Among five portraits by Bol in the Munich Pinakothek No. 338 may be specified as particularly handsome. It is that of a man with dark-brown hair and a mustache and imperial of lighter hue, possibly Govert Flinck. He wears a black cap and cloak and leans his arm upon a table. The following number in the catalogue is allotted to a portrait of this man’s wife. She is shown as far as the waist, where her hands are folded, the body full front, the head a little to the left. The face is beautifully modeled in clear flesh-tones, surrounded by golden-brown hair in ringlets. Beneath her white stomacher is a dull-red gown with olive sleeves. Thus the color-scheme is Rembrandtesque, with an envelop of warm amber atmosphere, while the serious sympathy with which the characterization has been rendered would not be unworthy of Bol’s great master.
Unfortunately, Bol by no means maintained this high standard, as may be seen among the numerous examples of his portraits in the Rijks Museum. They mostly belong to his later period. The best is the earliest one, painted in 1657, representing the Six Governors of the Huiszittenhuis, seated round a table in black clothes and steeple hats. The heads are well characterized and the flesh-tones luminous; but an air of attitudinizing pervades the assemblage, which has rather the prim, set manner of a photographic group. And much the same feeling is aroused by the Four Governors of the Leper House, which is considered in Holland his masterpiece. In fact, it is not in the formal arrangement of a corporation picture, but in a single figure, that Bol is seen to best advantage. Yet some of the examples of these in the Rijks Museum, such as the Roelof Meulenaar and Maria Rey, are commonplace parodies of Rembrandt’s manner, while that of the sculptor Artus Quellinus is a parody of Van Dyck’s elegance. Bol, in fact, was an able assimilator of his master, Rembrandt, and as long as he retained the enthusiasm of his youth, painted creditable and often excellent portraits. Later, however, he drifted into the swim of social decadence, and his work is characterized by affectation, vapidity, and perfunctoriness.
CAREL FABRITIUS
Fabritius (about 1620-1654), after studying with Rembrandt, resided in Delft, where he became, it will be recalled, the teacher of Jan Vermeer. His life was prematurely cut short by the explosion of a powder-magazine, while he was in the act of painting the portrait of Simon Decker, sacristan of the old church at Delft. In consequence, the number of his pictures is small, and some of those which appear under his name in the catalogues are of disputed attribution. He must have had a precocious talent, for the Portrait of Abraham de Notte, in the Rijks Museum, is dated 1640, when the artist was scarcely twenty. It is a bust portrait in which the black-haired head, set against a light background, is well enveloped in atmosphere, while the features are fluently modeled in warm, luminous tones. It proves him to have been an exceptionally apt pupil of the master, and helps to justify the attribution to him of the other picture in the Rijks Museum, The Decapitation of St. John the Baptist, a powerful and attractive work. A golden luminosity, rich in quality, pervades the whole canvas. The characterization of the figures is striking. The executioner, a sturdy, brutal figure, with a rubicund, swollen face, showing above his white shirt, holds the head upon a salver, with the absolute unconcern of a butcher serving meat. A corresponding lack of emotion is apparent in the two female figures, daintily dressed and of girlish refinement, Salome’s eyes gazing into vacancy with a wistful expression, while Herodias, looking but little older, gazes at the head with a slight air of curiosity. The conception of these women is early Italian rather than what one would associate with Dutch of the seventeenth century, and recalls the expression of Mantegna’s Judith with the Head of Holofernes. They suggest a sexless abstraction, moved by no active impulse, yet hauntingly fascinating in its young passionlessness. In the Berlin Gallery a Study of a Man Praying is attributed to Fabritius, while in the Munich Pinakothek are two portraits of young men associated with his name. The bust portrait, No. 344, is definitely assigned to him, while the half-length, No. 345, once attributed to him, is now assigned to Rembrandt. It represents a young man with long hair parted in the center, who, holding a sheaf of paper and a pen, seems to have paused in his writing and is looking up and out of the picture with an expression of rapt meditation. In its different way it is akin to the expression of the Salome in the other picture. That so gravely fine a picture should have passed for a Fabritius suggests the character of the estimation which hangs about the memory of this artist, who did not live to fulfil the promise of his youth. Moreover, what is known and what is conjectured about him suggests the value of his influence upon Jan Vermeer, whose own tendency to give his figures a concentrated absorption may possibly be traced to this source.
GERBRANDT VAN DEN EECKHOUT
Eeckhout (1621-1674), the son of an Amsterdam goldsmith, was the first pupil to enter Rembrandt’s studio and one of his closest imitators. For example, in The Woman Taken in Adultery of the Rijks Museum, the face of the lonely figure of Christ is the center of light amid the coruscation of rich coloring formed by the costumes of the scribes and Pharisees, while a quieter note of dignity appears in the fine green and plum draperies of the kneeling woman. The color is sonorous, yet its echo does not penetrate to the depths of the surroundings, the shadows of which are inclined to be opaque and unexplorable. Better in this respect, that its shadows are more luminous, is the Christ with the Doctors of the Munich Pinakothek. Here the strongest light centers on the head of an old rabbi, so as to bring out the color of his turban and beard while leaving his face in shadow; a device which makes the little face of the Child Christ, though it is clearly illuminated, seem by comparison pathetically insignificant. Meanwhile the light touches here and there the other figures in the group and penetrates their environment of shadow. It is worth while to compare this picture with the series of Biblical subjects by Rembrandt in the same museum, particularly the Adoration of the Shepherds. In the Berlin Gallery Eeckhout is represented by Raising of Jairus’s Daughter and a Presentation of Christ in the Temple. These pictures, particularly the latter, are wonderfully reminiscent of Rembrandt, finely composed in masses of light and shade and sumptuous in color. In a third example, Mercury and Argus, Eeckhout has treated this mythological subject with some charm. The young nude figure of Mercury, with a blue drapery over his knees, as he sits playing his pipe, is a charming white spot against the warm ruddiness of the rocky landscape, where beside a white and red cow the brown nude form of Argus is stretched, as if in sleep. Farther back in shadow are the sheep and goats. The feeling of the picture is pleasant; but its suggestion is inclined to be rather superficial.
Of this artist’s portraits there is an example in the Brunswick Gallery and one excellent specimen in the National Gallery. This is The Wine Contract, in which the four governors of the Wine Guild of Amsterdam, dressed in black, are seated at a table, examining a contract.
AERT DE GELDER
De Gelder was a pupil of Rembrandt’s old age. He himself was not born until 1645, and, it is supposed, was little over fifteen when, after studying with Hoogstraten in their native city, Dordrecht, he went to Amsterdam. Then he returned to Dordrecht and resided there until his death in 1727. He is thus one of the latest of the artists of the period we are considering. An early work, dated 1671, directly inspired by Rembrandt, is in the Dresden Gallery. The Presentation of Christ in the Temple is a reproduction in color of Rembrandt’s well-known etching of this subject, worked out in red and brown and olive green, enveloped in a dull, warm glow, which, however, has more of mannerism than of suggestion to the imagination. The accompanying example in this gallery, An Important Document, shows a man and woman seated at a table, covered with a red cloth, examining a paper. The coloring is warm, the hands and faces, however, inclining to an unpleasant brickiness of red, while the whole aspect of the scene is lifelike but uninspired. The Dresden Gallery also owns the Portrait of a Halberdier, a well-painted and fairly interesting study of a stout man, with rosy, glowing face beneath a fur-brimmed hat, whose uniform is of various tones of olive green.
De Gelder is also represented by three portraits in the Rijks Museum and by a Biblical subject, Judah and Thamar, in the Hague Gallery, but the best example of the latter kind is in the Museum of Art at Budapest. This Esther and Mordecai, dated 1685, shows the queen, seated at a table before an open book, resplendent in a brocaded and jeweled cloak and a tagged and tufted dress, listening while Mordecai, bending forward with humble admiration, addresses her. The coloring is rich and mellow, and the delineation of character, especially in the case of Mordecai, has considerable suggestion of the spirit of the story.