The Story of Dutch Painting

by Charles H. Caffin

The influence exerted by Hals in these four directions—namely, in the treatment of still-life, in composition, in regard for values, and in the habit of skilful brushwork—was supplemented by that of Rembrandt, which dates from 1632, the year in which he moved to Amsterdam. The latter also affected the development of genre, but not in the line of direct suggestion. Rembrandt’s technique in its most characteristic aspects was and still remains too personal an expression of his own attitude of mind and of its changes of mood, varying according to the nature of each subject interpreted, to permit of imitation. Rembrandt contributed ideas. He enlarged the scope of genre by the suggestion, on the one hand, of a further range of subject, and, on the other, of a new motive in technique. It was especially the example of his religious pictures that affected the idea of subject, either directly leading other artists to a similar treatment of religious themes or indirectly encouraging them to include some kind of sentiment in the domestic scenes they depicted. Meanwhile, by the example of his own use of chiaroscuro, he encouraged a more subtle study of values, at once more intimate and varied and more expressive.

An admirable epitome of the character of Rembrandt’s influence upon his contemporaries is in the old Pinakothek in Munich. In the first place there is a Holy Family, painted in 1631, the year before he moved from Leyden. It is about six feet high, the figures being life-size; but the conception and treatment of the subject are thoroughly in the way of genre. The picture presents a glimpse of the interior of a Dutch home: the tools hanging on the walls, the face, figure, and costume of the mother, the Child swathed in a shawl, and the familiar accompaniment of the cradle—all are distinctively Dutch in character. The mother, with a pretty gesture of tenderness, is fondling one of the Baby’s feet, looking down at it with a gentle smile, while the father bends forward over the cradle in an attitude of reverent solicitude. The whole scene breathes the quiet happiness of domestic life. In its character the picture is essentially a genre subject. At the time it was painted Dou was working in Rembrandt’s studio, and to its influence it is not unreasonable to trace at least some of the tendency that Dou exhibited in later years to introduce just such tender and reverential sentiment into his own work, as witness The Young Mother at the Hague Gallery and The Old Woman Saying Grace in the Pinakothek in Munich. In fact, The Holy Family is already characteristic of the sentiment that became infused into genre by the example of Rembrandt.

Intimately connected with this is the example of Rembrandt’s technical use of chiaroscuro, used either for the purpose of interpreting sentiment or of simply adding to the interest of the color-scheme. The foretaste of this is given in a series of six pictures of Biblical subjects in the Pinakothek, painted for the Stadtholder, Frederick Henry: two of them, The Descent from the Cross and The Elevation of the Cross, in 1633; The Ascension, 1636; The Burial and The Resurrection, 1639; and The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1646. About three feet high, they approximate to the familiar size of genre, and are distinctly genre in conception and treatment. Moreover, they are arched over at the top, a device that became popular with Dou and other genre painters, who frequently substituted for the formal arch a draped curtain, the result being to set the main part of the scene back, and thus increase the effect of looking into it. This, however, is not merely to suggest more vividly the third dimension. For Rembrandt in these pictures has set the example of concentrating the high light on a few features of the composition, surrounding these with lighted objects of lower value, and finally inclosing all in a ring of shadow, so that one seems to be looking into a circular concavity out of the gloom of which certain objects emerge into view with greater or less distinctness. The device is used by Rembrandt to heighten the dramatic and emotional significance of the composition, and was so applied by some of his followers, notably by Maes, while by others the principle was adopted as a means of giving force, variety, and added charm of mystery to their color-schemes. It became, in fact, one of the most characteristic of the technical methods of Holland genre.

Apropos of this series it is interesting to note, as a side-light on Rembrandt’s use of models, that one, The Elevation of the Cross, contains a striking figure of an Oriental. It was transferred in reduced size from a picture of the same subject painted in the preceding year, 1632, which is now owned by the New York collector Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt. Moreover, the head and bust of this man appear as the subject of another picture, painted in the same year as The Elevation, which now hangs in the Munich Pinakothek.

To recapitulate, then, in this series of the Old Pinakothek we have a striking example of Rembrandt’s motive in the treatment of Biblical subjects, developed during the period from 1633 to 1646 of his greatest popularity in Amsterdam. It involved, as we have seen, the translation of the heroic and grandiloquent style of religious subjects, as practised by the Italians, into the homelier poignancy and intimate personal suggestiveness of meaning that commended themselves to the simple directness and home-love of the Hollanders. It practically converted the religious picture into one of genre; and its example led to a similar treatment of these subjects by other painters, notably Carel Fabritius, Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, and Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout, while to the painters of domestic genre pure and simple it also supplied the motive of sentiment and a new motive of technique.

It is true that sentiment plays a comparatively small part in Holland genre. Dou has been mentioned as following the example of Rembrandt in this respect, and the other prominent instance is Nicolaes Maes, who entered the master’s studio in 1648, that is to say, two years after the completion of The Adoration of the Shepherds, the latest of the Munich series. How far Rembrandt had influenced the bias of Maes’s temperament toward sentiment is conjectural, but that he supplied the younger man with a technical principle for its expression is certain. Maes discovered the possibilities of emotional suggestion that existed in the device of heightening the luster of certain parts of the composition by the contrast of veiled and shadowed color elsewhere. With him it does not reach the dramatic force or depth of emotional appeal that the master’s use of it involves, but nevertheless becomes the expression of a sentiment that, as Bode remarks, is nearer to the sentiment of Rembrandt than that of any other artist of the school.

On the other hand, by those genre artists of the period who were not given to sentiment, the principle of Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro was adopted for the sake of æsthetic considerations, founded upon the facts of sight. It may or may not be true that Rembrandt himself derived it from his observation of the light in the dim recesses of his father’s mill, but at any rate the artists of genre interiors soon saw its application to their subjects, and were led by it to study with more discrimination the infinite variety of light value. The result was twofold. Their color-schemes grow more subtle and refined, and the tonality becomes impregnated with the suggestion of atmosphere. Thus the example of Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro wedded to that of Hals’s facile craftsmanship developed the inimitable perfection of technique which characterizes the best works of Holland genre.

It is the latter, one may observe in conclusion, that has most affected the modern revival of painting in Holland. While foreign painters, in portraiture especially, have been disposed to follow the direct example of Frans Hals, the Hollanders themselves, both in landscape and genre, have been influenced by the so-called “little masters,” and, in the case of Josef Israels, by Rembrandt himself. And the result of this influence has been to make modern Dutch painters, as a group, the best brushmen of their age.

CHAPTER VII
DUTCH GENRE

THE tendency toward genre painting began before the separation of the Holland Free State from the Spanish Netherlands. Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who died in Brussels in 1570, is regarded as the leader of the group of painters who depicted the life of the people, particularly in open-air surroundings. His work, for example, and that of one of his pupils, Lucas van Valckenborch, make a very lively showing in one of the galleries of the Art-History Museum in Vienna. Here, in a number of canvases of considerable size, crowded with figures, are pictured scenes of peasants, merrymaking, harvesting, engaged in a vintage festival, or skating and sleighing, while there is even a representation of rich folk enjoying a picnic in a park. These painters and their contemporaries in similar subjects are to be reckoned in the Flemish School. But there is one, Pieter Aertz, surnamed “Long Pieter,” who, although he died in 1575, before any separation from Flanders was dreamed of, may be considered as a forerunner of distinctly Dutch genre, since he was born in Amsterdam and lived there for the greater part of his life. An interesting example of his work, The Egg Dance, is in the Rijks Museum. The scene is a kitchen, opening into a garden, and the floor is scattered with various articles—a bowl, a shoe, onions and eggs—among which a young man is jauntily dancing, while a group beside the hearth applauds. As far as the character and spirit of the scene go, the picture is thoroughly representative of the older kind of genre, which portrays the type rather than the individual, and numerous little episodes massed into a group, rather than a single incident or phase of life wrought out completely. For this becomes the tendency of the later and distinctively Holland genre, which, as the technical motives of the artists grew in refinement and possibly as the taste of the public became more refined, resulted in the subjects being drawn more and more from the home life of the well-to-do and fashionable. By this time the genre pictures have ceased to represent an amusing picture-book of manners and customs; they have in a sense lost their interest of subject, the matter of which they treat counting for very little in comparison with the charming manner of the treatment.