in its grave, tender rendering of old age, preserves the fine sentiment of his best period. But such noble characterization of humanity is rare with him, for, impelled by need and very likely by the taste of his public, he became an imitator of Van Dyck’s elegance. With Maes this elegance became pinchbeck, his fine ladies and gentlemen being very cheap imitations of their models.
GABRIEL METSU
Born in Leyden in 1630, the son of a painter, Gabriel Metsu was one of the precocious talents of the Holland School, for in his sixteenth year he helped to form the Guild of St. Luke in his native city. For the purpose of studying his art, his brief career of thirty-seven years (he died in 1667) may be conveniently divided into two parts, preceding or following the year 1655, in which he moved to Amsterdam and came under the direct influence of Rembrandt. But it would appear from his own early pictures, that even during his life in Leyden he had by some means obtained a knowledge of this master’s work. Metsu’s actual teacher, according to Houbraken, had been Dou, though his own work shows no direct trace of the latter’s influence. On the other hand, that of Hals is apparent. Meanwhile he experimented for himself and produced several pictures which, like The Blacksmith, in the Rijks Museum, are founded on the motive of a workshop, lighted fitfully by a forge and scattered with tools. In fact, as Bode says, the work of his early period is distinguished by “restless composition, hurried movement, and careless treatment.”
Moving to Amsterdam, he became one of the group that circled round Rembrandt, and at first was directly influenced by Maes, and perhaps by Rembrandt himself; witness his Old Woman in Meditation of the Rijks Museum and his fine portrait of an old lady in the Berlin Gallery. Then almost at a jump he reaches an individual style of his own. It grows out of his attitude toward the subjects that—with occasional exceptions of marketing scenes, such as the two pictures respectively of a man and of a woman selling poultry, in the Dresden Gallery, and the Vegetable Market of the Louvre—he now favors. They are intimate presentations of the graciously prosperous life of the middle-class burghers, before extravagance and ostentation had eaten their way into Dutch society. That his art thus settled to a distinct purpose may be partly attributed to the fact that the artist himself settled down to domestic life, marrying Isabella Wolff, April 1, 1663. A picture in the Dresden Gallery, dated two years earlier, Lovers at Breakfast, shows himself and the lady sitting side by side, one of his arms about her shoulders and the other lifted as he holds a tall wine-glass. It is curiously interesting in its resemblance and difference to Rembrandt’s picture of himself and Saskia that hangs in an adjoining gallery of the same museum.
The style which Metsu formed for himself is in accordance with the character and treatment of the subjects to which he now devoted himself. He abandons the Rembrandtesque principle of chiaroscuro, for there is no mystery or depth of sentiment in his point of view. He is frankly and simply interested in the genial externals of his subject; yet something of the Maes influence still affects his outlook. He sees the comfort and happiness of the home life and reflects it in the composure and refined orderliness that now pervade his compositions. Devoting himself to the simplest and directest way of presenting the subject, he avoids all striving after effect and secures a quietly balanced ensemble, wherein every figure and object is rendered with sureness of drawing, regard for the beauty of local color, and the utmost perfection of truthful realization. The date at which Metsu thus found himself is placed about 1660, and the picture in the Metropolitan Museum, A Music Party, dated 1659, serves to mark the transition. Its composition is still inclined to be “restless”; but the treatment, far from being “careless,” is distinguished by a very sincere feeling for the objective beauty of the salient details, while at least one figure, that of the cavalier on the right, exhibits the concentrated repose of movement which became one of the most delightful elements of Metsu’s art. It is seen developed throughout the whole composition in Mr. J. P. Morgan’s Visit to the Nursery, where, notwithstanding the sprightliness of feeling that animates the figures, each of them has its own plastic individuality of self-contained movement. Every detail has a perfection of finish that is never finical or at the expense of the unity of the whole. The hands and heads have a special distinction of fluent modeling and of exquisite expression. These qualities, combined with richness of local color, characterize the pictures of the sixties, as may be seen in the examples in the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection, and the galleries of Dresden, Amsterdam, and The Hague. Toward the end of this ten years of highest production Metsu’s pictures grow stiffer in composition, colder in color, and harder in their surfaces. The beginning of this change is noticeable in the portrait group of The Family Geelvink, in the Berlin Gallery, and characterizes also some of his latest genre subjects. Probably the cause was failing health, for toward the end of his life he suffered from the effects of a bungled operation.
PIETER DE HOOCH
Pieter de Hooch, the son of a butcher, was born in Rotterdam in 1630, being therefore the same age as Metsu and two years older than Maes and Vermeer. With these last two he has been ranked by some critics, who consider that the trio represents the high-water mark of Holland genre. With Maes’s claim to this distinction one has ventured to disagree, and may also dispute De Hooch’s for somewhat the same reason. The latter’s best period was confined to ten years, 1655-1665, and outside of that, especially toward the end of his life, he did some quite indifferent work.
Houbraken makes the statement that his teacher was Nicolaes Berchem. It is accepted as a fact, the presumption being that Berchem at the time was living in Amsterdam, in which case De Hooch would have become acquainted with Rembrandt’s style. That it did not affect him, immediately at any rate, is evident from his early work, which represents lively scenes of soldiers and young girls, painted rather in the manner of Dirck Hals or Duyster. It is possible, however, that even thus early the Rembrandt influence may have been operating upon him, as upon so many of the painters in Amsterdam at that time, by drawing his attention to problems of light, which eventually became the characteristic of his art.
From 1653, for two years, he served as “painter and footman” to Justus de la Grange, a rich merchant adventurer, with whom he lived both in Haarlem and The Hague. Then he married a girl from Delft and moved to that city, his name appearing among the members of its guild from 1655 to 1657. It was now that he came in touch with Vermeer, whose example helped to bring out all that was best in him. His pictures now became veritable poems of light, wrought with extraordinary conscientiousness and to a high pitch of refinement. He paints the courtyards of city houses, aglow in bright sunshine, cool rooms opening into warmly lighted ones, the vista often terminating in a street or canal. Always the varieties of light are rendered with delightful naturalness and in a way that gives a special charm to every detail which the light illumines. He is not very skilful in the representation of figures, but a master in the art of placing them. They and every object in the scene not only occupy their respective planes with absolute justness, but the position assigned to them has been selected with an unerring eye for decorative effect. Moreover, no artist has been so successful in rendering what visitors to Holland rarely fail to observe—the propriety and cleanliness of the Dutch home, and the sentiment that seems to attach to every object in it and around it. Among the loveliest of these interiors is No. 426 in the Munich Pinakothek; The Mother, in the Berlin Gallery; The Interior of the National Gallery; The Pantry and The Interior, in the Rijks Museum, and an Interior in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; while two notable outdoor scenes are the National Gallery’s A Dutch Courtyard and the Family Group of the Berlin Gallery. All these and others that might be cited belong to the period between 1655 and 1665. But the enthusiasm which these arouse is sadly dashed by many examples of his later manner, which are disconnected or restless in composition, hot in color rather than luminous, and heavy in the shadows, while others are marred by excessive hardness of surface and triteness of overwrought detail. The latest date that appears on any of his paintings is 1677, wherefore it is surmised that De Hooch’s death occurred about this time.