A Text-Book of the History of Painting

by John C. Van Dyke

FIG. 84.—HOBBEMA. THE WATER-WHEEL. AMSTERDAM MUS.

Van Goyen (1596-1656) was one of the earliest of the seventeenth-century landscapists. In subject he was fond of the Dutch bays, harbors, rivers, and canals with shipping, windmills, and houses. His sky line was generally given low, his water silvery, and his sky misty and luminous with bursts of white light. In color he was subdued, and in perspective quite cunning at times. Salomon van Ruisdael (1600?-1670) was his follower, if not his pupil. He had the same sobriety of color as his master, and was a mannered and prosaic painter in details, such as leaves and tree-branches. In composition he was good, but his art had only a slight basis upon reality, though it looks to be realistic at first sight. He had a formula for doing landscape which he varied only in a slight way, and this conventionality ran through all his work. Molyn (1600?-1661) was a painter who showed limited truth to nature in flat and hilly landscapes, transparent skies, and warm coloring. His extant works are few in number. Wynants (1615?-1679?) was more of a realist in natural appearance than any of the others, a man who evidently studied directly from nature in details of vegetation, plants, trees, roads, grasses, and the like. Most of the figures and animals in his landscapes were painted by other hands. He himself was a pure landscape-painter, excelling in light and aërial perspective, but not remarkable in color. Van der Neer (1603-1677) and Everdingen (1621?-1675) were two other contemporary painters of merit.

The best landscapist following the first men of the century was Jacob van Ruisdael (1625?-1682), the nephew of Salomon van Ruisdael. He is put down, with perhaps unnecessary emphasis, as the greatest landscape-painter of the Dutch school. He was undoubtedly the equal of any of his time, though not so near to nature, perhaps, as Hobbema. He was a man of imagination, who at first pictured the Dutch country about Haarlem, and afterward took up with the romantic landscape of Van Everdingen. This landscape bears a resemblance to the Norwegian country, abounding, as it does, in mountains, heavy dark woods, and rushing torrents. There is considerable poetry in its composition, its gloomy skies, and darkened lights. It is mournful, suggestive, wild, usually unpeopled. There was much of the methodical in its putting together, and in color it was cold, and limited to a few tones. Many of Ruisdael's works have darkened through time. Little is known about the painter's life except that he was not appreciated in his own time and died in the almshouse.

Hobbema (1638?-1709) was probably the pupil of Jacob van Ruisdael, and ranks with him, if not above him, in seventeenth-century landscape painting. Ruisdael hardly ever painted sunlight, whereas Hobbema rather affected it in quiet wood-scenes or roadways with little pools of water and a mill. He was a freer man with the brush than Ruisdael, and knew more about the natural appearance of trees, skies, and lights; but, like his master, his view of nature found no favor in his own land. Most of his work is in England, where it had not a little to do with influencing such painters as Constable and others at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

FIG. 85.—ISRAELS. ALONE IN THE WORLD.

LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE: Here we meet with Wouverman (1619-1668), a painter of horses, cavalry, battles, and riding parties placed in landscape. His landscape is bright and his horses are spirited in action. There is some mannerism apparent in his reiterated concentration of light on a white horse, and some repetition in his canvases, of which there are many; but on the whole he was an interesting, if smooth and neat painter. Paul Potter (1625-1654) hardly merited his great repute. He was a harsh, exact recorder of facts, often tin-like or woodeny in his cattle, and not in any way remarkable in his landscapes, least of all in their composition. The Young Bull at the Hague is an ambitious piece of drawing, but is not successful in color, light, or ensemble. It is a brittle work all through, and not nearly so good as some smaller things in the National Gallery London, and in the Louvre. Adrien van de Velde (1635?-1672) was short-lived, like Potter, but managed to do a prodigious amount of work, showing cattle and figures in landscape with much technical ability and good feeling. He was particularly good in composition and the subtle gradation of neutral tints. A little of the Italian influence appeared in his work, and with the men who came with him and after him the Italian imitation became very pronounced. Aelbert Cuyp (1620-1691) was a many-sided painter, adopting at various times different styles, but was enough of a genius to be himself always. He is best known to us, perhaps, by his yellow sunlight effects along rivers, with cattle in the foreground, though he painted still-life, and even portraits and marines. In composing a group he was knowing, recording natural effects with power; in light and atmosphere he was one of the best of his time, and in texture and color refined, and frequently brilliant. Both (1610-1650?), Berchem (1620-1683), Du Jardin (1622?-1678), followed the Italian tradition of Claude Lorrain, producing semi-classic landscapes, never very convincing in their originality. Van der Heyden (1637-1712), should be mentioned as an excellent, if minute, painter of architecture with remarkable atmospheric effects.

MARINE AND STILL-LIFE PAINTERS: There were two pre-eminent marine painters in this seventeenth century, Willem van de Velde (1633-1707) and Backhuisen (1631-1708). The sea was not an unusual subject with the Dutch landscapists. Van Goyen, Simon de Vlieger (1601?-1660?), Cuyp, Willem van de Velde the Elder (1611?-1693), all employed it; but it was Van de Velde the Younger who really stood at the head of the marine painters. He knew his subject thoroughly, having been well grounded in it by his father and De Vlieger, so that the painting of the Dutch fleets and harbors was a part of his nature. He preferred the quiet haven to the open sea. Smooth water, calm skies, silvery light, and boats lying listlessly at anchor with drooping sails, made up his usual subject. The color was almost always in a key of silver and gray, very charming in its harmony and serenity, but a little thin. Both he and his father went to England and entered the service of the English king, and thereafter did English fleets rather than Dutch ones. Backhuisen was quite the reverse of Van de Velde in preferring the tempest to the calm of the sea. He also used more brilliant and varied colors, but he was not so happy in harmony as Van de Velde. There was often dryness in his handling, and something too much of the theatrical in his wrecks on rocky shores.

The still-life painters of Holland were all of them rather petty in their emphasis of details such as figures on table-covers, water-drops on flowers, and fur on rabbits. It was labored work with little of the art spirit about it, except as the composition showed good masses. A number of these painters gained celebrity in their day by their microscopic labor over fruits, flowers, and the like, but they have no great rank at the present time. Jan van Heem (1600?1684?) was perhaps the best painter of flowers among them. Van Huysum (1682-1749) succeeded with the same subject beyond his deserts. Hondecoeter (1636-1695) was a unique painter of poultry; Weenix (1640-1719) and Van Aelst (1620-1679), of dead game; Kalf (1630?-1693), of pots, pans, dishes, and vegetables.