The Story of Dutch Painting

by Charles H. Caffin

IMPERIAL ACADEMY, VIENNA

possessed a practical monopoly of the most lucrative trade of those times, namely, that of spices.

Meanwhile, as a reverse to this story of national progress, were the religious and political dissensions that crept into the commonwealth. Protestantism, after presenting a solid front to Romanism, now found itself cleft by the sect-rivalries of Arminians and Gomarists; and these in time gave color and opportunity to the ambition of Maurice. No disinterested patriot like his father, William the Silent, the second Stadtholder intrigued for his personal aggrandizement, and stained his memory by the judicial murder of the old patriot-statesman Barneveldt. On the other hand, of better memory was his service to art. In 1611 he commissioned Ravesteyn to paint a series of portraits of officers. These and other pictures that he gathered adorned his palace, and, added to by his successor, the Stadtholder Frederick Henry, became the nucleus of the collection that, accumulating through various vicissitudes, now occupies the Mauritshuis, as the Royal Museum of The Hague.

The lack of cohesion, of which these dissensions were a symptom, and that had always been close to the surface of unity owing to the excessive individualism of the cities, was reflected in the new art. Small as was the total area of the country, it supplied a number of artistic centers, each with its group of artists, who had sufficient in common to constitute a school. Under the influence of tradition, or more often of some conspicuous member of the group, they presented similarities of motive that distinguished their choice of subjects and even their method of painting. Thus we may note a school of Haarlem, of Leyden, of Amsterdam, The Hague, Delft, Dordrecht, and Utrecht. There was a certain rivalry between the schools of these various cities, but, on the other hand, a centripetal force that tended also to draw them together. Communication was easy in so small a country, and, moreover, the growing importance of Amsterdam as the commercial capital made it gradually a center also of art. The result was a happy combination of homogeneousness and individualism. The paintings of the period possess a common excellence, of a kind so distinctive that you may recognize at once a picture as belonging to the School of Holland, and yet they reveal so many individual traits that the homogeneousness is not characterized by monotony.

Accordingly, if we do not make the mistake of trying to surround the school of each city with an arbitrary wall, separating it conclusively from other cities, we may get many suggestions that help to classify our comprehension of the Holland School as a whole. I propose, therefore, to distribute the artists, whose names we have already reviewed, according to their individual schools; to the cities in which they worked, and, in most cases, were born and educated.

Under the head of Utrecht, then, we find the names of Heem, Hondecoeter, and Weenix, all three of them still-life painters. But, while this points to the fact that the distinguishing characteristic of the Utrecht School was the painting of flowers, dead game, and birds, it is not to be assumed that still-life is unrepresented in the other schools. The catalogues contain the names of no less than a hundred painters in this department, distributed throughout the various cities, and, as time goes on, congregating especially in Amsterdam. To the latter Weenix and Hondecoeter migrated; and it is interesting to note how the change of locale affected their art. Corresponding to the wealth of the capital, their pictures became much larger, designed as superb decorations for the walls of sumptuous houses.

The School of Haarlem includes the following: the portrait-painters Bray, Hals, and Terborch, the last also a genre painter, like Ostade of this city; and the landscapists Salomon and Jacob Ruisdael, Wynants, Everdingen, Wouwerman, Esaias van de Velde, and Berchem. The array of names, in the first place, suggests the importance of Haarlem at this period, as a center of commerce, society, and art. We may remember that it was particularly given to “corporation” pictures, as its museum to this day proclaims in the works of Bray and Hals, while Terborch, commencing under the influence of this place, later on painted the equivalent of a corporation picture in his Peace of Münster, now in the National Gallery. Another clue to be derived from this grouping of names is that Hals, the acknowledged leader, exerted a direct influence on Terborch and Ostade; and through the latter upon Steen, who came over from Leyden to be Ostade’s student.

Further, we recognize that this school was as fertile in landscape as in portraiture. With the exception of Van Goyen of Leyden, the founders and chief exponents of the art were associated with Haarlem; even Hobbema of Amsterdam, through his having been a pupil of Jacob Ruisdael. The latter’s career, also, is made clearer by this classification. Haarlem was his birthplace and the scene of his personally inspired work. When, discouraged by lack of recognition, he moved to Amsterdam, it was the example of his fellow-townsmen that made him change his own style. For Everdingen, who had visited Sweden, was painting romantic scenes of waterfalls and rocks, and Ruisdael, observing how they found favor with the Amsterdammers, abandoned his study of the Holland landscape to invent similar subjects. Finally, we may connect Wouwerman with two of his townsmen. From Wynants he learned the landscape, and by Hals was influenced in his incomparable treatment of the accompanying groups of figures.

The School of Leyden boasts the great name of Rembrandt, who, however, moved finally to Amsterdam in 1631, when nearing his twenty-fifth year. After him the names that appear in the School of Leyden are: Dou, Steen, Metsu, Mieris, and Van Goyen; all of them, the last named only excepted, genre painters. Dou studied with Rembrandt, who was seven years his senior, during the last three years of the latter’s stay in Leyden. He himself became the teacher of Gabriel Metsu, who, however, was also influenced by Frans Hals, and also, after his move to Amsterdam, where he died, by Rembrandt. Dou was also the instructor of Frans van Mieris. Steen, on the other hand, the greatest of the Leyden group, escaped the influence of Dou, becoming, as we have seen, a pupil of Van Ostade at Haarlem, and later of Van Goyen, after the latter had moved to The Hague. Van Goyen, though born in Leyden, is associated also with the Haarlem School, for after he had had several masters, including Van Swanenburch, in Leyden, he served apprenticeship to the Haarlem painter Esaias van de Velde. Moreover, by the time that he had mastered his art, he settled in The Hague. Thus the characteristic of the School of Leyden remains its genre.