The political events of the reign of Philip II. of Spain, the mistaken, mischievous, and oppressive policy he adopted with regard to his territory in the Netherlands, and the contempt with which he treated his Dutch subjects, soon alienated their sympathies; but the Duke of Alva by his harshness and bigotry incited them to frenzy. When he set forth in 1567, all hope of peace and mercy fled before him, and within a short period his tyranny and ferocity fanned the flame of rebellion, which after a struggle of eighty years was to end in the Peace of Münster of 1648. In that year Spain ignominiously surrendered, and the independence of the northern Netherlands was recognised. During the long period which elapsed between the Union of Utrecht in 1579 and the negotiations at Osnabrück and Münster in 1648 must have been destroyed innumerable religious pictures, the loss of which renders it almost impossible for us to estimate the full significance of artistic endeavour in Holland in the closing years of the sixteenth century.
A new era in Dutch history, social life and art was beginning to open out by the year 1612, when Abraham Blomaert (1564–1651) painted and signed his very large Nativity (No. 2327), which was formerly attributed to Bernardino Fassolo. Blomaert’s Portrait of a Man (No. 2327a) is also a signed work.
HISTORY AND PORTRAIT PAINTERS
Blomaert’s contemporary, Michiel Jansz Mierevelt (1567–1641), who was at one time Court painter to the Princes of Orange at The Hague, and was with undue flattery hailed as the “New Xeuxis of Delft,” is represented by the Portrait of Olden Barnevelt (No. 2465) and three other portraits, one of which (No. 2466) is in a very bad state. Stiff but characteristic is the Portrait of a Woman (No. 2534), which was painted by Jan van Ravesteyn (1572–1657) in 1633, while his initials are also found on a panel (No. 2535) which was commissioned of him in the following year. Although Gerard Verspronck (1600–1651) was many years his junior, and in 1641, in the period of his maturity, achieved the Portrait of a Lady (No. 2576a), the top corners of which have been added, he painted on the lines of tradition, and showed little originality. He came under the influence of Frans Hals, under whose name his pictures often pass.
CORNELIS JANSSEN
Nor can it be said that the numerous portraits which Cornelis Janssen van Ceulen (1593–1664?) undertook in England, give signs of the new artistic impulse which was daily manifesting itself in Holland in the early works of Frans Hals. Janssen, who was baptized at the Dutch Reformed Church, Austin Friars, London, throve until the establishment in England of Van Dyck, before whom he quickly had to give way; although he withdrew to Kent and lived in retirement, he did not receive the Speaker’s warrant to pass beyond seas until 1643. That “Cornelius Johnson Picture Drawer” made use of pallid flesh tones and lifeless grey tones, is obvious from the two portraits (No. 2338 and No. 2339) exhibited in the Louvre.
The very modern looking Portrait of a Young Man (No. 2303a), signed “d. bailly,” is officially held to be the work of a Leyden painter of that name who would appear to have been a contemporary of Cornelis Janssen.
FRANS HALS
Although the great Dutch painter, Frans Hals (1580?–1666) was born at Antwerp, his parents were natives of Haarlem, whither he removed about 1600, and where he settled for the remainder of his eventful, irregular, and improvident career. This lusty and unromantic master by his forceful characterisation, his rapid wielding of his brush, and his frank realism, in a few years transformed the earlier portrait-making of Holland, and the rendering of the commonplace and obvious likeness of an individual, as seen in the works of Moreelse and others, into the region of great art. He was by about a quarter of a century the senior of Rembrandt, who is the greatest genius among Dutch painters, and developed his art on logical lines. It is, however, necessary to know the outstanding facts of his personal history, the fluctuating circumstances under which he worked, and the grinding poverty of his latest period. Perhaps no other painter in the whole range of art was so affected by his environment as Hals.
