LANDSCAPE PAINTERS
The naturalistic treatment of the landscape background in the religious pictures of Jan van Eyck and his successors, Memlinc, Bouts, Hugo van der Goes, and other painters in the Netherlands, in time brought about the promotion of landscape painting to an independent art. Among the earlier Dutch artists who approached the study of Nature were Arent Arentzen (1586?–1635?), as we see from his Landscape with a Fisherman (No. 2300a), and Roeland Roghman, who was born a year later than Jan van Goyen, and lived as late as 1685. He painted the Landscape (No. 2555b), which was formerly in the Paul Mantz collection. Indeed, several Dutchmen of the period sought to commit to panel views of nature, as in the case of Pieter de Bloot (1600–1652), who gives us a Landscape with a River (No. 2327b).
The romantic feeling which so often pervades the background of Rembrandt’s paintings, and is so apparent in such etchings as the Three Trees, can only be touched on here. This new tendency is best exemplified in the works of Jan van Goyen (1596–1656), who may be regarded as the founder of a self-centred school of landscape painting in Holland; but it was his ever handy sketch-book that enabled him to outstrip his rivals in this branch of Dutch art. He is seen to great advantage in his very fine Banks of a Dutch River (No. 2375), his superb River View with eight Men in a Boat (No. 2378), a signed and dated work of 1649, a large light-brown-toned River in Holland (No. 2377), a good Banks of a Canal (No. 2379), as well as a Dutch Canal (No. 2376) and a Dutch River (No. 2377).
PLATE XXXVI.—JAN VER MEER VAN DELFT
(1632–1675)
DUTCH SCHOOL
No. 2456.—THE LACE MAKER
(La Dentellière)
A girl, wearing a yellow bodice and a blue skirt, is seated behind a table. She is bending her head over a light-blue lace pillow as she adjusts the bobbins with both hands. A dark-blue cushion and a book are on the table to the left.
Signed in the upper right-hand corner:—“J. v. Meer,” the first three letters being intertwined.
Painted in oil on canvas.
9½ in. (0·24) square.
Aert van der Neer (1603–1677) painted with strong contrasts of light, as in his Banks of a Dutch Canal (No. 2483); and his monogram is to be found on the seat at the foot of a tree in his Dutch Village (No. 2484), where his propensity for painting moonlight scenes is well illustrated. Herman Saftleven’s (1609–1685) Banks of the Rhine (No. 2563); Jan Asselyn’s View of the Lamentano Bridge on the Teverone (No. 2301), Landscape (No. 2302), and Ruins in the Roman Campagna (No. 2303); and the two Landscapes (Nos. 2332 and 2333) by Jan Both (1610–1652), who worked in Rome and painted Italian landscapes under the influence of the French artist Claude Lorrain, show the gradual introduction of foreign influences. Joris van der Hagen (died 1669) takes a new line in the representation of a very low horizon in his Environs de Haarlem (No. 2382); but his Landscape with Peasants crossing a Ford (No. 2381) is dull in tone and composed of unrelated parts.
The Banks of a River (No. 2561d) is a superb example of the art of Salomon van Ruysdael (1600?–1670), one of the founders of the Haarlem school of landscape, and the uncle of Jacob van Ruisdael. The Large Tower (No. 2561c) gives a better idea of his power than the Ford (No. 2561b). Another painter in the same school, Cornelis Decker (1618?–1678), has a Landscape (No. 2346). although Isack van Ostade at times gave himself up to trivial subjects, as we have already seen, the merit of his frozen river scenes (Nos. 2510, 2511, 2515) is firmly established, and the happy way in which he combined a genuine appreciation of nature with great skill in the placing and treatment of his figures has earned for him a high place among the Dutch landscape painters.