XIII.
In the Drawing-room hang many admirable and interesting works, to a few of which we may direct attention. Chief among them is the noble three-quarter-length of Anthony Triest, Bishop of Ghent, by Rubens, a portrait most characteristic in pose, vigorously lifelike in expression, and accomplished in colour. Another portrait of this prelate, a seated half-length turned to the right, was painted by Van Dyck, Rubens’ great pupil, and etched by his own hand in a plate which was afterwards completed with the graver by Peter de Jode. In the same room is Van Dyck’s rendering of “A Lady of the Coningsby Family,” a graceful full-length, draped in rose-colour, the gloved right hand resting on a flower-pot which is relieved against a wooded background, and the right foot raised as the figure stands on a flight of stone garden-steps. A bust-sized male portrait of an unknown subject also bears the name of Rubens, and, by whatever hand, it is certainly an admirable example of Flemish art. The costume is black with a piped ruff; the face worn, the brow furrowed, the hair yellowish, slightly silvered with age, the thick beard and moustache of a ruddy colour, and the flesh-tones most attractive in the quietude and cool grey quality of their shadows. By Zeeman, an esteemed Dutch painter of naval subjects, known, too, as an etcher of much directness and simplicity of method, is a large sea-piece, with shipping and a great expanse of sky in which the clouds are beginning to grow mellow towards the sunset; and by Melchior Hondecoeter we have a vigorous picture of “Fighting Cocks,” firmly painted, and effective in the contrast of the white plumage of the nearer bird to the glowing brown and ruddy tones of the rest of the picture.
The Library, a particularly sunny and spacious room on the upper floor, contains in addition to its books—which, as we have already said, include those bequeathed to the Baron by Boerhaave, his early friend,—a fine and extensive collection of prints, duly catalogued and arranged in volumes according to their various schools. Among the rest are some rare Dürer items, and a set of John Clerk’s etchings in their progressive states, along with many original sketches by his hand.
Over the fireplace is inlet in the wainscoting an attractive subject representative of “Music,” executed in grisaille on canvas, in clever simulation of a marble bas-relief. It is signed by its painter, Jacob de Wit, a native of Amsterdam, born 1695, died 1754, who “attained a marvellous excellence in the imitation of sculpture of all kinds of materials, bronze, wood, plaster, and particularly white marble, in which he produced such complete illusion that even the practised eye is deceived.” His most notable work of this kind was the decoration, in 1736, of a hall in the Hôtel de Ville of Amsterdam; and it is further stated by Kugler that “a favourite subject with the master was the representation of pretty children in the taste of Fiammingo.” The present picture, in the satisfying arrangement of its composition and in the grace of its flowing lines, possesses a more legitimate artistic value than could come from any merely imitative dexterity in rendering the effect of sculpture by means of painting. The musicians are a party of naked, chubby children. The figure of their leader is an especially charming one, standing holding up a music-book in one hand, beating time with a roll of papers held as a baton in the other, and singing with open mouth; his raised face, with the soft hair clustering about the rounded cheeks, wearing an entranced expression which embodies the very spirit of melody. Beside him one of his infant musicians touches the wires of a lyre, another bends over a great mandoline, of which a third is tightening the strings, and a fourth breathes softly on the flute.
At the entrance to the Library door are placed two large glass cases, one filled with natural history specimens, the other containing the valuable collection of Roman remains, in metal, pottery, coins, etc., accumulated by Baron Clerk, which it would require the skill of an archæologist rightly to estimate. Among them is a curious and most interesting ivory carving, inscribed, on a parchment label, in the Baron’s handwriting, “An Antient piece of Sculpture on the Tooth of a Whale,—it was found by John Adair, Geographer, in the North of Scotland, Anno 1682, all the figures are remarkable.” In this year Adair, the Geographer for Scotland, was appointed by the Privy Council of Scotland to make a survey of the kingdom and maps of the shires, of which only a portion was published. The carving represents a crowned queen, seated holding a lapdog on her knees; with a knight, wearing a surcoat over chain-armour, and bearing a sword and a shield blazoned with a chevron chequé, standing on her left; and on her right a musician playing on a crowde, an old instrument resembling a violin; while between these, round the rest of the ivory, is a row of female figures, wearing long flowing robes, standing with clasped hands, that beside the musician holding a palm-branch. The carving is described and figured in Dr. Daniel Wilson’s “Prehistoric Annals of Scotland.” Dr. Wilson considers it to be a queen piece of a chess set, and assigns it to the fourteenth century.