gallery. Poelenburg did not etch himself, but his friend Jan Gerritz Bronchorst etched from his paintings and in his style, though with less grace and elegance. We find here the beginnings of that school of landscape, “Arcadian” as Bode calls it, which so soon received its fullest and most perfect expression in the large and tranquil art of Claude.
Fig. 21.—Landscape. By Both. B. 3.
Pieter de Laer, of whose etchings of animals we shall say something in the next chapter, etched one landscape at least in the delicate soft manner of that master. And with him maybe associated Bartolomeus Breenbergh, who lived in Rome from his twenty-first to his twenty-eighth year, 1620-1627. He was married at Amsterdam in 1633 and died there in 1659 or earlier; but was at Rome again in the interval, during which he published (1640) a set of very attractive little prints. Fig. 20 is an example of his work.
The same delicate, fine needle, and the same preference for the picturesque, characterise the earlier etchings of Thomas Wyck. Later he adopted a freer, broader style, and worked on a larger scale, but with less success.
But the most conspicuous and important of this group is Jan Both. Like Poelenburg, he was a man of Utrecht, where he was born in 1610 and where he died in 1652. His portrait, taken in his later days at home, is that of a stout, grave burgher. Quite young he left the studio of his master Bloemart and travelled through France to Rome. There the soft sunshine of Claude fascinated him and he began to follow in the footsteps of that famous painter.
Every one knows the landscapes of Both, their smooth, rather insipid grace, their premeditated balance of composition, their elegant monotony. It is certain that they were popular in Holland, whither they were brought in ships from Italy to adorn the walls of wealthy buyers. Probably in that day such painting of placid sunshine was a new thing; what we perceive to be a surface acquaintance with Nature savoured almost of intimacy; and doubtless Both’s pretty and monotonous conventions had then a permanent charm.
In his etchings, Both’s weaknesses do not appear so strongly. And, wisely, he did not produce many. Had there been more they would, beyond doubt, have been precisely similar to what we have; and from mere fatigue at their monotony one would have rated them below their worth.
As it is, the ten landscapes after his own designs are more than enough to reveal Both’s great limitations. Yet they are few enough for us to enjoy them. For, after all, they are attractive and accomplished etchings. From Claude, Both had learned how to produce, with a nice management of the acid, an exquisite softness in his distances. The atmosphere is limpid and bathed in sunshine, and the foregrounds are suggested with that light touch and selection of detail which are first requisites in an etching.