The late Théophile de Bock was an interpreter of nature and his brush-work was fat and rich. His work is well known in America and gains in value every day (he died in 1904). There are fourteen specimens here of his best period. The Emile Bretons are early and therefore different from his commercial productions. Of the Corots, twelve in number, we did not see an insignificant one, not a weak one. The famous Early Morning and View at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon are hung. The first depicts a group of trees; to the right a narrow stream in which is reflected a cloudless sky. In the centre two women in white caps. The second is more elaborate in composition. The middle distance is occupied by picturesque buildings dating probably from the Middle Ages. In the foreground four persons are under the shadow of some trees. An unusual scheme for Corot. His well-known characteristics are present in the dozen; the tremulous leafage, the bright, pure light, the Italian softness. And what do you say to a half-dozen Courbets, all of his strong period, landscapes, still-life, a nude study, a dead roe, a sunlit path, and a lake scene! Good Courbets are not numerous, and these are good. The nude is a woman recumbent upon draperies. The pâte is heavy but vital, the flesh tones glowing, and the silhouette firm, yet delicate. The portrait of the artist by himself is massive. It was probably painted in Ste. Pélagie.
Coutures two, twenty-five Daubignys, and one of his son Karl. Daubigny the elder is here in all his manners, dark pictures with big foregrounds, intimate bits of wooded interiors, sand-hills, streamlets, moonlights, coast scenes, evening effects, sunsets at sea, twilights, sheep, broken rocks, and a study in crayon.
Decamps and Delacroix come next in order. There are three of the former, among the rest his Poacher, and three of Delacroix, one a portrait of himself. Seven of Diaz, painted when his colour was most sonorous and brilliant, are here, with a study of an undraped female figure. La Mare is a sunlight effect in the forest of Fontainebnleau. Dupré has seven to his account, several of great tonal beauty. The one Fortuny is an elaborate etching of his Anchorite. The Josef Israels are strong. Jacque pigs and sheep; Klinkenberg's view of the Binnenhof; Mancini's bewildering chromatic blurs and sensuously rich gamut, and seventeen in number. This painter is seldom encountered in America. He should be better known; while his ideas are not particularly significant he is colourist for colour's sake, as was Monticelli. The three brothers Maris, Jakob, Willem, and Matthys (the latter living in London), are to be seen here in unexampled states. Mauve, too, with fourteen pictures. Both the Mesdags, Taco Mesdag, a brother and his wife are present. Also Ter Meulen, a gifted Dutch artist. We have seldom seen better George Michels. The Monticelli up-stairs is an unusual subject. It is a mountain path in the south of France. The sun is disappearing behind a cluster of trees. Rocks in the foreground. The scheme of colour is low for Monticelli, the forms sharply accented. He could see line when he wished. The smaller example is an interior, as rich as Monticelli knew how to lay the colours on.
Seven Millets, one the large exhibition picture Hagar and Ishmael, another the wonderful Resting Vintager. Alone these Millets would cause a sensation if exhibited elsewhere. The Hagar seems a trifle too rhetorical for the simple-minded painter. Brown predominates in the colour scale, the composition is rather conventional, an echo, perhaps, of the artist's Delaroche apprenticeship, but the Vintager is a masterpiece. Seated among the vines in the blaze of the sun, he is resting and has removed his heavy sabots. The relaxed attitude after arduous labour is wonderfully expressed. The atmosphere indicates stifling sultriness.
Ricard, Roelofs, Theodore Rousseau—halt! There are twelve of this French master, dramatic and rich. Descente des Vaches dans le Jura is the celebrated canvas refused at the Salon, 1834. But it is too bituminous in parts. A greater composition, though only a drawing, is Les grands chênes du vieux Bas-Bréau. Four large trees illumined by sun-rays. Two Segantinis, a drawing in chalk and pastel; Storm Van's Gravesande; seven Troyons, one, Le retour du Marché, a masterpiece; Vollon, still-life, fish, ivory goblets, violets; Weissenbruchs; Zilcken etchings and two De Zwarts. There is old Rozenburg pottery, designed by Colenbrander, scarce to-day; Dutch and Gothic brass, Oriental portières and brass, old Delft, Japanese armour, various weapons and lanterns, Gobelin tapestry, carved furniture, Dutch and Scandinavian, and a magnificent assortment of Satsuma pottery, Cmail cloisonné, Japanese bronzes, Persian pottery, Spanish brasses, majolica and bronzes and sculptures by Mattos, Constantin, Meunier, and Van Wijk—the list fills a pamphlet. Next door is the studio of the aged Mesdag, a hale old Dutchman who paints daily and looks forward to seeing his ninety years. In Holland octogenarians are not few. The climate is propitious; above all, the absence of hurry and worry. To see The Hague without visiting this collection would be a regrettable omission.
HALS OF HAARLEM
In writing of Holland more is said of its windmills than its flowers. It is a land of flowers. Consider the roll-call of its painters who their life long produced naught but fruit and flower pieces. Both the De Heems, the cunning Huysums, whose work still lives in the mezzotints of Earlom—like David de Heem, he was fond of introducing insects, flies, bees, spiders, crawling over his velvety peaches and roses—Seghers, Van Aelst and his talented pupil Rachel Ruysch, Cuyp, Breughel (Abraham), Mignon, Van Beyeren, Van den Broeck, Margaretha Rosenboom, Maria Vos, Weenix, A. Van der Velde, Kalf, and many others who excelled in this pleasing genre. Their canvases are faded, the colours oxidised, but on the highways and by-ways the miracle is daily renewed—flowers bloom at every corner, fill the window-boxes of residences, crowd the hotel balconies, and are bunched in the hands of the peddlers. A cart goes by, a gorgeous symphony of hues. Roses, chrysanthemums, dahlias, daisies, tufts of unfamiliar species, leaves that are as transparent lace, blushing wild roses, and what not. Ivy is used for practical purposes. On the steam-yacht Carsjens at Leyden a wind screen is composed of ivy; you feel enclosed in a floating garden. Along the Vivjer berg, fronting the house of Baron Steengracht, is a huge boat-shaped enclosure of stone. It is full of ivy growing low. Dutch landscape gardeners are fertile in invention. They break the flat lines of the landscape with all sorts of ingenious surprises; bosky barriers, hedges abloom, elm-trees pared away to imitate the processional poplars of Belgium and France, sudden little leafy lanes—what quips and quirks we have come across a few miles away from the town! To see Haarlem and its environs in June when the bulb farms are alight with tulips must be a delightful spectacle. In the fall of the year you are perforce content to read the names of the various farms as the train passes. The many-coloured vegetable carts remind you that Snyders and Van Steen painted here.
The Groote Kerke, St. Bavo, at Haarlem, is a noble pile with a tall tower. One of its attractions is the organ (built in 1735-38) by Christian Müller; it was until a few years ago the largest in the world. Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops and five thousand pipes (thirty-two feet the longest) when manipulated by a skilful organist produce adequate musical results. We had the pleasure of hearing the town organist play Bach for an hour. He began with a few Bach chorales, then came A Mighty Fortress is Our God; followed by the A minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge fugue. The general diapasonic quality is noble, the wood stops soft, the mixtures without brassy squealing, and the full organ sends a thrill down your spine, so mellow is its thunder. Modern organs do not thus sound. Is the secret of the organ tone lost like the varnishing of Cremona fiddles and the blue of the old Delft china? There are no fancy "barnyard stops," as John Runciman has named the combinations often to be found in latter-day instruments. You understood after hearing the Haarlem organ why Bach wrote his organ preludes and fugues. Modern music, with its orchestral registration, its swiftness and staccato, would be a sacrilege on this key-board.
The bronze statue of Coster did not unduly excite us. The Dutch claim him as the inventor of printing, but the Germans hang on to Gutenberg. At Leyden there is a steam train to Katwyk-aan-See; at Haarlem you may ride out to Zandvoort, and six miles farther is the North Sea Canal. But as the Katwyk and Zandvoort schools flourish mightily in the United States we did not feel curious enough to make the effort at either town. Regrettable as was the burning of the old church at Katwyk, perhaps its disappearance will keep it out of numerous pictures painted in that picturesque region. Of course it will be, or has been, rebuilt. We walked in the forest of Haarlem and did not once think of 125th Street; the old town is slightly unlike its modern namesake. What a charm there is in this venerable forest. The Dutch of Amsterdam, less than half an hour away, come down here on Sunday afternoons for the tranquillity and the shade. You must know that the sun-rays can be very disturbing in July. The canals intersecting the town are pretty. They may be sinks of iniquity, but they don't look so. Naturally, they exhale mephitic odours, though the people won't acknowledge it. It is the case in Venice, which on hot August afternoons is not at all romantic in a nasal sense. But you forget it all in Haarlem as you watch a hay barge float by, steered by a blond youngster of ten and poled by his brothers. From the chimney comes a light smoke. Soup is cooking. You remember the old sunlit towpath of your boyhood; a tightening at your heart warns you of homesickness, or hay fever. Oh, to be on the Erie Canal, you exclaim, as you sneeze.
But the Town Hall Museum is hard by. It is the glory of Haarlem as the Rijks Museum is the glory of Amsterdam and Holland. A pull at the bell and the door is opened, a small fee is paid, and you are free to the room where are hung ten large paintings by the inimitable Frans Hals. Here are the world-renowned Regent pictures set forth in chronological order. Drop the catalogue and use your own eyes. The first impression is profound; not that Hals was profound in the sense of Rembrandt's profundity, but because of the almost terrifying vitality of these portraits. Prosaic men and women, great trenchermen, devourers of huge pasties, mowers down of wine-bottles and beer-tankards, they live with such vitality on the canvases of Hals that you instinctively lower your voice. The paint-imprisoned ghosts of these jolly officers, sharpshooters, regents, and shrewd-looking old women regents are not so disquieting as Rembrandt's misty evocations. They touch hands with you across the centuries, and finally you wonder why they don't step out the frame and greet you. Withal, no trace of literalism, of obvious contours or tricky effects. Honest, solid paint, but handled by the greatest master of the brush that ever lived—save Velasquez. How thin and unsubstantial modern painting is if compared to this magician, how even his greatest followers, Manet and Sargent, seem incomplete. Manet, with his abridgments, his suppressions, his elliptical handling, never had the smiling confidence of Hals in facing a problem. The Frenchman is more subtle, also more evasive; and there is no hint in him of the trite statement of a fact that we encounter in Bartholomew Van der Heist—himself a great painter. Hals had not the poetic vision of Rembrandt, but he possessed a more dexterous hand, a keener eye. Judged according to the rubric of sheer paint, sheer brush-work, not Rubens, not Van Dyck, was such a virtuoso. Despite his almost incredible swiftness of execution, Hals got closer to the surfaces of what is called "actual" life than any of the masters with the exception of the supreme Spaniard.