There is something in Dutch landscape, so open, tranquil, large, which seems to look for the presence of these peaceful creatures as its natural complement; their spirit is so entirely in harmony with the spirit of their pastures. Not accidental, perhaps, nor without its due effect, was the Dutch strain of blood in the American poet who seems to have first suggested in words what Potter expressed in art—
Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain, or halt in the leafy shade,
What is it that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.[14]
Like Whitman, Potter is possessed by the fascination of animals; he, too, “stands and looks at them long and long.” And with a feeling so reticent that its intensity escapes a superficial notice, he puts into these etched lines the breath that moves their bodies, and the dumbness that looks out of their eyes.
V
Two years after the publication of the cattle series, appeared the five larger plates of horses. These have less the air of being mere etched studies for pictures; they seem to have been made for their own sake, and make a kind of history, such as Tolstoi in the strange story of Kohlstomir has written; a kind of Horse’s Progress.
The fourth (B. 12), the Two Plough Horses, is reproduced on Plate III. This and the Horse Whinnying (B. 10) seem to the writer the finest of the series, and the finest of all Potter’s etchings. The work is entirely simple and unaffected: there is immense skill, but no apparent consciousness of it, still less parade of it. Nothing adventitious is brought in, no artifice is used of setting or surrounding: bathed in light and air, on their own level pastures, the horses stand clearly outlined. But what a feeling of morning freshness, of careless and free joy, is in the breeze that tosses the mane of the whinnying horse, and makes him tremble with felt vitality! It is a triumph of the untamed energy of life. How different a picture from this of the two tired creatures, set free from their heavy labour at the plough, but no longer rejoicing in their freedom, except as a respite. By some magic of sympathy Potter makes us feel the ache of their limbs, stiff with fatigue, just as he expresses the patience in their eyes. Yet tender as is the feeling of the drawing, it is so restrained that “pity” seems a word out of place. It is rather the simple articulation by means of sensitive portrayal, of an else inarticulate pathos. Such drawing as this is in a true sense imaginative.
The studies of dogs, reproduced in Fig. 25 are an admirable example of Potter’s gift. It is interesting to compare them with a drawing by Berchem, also in the British Museum, representing a hunting scene, with the boar at bay and dogs springing at him or struggling in the leash. Unfortunately, it has been impossible to find room for a reproduction of it; but whoever looks at it will perceive at once a vital difference between such drawing and that of Potter’s. Berchem sketches the scene in a rapid, summary manner, using a few strokes only for each figure. It is Rembrandt’s method; but what a difference in the result! There is a sketch by Rembrandt of a lion springing at and seizing a man on horseback. Only a few lines are used, but the whole action of each figure is expressed perfectly. Berchem thinks to do the like, but his
Fig. 26.—The Cow. By Paul Potter. B. 3.
lines are all just beside the truth. His mind, which has not sufficient love for things to brood upon their forms, is incapable of the swift act of sympathy necessary to seize their movement in action; and its power of reproduction, by nature probably a delicate and precise faculty, has been warped and blunted by the man’s satisfaction in his own cleverness, till it gives an inaccurate image.