In technical character, these etchings recall the Spanish etcher Goya, who was also fond of producing a sharp, vivid, emphatic effect by a similar artificial manner of lighting. Not improbably Bega’s etchings may have been known to Goya, and given him a suggestion.
Bega had apparently no tenderness, and little or no interest in
Fig. 11.—The Tavern. By Bega. B. 32.
humanity. This deficiency, in one of the Dutch school, and trained in the Dutch tradition, is notable. One has only to turn from his mother and baby sitting by the window (B. 21) to Ostade’s Child and Doll, to feel what a difference lies between the two.
Cornelis Dusart was a much later scholar. At Bega’s death he was only a child of four, and he survived Ostade many years, living on till 1704. When Ostade died, he finished his master’s uncompleted pictures, but kept them till his death in his own possession.
Some of Dusart’s etchings, as for instance The Village Fête (B. 16) have a pleasing effect, with well-managed light and shade; but they cannot be compared with the similar pieces by Ostade, whose method is here carried on, but in an inferior manner. Yet he has a vein of his own, a gross, riotous, extravagant vein, with a great fondness for violent action. In the plate called by Bartsch Le Violon Assis (B. 15), which was too large to be reproduced here, his specific qualities appear to great advantage.
One seems to hear an hilarious din merely from looking at it. The fiddler plays with a wild fantastic energy; one peasant accompanies him with crashing tankard and roaring chorus; another sits bent and sullen with his head on his hands. The landlord, with huge frame and round paunch, looks on with twinkling eyes. A woman by the great chimney, on which hangs the notice of a sale of tulips and hyacinths, “Tulpaan en Hyacinthen,” calls a child to her. The roomy background with its beams and rafters, is drawn and lighted with extraordinary skill. As a page of daily life, fresh and vivid, this etching deserves the fullest praise.
Dusart in his later years devoted himself to mezzotint, and produced a great deal in this manner. These engravings, some of which represent in Dusart’s extravagant way, the joy in Holland at the taking of Namur in 1695 by William III., are more interesting historically than artistically. It was not till the middle of next century that mezzotint, the invention of which does not date from much earlier than Dusart’s birth, reached its perfection in the hands of the English engravers.