PLATE XXXVI.—JAN VER MEER VAN DELFT
(1632–1675)
DUTCH SCHOOL
No. 2456.—THE LACE MAKER
(La Dentellière)
A girl, wearing a yellow bodice and a blue skirt, is seated behind a table. She is bending her head over a light-blue lace pillow as she adjusts the bobbins with both hands. A dark-blue cushion and a book are on the table to the left.
Signed in the upper right-hand corner:—“J. v. Meer,” the first three letters being intertwined.
Painted in oil on canvas.
9½ in. (0·24) square.
Aert van der Neer (1603–1677) painted with strong contrasts of light, as in his Banks of a Dutch Canal (No. 2483); and his monogram is to be found on the seat at the foot of a tree in his Dutch Village (No. 2484), where his propensity for painting moonlight scenes is well illustrated. Herman Saftleven’s (1609–1685) Banks of the Rhine (No. 2563); Jan Asselyn’s View of the Lamentano Bridge on the Teverone (No. 2301), Landscape (No. 2302), and Ruins in the Roman Campagna (No. 2303); and the two Landscapes (Nos. 2332 and 2333) by Jan Both (1610–1652), who worked in Rome and painted Italian landscapes under the influence of the French artist Claude Lorrain, show the gradual introduction of foreign influences. Joris van der Hagen (died 1669) takes a new line in the representation of a very low horizon in his Environs de Haarlem (No. 2382); but his Landscape with Peasants crossing a Ford (No. 2381) is dull in tone and composed of unrelated parts.
The Banks of a River (No. 2561d) is a superb example of the art of Salomon van Ruysdael (1600?–1670), one of the founders of the Haarlem school of landscape, and the uncle of Jacob van Ruisdael. The Large Tower (No. 2561c) gives a better idea of his power than the Ford (No. 2561b). Another painter in the same school, Cornelis Decker (1618?–1678), has a Landscape (No. 2346). although Isack van Ostade at times gave himself up to trivial subjects, as we have already seen, the merit of his frozen river scenes (Nos. 2510, 2511, 2515) is firmly established, and the happy way in which he combined a genuine appreciation of nature with great skill in the placing and treatment of his figures has earned for him a high place among the Dutch landscape painters.
AELBERT CUYP
Unlike most of the artists of his time in Holland, Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691) was highly esteemed by his contemporaries, his social position and his good fortune in money matters freeing him from the poverty which Hobbema and others endured. He painted portraits with much skill, as we see from his Portrait of a Man (No. 2345a) and his Portrait of a Boy and a Girl with a Goat (No. 2344); but he is best known as a cattle painter, his sturdy cattle being artistically grouped in thick green pastures flooded with sunshine, as in his Herdsman with Cattle (No. 2341). He attained much success also with his riding pictures, and the Starting for the Ride (No. 2342) and the Riding Party (No. 2343) are in every way preferable to his Boats on a Rough Sea (No. 2345). Following his usual habit, he has placed no date on any of these six pictures. He had no pupil in the proper sense of the term; but a host of imitators, such as Jacob van Stry and the much later English Royal Academician Sidney Cooper, failed ignominiously in their feeble attempts to copy his methods.