But Antwerp is so
distinctly Flemish that you forget that bustling modern Brussels is
only thirty-six minutes away by the express--a fast train for once in
this land of snail expresses. No doubt the best manner of approaching
Antwerp is by the Scheldt on one of the big steamers that dock so
comfortably along the river. However, a trip to the vast _promenoir_
that overlooks the river gives an excellent idea of this thriving
port. The city--very much modernised during the past ten years--may
easily be seen in a few days, setting aside the museums and churches.
The quay promenade brings you to the old Steen Castle, and the Town
Hall with its _salle des marriages_, its mural paintings by the
industrious Baron Leys--frigid in style and execution--will repay you
for the trouble. The vestibules and galleries are noteworthy. We
enjoyed the façades of the ancient guild houses on the market-place
and watching the light play upon the old-time scarred front of the
cathedral that stands in the Place Verte. Then there are the
Zoological Garden, the Plantin Museum, the Théâtre Flamand, the
various monuments, and the spectacle of the busy, lively city for
those who do not go to Antwerp for its art. You may even go to
Hoboken, a little town in the suburbs not at all like the well-known
Sunday resort in Jersey.
The Royal Museum is displayed in a large square. It is a handsome
structure and the arrangement of the various galleries is simple. The
Rubenses, thirty-odd in all, are the _pièce de résistance_, and the
Flemish and Dutch Primitives of rare beauty. Bruges is better for
Memling, Brussels for Van der Weyden, Ghent for the Van Eycks, yet
Antwerp can boast a goodly number of them all. She exceeds Brussels in
her Rubenses for the larger altar pieces are here, just as at
Amsterdam the Rembrandts, while not numerous, take precedence because
of The Syndics and The Night Watch. The tumultuous, overwhelming Peter
Paul is in his glory at Antwerp. You think of some cataclysm when
facing these turbulent, thrilling canvases. If Raphael woos, Rubens
stuns. In the company of Michel Angelo and Balzac or Richard Wagner he
would be their equal for torrential energy and vibrating humanity. Not
so profound as Buonarroti, not so versatile as Balzac, he is their
peer in sheer savagery of execution. Setting aside the miles of
pictures signed by him though painted by his pupils, he must have
covered multitudes of canvas. Like men of his sort of genius, he ends
by making your head buzz and your eyes burn; and then, the sameness of
his style, the repetition of his wives and children's portraits, the
apotheosis of the Rubens family! He portrayed Helena Fourment and
Isabella Brandt in all stages of disarray and gowns. He put them
together on the same canvas. He did not hesitate to show them to the
world in all their opulent nudity. Their white skins, large eyes with
wide gaze, their lovely children appear in religious and mythologic
pictures at every turn you make in this museum. You become too
familiar with them. You learn to know that one wife was slenderer than
the other; you also realise that other days had other ways. Titian
painted the portrait of a noble dame quite naked and placed her
husband, soberly attired, near by. No one criticised the taste of this
performance. Manet, who was no Titian, did the same trick and was
voted wicked. He actually dared to show us Nana dressing in the
presence of a gentleman who sat in the same room with his hat on.
The heavy-flanked Percheron horses are of the same order as the Rubens
women. The Flemings are mighty feeders, mighty breeders,
good-tempered, pleasure-loving folk. They don't work as hard as the
Dutch, and they indulge in more feasting and holidays. The North seems
austere and Protestant when compared with this Roman Catholic land.
Its sons of genius, such as Rubens and Van Dyck, painted pictures that
do not reveal the deeper faith of the Primitives. No Christ or Mary of
either Van Dyck or Rubens sounds the poignant note of the
Netherlandish unknown mystic masters.
But what a banquet of beauty Rubens spreads for the eye! With him
painting reached its apogee, and in him were the seeds of its
decadence. He shattered the Florentine line; he, a tremendous
space-composer when he so wished, wielded his brush at times like a
scene-painter on a debauch. The most shocking, the loveliest things
happen on his canvases. Set the beautiful Education of the Virgin, in
this gallery, beside such a work as Venus and Vulcan at Brussels, and
you will see the scale in which he sported. Or the Virgin and Parrot,
with a child Christ who might have posed as a youthful Adonis, and the
Venus Frigida--both in Antwerp. A pagan was Rubens, for all his
religion. We prefer the Christ Crucified between Two Thieves or the
Christ on the Cross, the single figure, to the more famous Descent at
the Cathedral. But what can be said that is new about Rubens or Van
Dyck? In the latter may be noted the beginnings of deliquescence. He
is a softened Rubens, a Rubens aristocratic. The portraits here are
prime, those of the Bishop of Antwerp, Jean Malderus, and of the young
girl with the two dogs. His various Christs are more piteous to behold
than those of his master, Rubens. The feminine note is present, and
without any of the realism which so shocks in the conceptions of the
Primitives. Nevertheless we turn to his portraits or to the little boy
standing at a table. There is the true key of Van Dyck. He met Rubens
as a portraitist and took no odds of him.
Lucas Cranach's Adam and Eve is a variation of the picture in the
Brussels gallery. A Gossaert portrait catches the eye, the head and
bust of a man; then you find yourself staring in wonderment at the
Peter Breughels and Jerome Bosches with their malodorous fantastic
versions of temptations of innumerable St. Anthonys. The air is thick
with monsters, fish-headed and splay of foot. St. Anthony must have
had the stomach of an ostrich and the nerves of a politician to endure
such sights and sounds and witches. Such females! But Peter and his
two sons are both painters of interest. There are better Teniers in
Brussels, though Le Chanteur is admirable. Ostade's Smoker is a
masterpiece. Only four Rembrandts, the portrait of a woman, according
to Vosmaer and W. Burger that of his wife Saskia; a fisherman's boy,
the Burgomaster, and the Old Jew. Dr. Bode thinks that the last two
are by Nikolas Maes. The portrait of Eleazer Swalmius--the so-called
Burgomaster Six--is finely painted as to head and beard. The Antwerp
Museum paid two hundred thousand francs for the work. We must not
forget mention of a David Teniers, a loan of Dr. Bredius, a
still-life, a white dead goose superb in tone.