Holland, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

Another of the most striking characteristics of Dutch painting is naturally color. It is generally recognized that in a country where there are no distant mountains, no undulating views, no prominent features to strike the eye—in short, no general forms that lend themselves to design—the artist is strongly influenced by color. This is especially true in the case of Holland, where the uncertain light and the vague shadows which continually veil the air soften and obscure the outlines of objects until the eye neglects the form it cannot comprehend, and fixes itself on color as the chief quality that nature possesses. But there are yet other reasons for this: a country as flat, monotonous, and gray as Holland is has need of color, just as a southern country has need of shadow. The Dutch artists have only followed the dominant taste of the people, who paint their houses, their boats, their palisades, the fences of the fields, and in some places the very trunks of the trees, in the brightest colors; who dress themselves as of yore in clothes of the gayest hues; who love tulips and hyacinths to distraction. Hence all the Dutch painters were great colorists, Rembrandt being the first.

Realism, favored by the calm and sluggish nature of the Dutch, which enables their artists to restrain their impetuosity, and further aided by the Dutch character, which aims at exactness and refuses to do things by halves, gave to the paintings of the Hollanders another distinctive trait—finish. This they carried to the last possible degree of perfection. Critics say truthfully that in Dutch paintings one may discover the first quality of the nation—patience. Everything is portrayed with the minuteness of a daguerreotype: the furniture with all the graining of the wood, the leaf with all its veins, a thread in a bit of cloth, the patch with all the stitches showing, the animal with every hair distinct, the face with all its wrinkles,—everything is finished with such microscopic precision that it seems to be the work of a fairy's brush, for surely a painter would lose his sight and reason in such a task. After all, this is a defect rather than a virtue, because painting ought to reproduce not what exists, but rather what the eye sees, and the eye does not see every detail. However, the defect is brought to such a degree of excellence that it is to be admired rather than censured, and one does not even dare to wish that it should not be there. In this respect, Dou, Mieris, Potter, Van der Helst, and indeed all the Dutch painters in greater or less degree, were famous as prodigies of patience.

On the other hand, realism, which imparts to Dutch painting such an original character and such admirable qualities, is, notwithstanding, the root of its most serious defects. The Dutch painters, solicitous to copy only material truth, give to their figures the expression of merely physical sentiments. Sorrow, love, enthusiasm, and the thousand subtle emotions that are nameless, or that take different names from the different causes that give them birth, are rarely or never expressed. For them the heart does not beat, the eye does not overflow with tears, nor does the mouth tremble. In their pictures a whole part of the life is lacking, and that the most powerful and noble part, the human soul. Nay more, by so faithfully copying everything, the ugly especially, they end in exaggerating even that. They convert defects into deformities, portraits into caricatures; they slander the national type; they give every human figure an ungraceful and ludicrous appearance. To have a setting for figures they are obliged to select trivial subjects; hence the excessive number of canvases depicting taverns and drunken men with grotesque, stupefied faces, in sprawling attitudes; low women and old men who are despicably ridiculous; scenes in which we seem to hear the low yells and obscene words. On looking at these pictures one would say that Holland is inhabited by the most deformed and ill-mannered nation in the world. Some painters permit themselves even greater license. Steen, Potter, Brouwer, and the great Rembrandt himself often pandered to a low and depraved taste, and Torrentius sent forth such shameless pictures that the provinces of Holland collect and burn them. But, overlooking these excesses, there is scarcely anything to be found in a Dutch gallery which elevates the soul, which awakens in the mind high and noble sentiments. One enjoys, one admires, one laughs, and sometimes one is silent before some landscapes, but on leaving one feels that one has not felt a real pleasure—that something was lacking. There comes a longing to look upon a beautiful face or to read inspired poetry, and sometimes, unconsciously, one catches one's self murmuring, "O Raphael!"

In conclusion, we must note two great merits in this school—its variety and its value as an expression, as a mirror, of the country. If Rembrandt and his followers are excepted, almost all the other painters are quite different from each other. Perhaps no other school presents such a number of original masters. The realism of the Dutch painters arose from their common love for nature, but each of them has shown in his work a different manifestation of a love all his own; each has given the individual impression that he has received from nature. They all set out from the same point—the worship of material truth, but they each arrived at a different goal. Their realism impelled them to copy everything, and the consequence is that the Dutch school has succeeded in representing Holland much more faithfully than any other school has illustrated any other country. It has been said that if every other visible testimony to the existence of Holland in the seventeenth century—its great century—excepting the work of its artists were to disappear, everything would be found again in the pictures—the towns, the country, the ports, the fleets, the markets, the shops, the dress, the utensils, the arms, the linen, the merchandise, the pottery, the food, the amusements, the habits, the religion, and the superstitions. The good and the bad qualities of the nation are all alike represented, and this, which is a merit in the literature of a country, is no less a merit in its art.

But there is one great void in Dutch painting, for which the peaceful and modest character of the people is not a sufficient reason. This school of painting, which is so essentially national, has, with the exception of some great naval battles, passed over all of the grand exploits of the war of independence, among which the sieges of Leyden and Haarlem would have been sufficient to inspire a legion of artists. Of this war, almost a century in duration, filled with strange and terrible events, there is not a single memorable painting. This school, so varied and so conscientious in reproducing its country and its life, has not represented one scene of that great tragedy, as William the Silent prophetically called it, which aroused in the Hollanders such diverse emotions of fear and grief, rage, joy, and national pride.

The splendor of Holland's art faded with its political greatness. Nearly all the great painters were born during the first thirty years of the seventeenth or during the last years of the sixteenth century; none of them were living after the first ten years of the eighteenth century, and no others appeared to take their places. Holland had exhausted its productiveness. Already toward the end of the seventeenth century the sentiment of patriotism had commenced to weaken, taste had become depraved, the painters lost their inspiration with the decline of the moral energies of the country. In the eighteenth century the artists, as though surfeited with nature, returned to mythology, classicism, and conventionality; their imagination was weakened, their style was impoverished, and every spark of their former genius was extinguished. Dutch Art showed the world the marvellous flowers of Van Huysum, the last great lover of nature, then folded her weary hands and the flowers fell on his tomb.

The present gallery at Rotterdam contains but a small number of paintings, among which there are very few works of the best artists and none of the chefs d'œuvre of the Dutch School. Three hundred paintings and thirteen hundred drawings were destroyed by fire in 1864, and most of the works that are now there were bequeathed to the city of Rotterdam by Jacob Otto Boymans. Hence the gallery is a place to see examples of some particular artist, rather than to study Dutch painting.

In one of the first rooms are some sketches of naval battles, signed by William van de Velde, who is considered the greatest marine painter of his time. He was the son of William the elder, who was also a marine painter. Both father and son were fortunate enough to live at the time of the great naval wars between Holland, England, and France, and were able to see the battles with their own eyes. The States of Holland placed a frigate at the disposal of Van de Velde the elder; his son accompanied him. Both made their sketches in the midst of the battle-smoke, sometimes advancing so far among the fighting ships that the admirals were obliged to order them to withdraw. The younger Van de Velde surpassed his father. He painted small pictures—for the most part a gray sky, a calm sea, and some sails—but so naturally are they done that when one looks at them one seems to smell the salt air of the sea, and mistakes the frame for a window. This Van de Velde belongs to that group of Dutch painters who loved the water with a sort of madness, and who painted, one may say, on the water. Of these was Bakhuisen, a marine painter who had a great vogue in his day, whom Peter the Great chose as his master during his visit to Amsterdam. This Bakhuisen, it is said, used to risk himself in a small boat in the midst of a storm at sea that he might be able to observe more closely the movements of the waves, and he often placed his own life and the lives of his boatmen in such danger that the men, caring more for their skins than for his paintings, sometimes took him back to land against his will. John Griffier did more. He bought a little ship in London, furnished it like a house, installed his wife and children in it, and sailed about on his own responsibility in search of subjects. A storm dashed his vessel to pieces against a sandbank and destroyed all he possessed; he and his family were saved by a miracle, and settled in Rotterdam. But he soon grew weary of a life on land, bought a shattered boat and put to sea again; he nearly lost his life a second time near Dordrecht, but still continued his voyages.