In the chapter on Hals I alluded to Van der Helst as his inferior in composition and characterization. And the judgment stands, especially when you find yourself at Haarlem in the presence of the superb facility and quality of Hals’s genius. None the less, when you face the prodigious output of Van der Helst’s talent in the Rijks Museum, you realize that, while he was less efficient as a painter, less gifted with the ease, as it were, of improvisation, in his compositions, he had yet an exuberance of invention and a gusto for characteristic generalization, so amazing that from a distance one may be disposed to question if Hals, after all, was so much greater. At his best he undoubtedly was, having the artist’s fine gift of heightening the significance of what he handled, and even in his less memorable work exhibiting more or less of that magical manipulation which is itself an inspiration. Beside him Van der Helst is less the artist than a mighty craftsman, and, when one grows enthusiastic over him, it is not because he has heightened the appeal of his material, but because he realizes so wonderfully the prodigal physical exuberance of his day. This reaches its culmination in his masterpiece, The Banquet of the Civic Guard (No. 1135). Grouped around the standard-bearer, who is in black velvet with a sash of the same blue silk as the flag, are some two dozen figures, arranged in natural positions, with easy gestures and heads and hands individually characterized. In these particulars and the treatment of the fabrics there is more than mere craftsmanship. The latter has been regulated by a superior order of intellect.
It is here that one seems to discover the essential difference between Van der Helst and Hals. The former is intellectually the bigger man, while Hals’s distinction is a superiority of feeling. His work, therefore, has the sensuous charm in which the other’s is deficient. When in the light of this you reëxamine Van der Helst’s masterpiece, it is to discover that what is lacking in it is the esthetic quality. The composition is not pervaded with atmosphere, in the various planes of which the figures might take on differences of subtle value; and, while there is an arrangement of light and shade, it is used only to assist the modeling of the figures, and with no feeling for heightening the beauty of the color-scheme by the luminosity of the hues. The result is that the scene, for all its assertion of vital force, is lacking in vivacity. The same test, applied to the other corporation pictures and single portraits by this artist in the Rijks Museum, corroborates the conviction that, apart from Rembrandt, Van der Helst was the biggest intellectual force among the portrait-painters of Holland, but that he lacked the esthetic feeling and accordingly the quality of technique which alone make him inferior to Hals.
THOMAS DE KEYSER
Son of an architect and sculptor, Thomas de Keyser was born in Amsterdam, 1596 or 1597, and died there in 1667. His career is divided by a date about 1628. Before this his portraits are similar in character to those of Nicolaes Elias, with which they have been confused. The figures have a hardness and some stiffness, but unmistakable carrying power; the flesh is leathery, dull in color, and expressionless, and the composition either formally arranged in rows, or artlessly strung out in separate items. Thus his earlier portraits present a curious mingling of power and naïveté. They are representative of real people, but are not yet conceived with an artist’s eye. Then by 1628 a change begins to appear in De Keyser’s work, as it also did a few years later in that of Elias. Atmosphere creeps into his pictures; the flesh becomes more luminous, the composition at once more varied and more unified, and the figures, without losing their character, acquire amenity and dignity. It is said that De Keyser’s work influenced the young Rembrandt when he first settled in Amsterdam, and it would seem as if also the older man gradually gained something from the younger.
In the Rijks Museum an example of De Keyser’s early style is The Company of Captain Cloeck (No. 1300). It is true it is dated 1632; but it still exhibits the hard-fleshed, vacantly staring faces, the figures in unimaginative poses and in no atmospheric envelop, and spiritless treatment of the fabrics. But compare The Family Meebeeck Cruywaghen (No. 1349). Here the group is held together by a pleasing background of trees and house, bathed in a yellow glow. It is the homestead, and the comfort of it is reflected in the charming spontaneousness of feeling in the figures—father, mother, and grandmother, and six happy children. Each is delightfully individualized, and the expression of the whole picture is one of dignity and sweetness. Or for dignity, again, of a very refined order, take the equestrian Portrait of Pieter Schout (No. 1650). There is here a fine feeling for color, the black horse and its rider’s black hat and yellow coat showing grandly against the drab gray of the lofty sky, below which are sand-dunes with light-green verdure. The picture, though scarcely three feet high, has a sense of space and the bigness of a large canvas.
The startling difference between De Keyser’s two styles is well exemplified in the Berlin Gallery, where you can compare the hard spread-out arrangement in black dresses of An Old Lady and Her Three Daughters with the genial dignity of An Old Man and His Two Sons. An exceedingly interesting Portrait of a Woman hangs in the Museum of Art in Budapest. About fifty years old, she is seated in an arm-chair almost facing us; in a handsome black silk dress, trimmed with brown fur, with a wide starched ruff and a lawn cap
FAMILY OF ADMIRAL PIETER PIETERSZ THOMAS DE KEYSER
RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM