Jan Wynants was another landscape painter in the Haarlem School, although he settled in Amsterdam and died there in 1682. His Outskirts of a Forest (No. 2636) is signed and dated 1668, and is superior to the Landscape (No. 2637) which bears his own signature as well as that of Adriaen van de Velde, who on numerous occasions inserted the figures for him. Wynants has also placed his name on a small Landscape with Sportsman and Falconer (No. 2638).
Adriaen van de Velde has been careful to sign and date each of the seven pictures by which he is represented (Nos. 2593–2599). By Allart van Everdingen (1621–1675), who travelled in Norway and painted rocky scenes and waterfalls, we find two Landscapes (Nos. 2365 and 2366).
JACOB VAN RUISDAEL
The greatest of all Dutch landscape painters, with the possible exception of Jan van Goyen, is Jacob van Ruisdael (1628?–1682), who occupied himself more especially with rushing waterfalls and undulating country. His Storm on the Coast (No. 2558) is a fine achievement, but his best picture in this collection is the Landscape (no No.), which was bequeathed by Baron Arthur de Rothschild. His Woody Landscape (No. 2559), the Road (No. 2559a), Landscape (No. 2561), and the Entrance to a Wood (No. 2561a), cannot, however, compare with his Sunny Landscape (No. 2560), which bears the artist’s monogram.
HOBBEMA
The talents of Meindert Hobbema (1638–1709) were so disregarded by his countrymen that in disgust he, at the age of thirty, took a humble post in the Customs. His woody scenes seen in the pale sunlight of the early afternoon are not copied from any chance scenery, but composed; and his Water Mill (No. 2404), fine though it is, contains passages that will be met with elsewhere. The Farm (No. 2404a) is a very good picture, as also is the Landscape (No. 2403) from the Nieuwenhuys collection. A very large number of painters, including Wyntrack, who gives us a Farm (No. 2639), painted the figures into the foregrounds of Hobbema’s best works.
PHILIPS WOUWERMAN
In a large number of Philips Wouwerman’s pictures the landscapes are of secondary importance to the figures; and although the execution is careful and conscientious, the frequenter of picture galleries is apt to tire of his make-believe genre-pieces, landscapes with horses, riders, sportsmen, soldiers, robbers, gipsies, and the like. The Louvre presents an imposing array of fifteen of the twelve hundred or more pictures by Philips Wouwerman (1619–1668), and his brother and pupil Pieter is credited with a poor but historically interesting View of the Porte de Nesles, Paris, in 1664 (No. 2635).
It will be convenient here to group Adam Pynacker (1622–1673) with his three pictures, Willem Romeyn (1624?–1696?) with one, Abraham Begeyn (1637?–1697) with one, Guilliam de Heusch (1625?–1692) with one, Dirk van den Berghen (1645–1690?) with two, and Glauber (1646–1726) with a single Landscape (No. 2374) in which the figures are inserted by Gerard de Lairesse. Mention must, however, be made of Paul Potter, the highly esteemed cattle painter, who died in 1654 at the early age of twenty-nine. One of his latest canvases is the Cows and Sheep in a Field (No. 2527), of 1652; but his Horse in a Field (No. 2528) of the following year, and the Wood at The Hague (No. 2529), give an excellent idea of his art. These and the Horses at the Door of a Cottage (No. 2526) show that Paul Potter had a sound knowledge of animal anatomy. He is seen at his best in small compositions such as are here exhibited, in which the construction and mise-en-scène are simple and the details delicately rendered. It is a popular fallacy that his chief contribution to the fame of Dutch art was his large Bull of 1647, which measures 8 ft. by 12 ft., in The Hague Gallery. He did not live long enough to form a “school.”