studies of Du Jardin’s, in which nothing is seized strongly while everything is made a little dull, to an etching of Rembrandt’s, say Six’s Bridge, is to receive a most vivid impression of Rembrandt’s immense superiority. Rembrandt’s light sketch is instinct with style; Du Jardin, in these prints at any rate, has no style at all. Such etchings as that of the pigs (Fig. 28) are of far higher quality.
Another etcher from Amsterdam, Adriaen van de Velde, came strongly under Potter’s influence. Born in 1635-36 Van de Velde, like Du Jardin, studied with Berchem. It has sometimes been assumed that he, too, followed up his studies with a journey to Italy, but Dr. Bredius decides against this supposition. There is Italian scenery in many of Adriaen’s pictures, but there were plenty of fellow artists to borrow materials for such backgrounds from. And with him the landscape is never much more than a background. His interest lay more in his cattle and his figures than in their surrounding. It is known, indeed, that he inserted figures for several of the landscape painters, including Ruisdael and Hobbema.
Van de Velde’s etchings are nearly all of cattle, and here he sometimes comes near Potter in drawing, while in management of the acid he is decidedly Potter’s superior. His earliest dated etching of 1653 is a large plate, which though not powerful has a real beauty. The cow which forms the centre of the composition is almost identical with that in the foreground of Potter’s Cowherd. Perhaps this was deliberate imitation, and if so, is evidence of the recognition Potter’s knowledge of animal form commanded, but it may equally well have been an accident. The whole plate is bathed in drowsy sunshine, with which the man asleep by the roadside, drawn with an admirable suggestion of repose, harmonises well. This print is one of those which must be seen in the silvery earliest state to be appreciated.
The original design for this plate is in the British Museum. In the same collection is also the design for The Cow Lying Down (B. 2). On the same sheet of paper is a study of part of the cow in a slightly altered position, and this has been adopted in the etching. Except for this insignificant change, the two etchings are copied from the pencil studies with entire fidelity. And probably this was always Van de Velde’s practice, as it was with Potter and Du Jardin. It is, therefore, strictly speaking, incorrect to describe the drawings as being made for the etchings. The studies were etched simply that they might be multiplied.
None of the studies of cattle, etched by the Dutch masters, surpasses Van de Velde’s set of three, numbered 11, 12, and 13 in Bartsch. The second is reproduced (Plate IV.). Potter never produced an effect so delicate and so rich in colour as Van de Velde in these three etchings. At the same time there is no ostentation of skill; rather there seems a
Fig. 29.—A Goat. By A. Van de Velde. B. 16.
kind of modesty in the workmanship that is winning. Equally excellent is the charming little study of a goat (Fig. 29).
Van de Velde, if not a great artist, was a true one, and his early death at the age of thirty-seven was a loss to the art of Holland.