We need not expect to find duplicated here the Rubens of Antwerp. The most imposing example is the Adoration of the Magi, while his portraits of the Archduke Albert and his Archduchess, Isabella, are perhaps the best extant. The Calvary is a splendid canvas, full of movement and containing several members of the well-known Rubens family. Such devotion is touching. You find yourself looking for Isabella Brandt and Helena Fourment among the angels that hover in the sky above the martyred St. Lieven. The four negro heads, the Woman Taken in Adultery, a Susanna (less concerned about her predicament than any we have encountered), a curious and powerful portrait of Theophrastus Paracelsus (Browning's hero), with a dozen others, make a goodly showing for the Antwerp master. Otho Vænius (Octave Van Veen), one of the teachers of Rubens, is hung here. There are nearly a dozen Van Dycks, of prime quality all. The Crucifixion, the portrait of an unknown gentleman wearing a huge ruff and the winning portrait of a Flemish sculptor, Francesco Duquesnoy, (on a stand), give you an excellent notion of his range, though better Van Dycks are in France and England.
The portrait of an old man, by Rembrandt, is beginning to fade, but that of an old woman is a superior Rembrandt. Of Frans Hals there are two fine specimens; one, a portrait of Willem van Heythusen, is a small picture, the figure sitting, the legs crossed (booted and spurred) and the figure leaning lazily back. On his head a black felt hat with a broad upturned brim. The expression of the bearded man is serious. The only Jan Vermeer is one of the best portraits by that singularly gifted painter we recall. It is called The Man with the Hat. Dr. Bredius in 1905 considered the picture by Jean Victor, but it has been pronounced Vermeer by equal authorities. It was once a part of the collection of Humphry Ward. The man sits, his hand holding a glove resting negligently over the back of a chair. He faces the spectator, on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide brim. His collar is white. A shadow covers the face above the eyes. These are rather melancholy, inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almost morbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of the Milkmaid and the Letter. There is something disquieting in this portrait, but it is a masterpiece of paint and character.
The Old Lady Dreaming, by N. Maes, and the Jan Steen (The Operator) are good though not remarkable examples. Jacob Jordaenses flood the various galleries; Rubens run to seed as far as quality, yet exhibiting enormous muscularity, is the trait of this gross painter. The King Drinks—his kings are always drinking or blind drunk—his nudes, which look like the contents of the butcher shops in Brussels, attract throngs, for the anecdote is writ large across the wall, and you don't have to run to read. Panoramas would be a better title for these robust compositions. David Teniers's La Kermesse is the most important work he ever finished. It is in good preservation. Amsterdam has not its superior. There is an ordinary El Greco, a poor Goya, and a Ribera downstairs. The French art is not enlivening.
Philip Champaigne's self-portrait is familiar: it has been reproduced frequently. Jean Baptiste Huysmans, a landscape with animals; he is said to be an ancestor of the late Joris Karel Huysmans. The Mors (Antonio Moro) is of value. But the lodestone of the collection is the Primitives.
The pictures in the modern gallery are largely Belgian, some French, and a few Dutch and English. It is not a collection of artistic significance. In the black-and-white room may be seen a few original drawings of Rops.
The Musée Wiertz is worth visiting only as a chamber of horrors. When Wiertz is not morbid and repulsive he is of the vasty inane, a man of genius gone daft, obsessed by the mighty shades of Rubens and Michael Angelo. Wiertz was born in 1806 and died in 1865. The Belgian Government, in order to make some sort of reparation for its neglect of the painter during his troubled and unhappy lifetime, acquired his country residence and made it a repository of his art. The pictures are of a scale truly heroic. The painter pitted himself against Rubens and Michael Angelo. He said: "I, too, am a great painter!" And there is no denying his power. His tones recall the pâte of Rubens without its warmth and splendour. When Wiertz was content to keep within bounds his portraits and feminine nudes are not without beauty. He was fanciful rather than poetic, and the picture of Napoleon in hell enduring the reproaches of his victims (why should they be there?) is startling. Startling, too, are the tricks played on your nerves by the peepholes. You see a woman crazed by hunger about to cook one of her murdered children; beheaded men, men crushed by superior power, the harnessed body of Patroclus, Polyphemus devouring the companions of Ulysses, and other monstrous conceptions, are all painted with reference to the ills of the poor. Anton Joseph was a socialist in sentiment. If his executive ability had been on a par with his ideas, and if those ideas had been less extravagant, the world would have had one more great painter; but his nervous system was flawed and he died a melancholic, a victim to misplaced ideals. He wished to revive the heroic age at a time of easel pictures. He, the half genius, saw himself outwitted by the sleek paint of Alfred Stevens. Born out of his due time, a dreamer of dreams, Wiertz is a sad example of the futility of looking backward in art.
BRUGES THE BEAUTIFUL
On the way up from Brussels to Bruges it is well to alight at Ghent for a few hours. There are attractions enough to keep one for several days, but as our objective was St. Bavon (St. Bavo, or Sint Baafs) we did not stay more than the allotted time. And an adventurous time it was. The Ostend express landed its passengers at the St. Pierre station and that meant the loss of half an hour. The Cathedral is reached by the tramway, and there we found that as an office was about to be sung no one would be allowed in the ambulatory until after its completion. It was pouring live Belgian rain without; already the choristers in surplices were filing into the choir. Not a moment to be spared! The sacristan was a practical man. He hustled us into a side chapel, locked the heavy doors, and left us in company with the great picture of the brothers Hubert and Jan Van Eyck. A monk knelt in prayer outside, the rain clouds made the lighting obscure. We were hemmed in, but by angels and ministers of grace. The chanting began. Atmosphere was not needed in this large and gloomy edifice, only more light. Gradually the picture began to burn through the artificial dusk, gradually its glories became more perceptible. Begun by Hubert in 1420 and finished by Jan in 1432, its pristine splendour has vanished; and the loss of the wings—the Adam and Eve are in Brussels, the remaining volets in the Berlin Museum—is irreparable despite the copies. But this Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, with its jewelled figures of the Christ, of St. John the Baptist, St. Cecilia, and the central panel with its mystical symbolism, painted in sumptuous tones, the lamb on the altar, the prophets and ecclesiastics in worship, the singing angels, is truly an angelic composition.
The rain had ceased. A shaft of sunshine pierced the rosy glass windows and fell upon the hieratic figure of the bearded Christ, which glowed supernally. In the chancel the Psalms had died away and the only sound was that of sandals shuffling over marble floors. The man turned the lock. It was a return to the world as if one had participated in a sacred ceremony.
Bruges is invariably called Bruges-la-Morte, but it is far from being dead, or even desperately melancholy. Delft, in Holland, after nine o'clock at night, is quieter than Bruges. Bruges the Dead? No, Bruges the Beautiful is nearer the truth. After reading Rodenbach's morbid romance of Bruges-la-Morte we felt sure that a stay in Bruges would be like a holiday in a cemetery. Our experience dispelled this unpleasant illusion. Bruges is in daylight a bustling and in certain spots a noisy place. Its inhabitants are not lugubrious of visage, but wideawake, practical people, close at a bargain, curious like all Belgians, and on fête days given to much feasting. Bruges is infinitely more interesting than Brussels. It is real, while modern Brussels is only mock-turtle. And Bruges is more picturesque, the food is as well flavoured, there are several resorts where ripe old Burgundy may be had at not an extravagant price, and the townsfolk are less grasping, more hearty than in Brussels.