No one before Van Huysum attained so perfect a manner of representing the beauty of flowers and the down and bloom of fruit; for he painted with greater freedom than Velvet Breughel and Mignon, with more tenderness and nature than Mario di Fiori, Andrea Belvedere, Michel de Campidoglio or Daniel Seghers; with more mellowness than de Heem, and with more vigour of colouring than Baptist Monoyer.
His pictures of flowers and fruit pleasing an English gentleman, he introduced them into his own country, where they came into vogue and yielded a high price. To express the motions of the smallest insects with justice he used to contemplate them through the microscope with great attention. At the times of the year when the flowers were in bloom, and the fruit in perfection, he used to design them in his own garden, and the Sieur Gulet and Voorhelm sent him the most beautiful productions in those kinds they could pick up.
His reputation rose to such a height that all the curious in painting sought his works with great eagerness, which encouraged him to raise his prices so high that his pictures at last grew out of the reach of any but princes and men of the greatest fortune. He was the first flower painter that ever thought of laying them on light grounds, which requires much greater art than to paint them on dark ones.
Van Huysum died at Amsterdam in 1749. He never had any pupil but a young woman named Haverman, and his brother Michael. Two other brothers have distinguished themselves in painting, one named Justus, who painted battles, and died at twenty-two years old, the other named James, who ended his days in England in 1740. He copied the pictures of his brother John so well as to deceive the connoisseurs: he had usually £20 for each copy. For the originals, it may be noted, from a thousand to fourteen hundred florins was paid.
V
PAINTERS OF LANDSCAPE
Coming now to the landscape painters we find that Jan Van Goyen, born at Leyden in 1596, was destined to exert a really powerful influence, inasmuch as he was the founder, as is generally acknowledged, of the Dutch school of homely native landscape. Beginning with figure subjects, he discovered in their landscape backgrounds his real métier, and seems only to have realized his great gifts when he looked further into nature than was possible when painting a foreground picture. He appears to have been by nature or by inclination long-sighted, and he is never so happy as when painting distance, either along the banks of a river or looking out to sea. This extended gaze taught him something of atmosphere that few painters beside himself ever acquired, and helped him to the mastery of tone which appears to have influenced so many of his followers, as for example Van de Velde in the painting of sea-pieces.
Jan Wynants, born at Haarlem about 1620, and still living in 1677, was the first master who applied all the developed qualities of the Dutch School to the treatment of landscape painting. In general his prevailing tone is clear and bright, more especially in the green of his trees and plants, which in many cases, merges into blue. One of his characteristics is a fallen tree trunk in the foreground, as may be seen in three out of the six examples in the National Gallery. The carefulness of his execution explains how it was that in so long a life he only produced a moderate number of pictures. Smith's catalogue contains about 214. These differ much according to their different periods. In his first manner peasants' cottages or ruins play an important part, and the view is more or less shut in by trees of a heavy dark green, the execution solid and careful. In his middle time he generally paints open views of a rather uneven country, diversified by wood and water. That Wynants retained his full skill even in advanced life is proved by a picture dated 1672, in the Munich Gallery, representing a road leading to a fenced wood and a sandhill, near which in the foreground are some cows (by Lingelbach) being driven along. In his last manner a heavy uniformly brown tone is often observable.
It is his genuine feeling for nature that makes Wynant's pictures so popular in England, where we meet with a considerable number of his best works.
Jacob Ruisdael (born at Haarlem 1628, died there 1682) is supposed to have developed under the influence of a school there that was opposing Van Goyen's tone treatment by local colour. Though not always the most charming, Ruisdael is certainly the greatest and the most profound of the Dutch landscape painters. His wide expanses of sky, earth or sea, with their tender gradations of aërial perspective, diversified here and there by alternations of sunshine and shadow, attract us as much by the pathos as by the picturesqueness of their character. His scenes of mountainous districts with foaming waterfalls; or bare piles of rock and sombre lakes are imbued with a feeling of melancholy. Ruisdael's work may be well studied in the six examples at Hertford House, and the fourteen in the National Gallery. Among his finer works in Continental collections the following are some of those selected by Kugler for description. At the Hague is one of his wide expanses—a view of the country around Haarlem, the town itself looking small on the horizon, under a lofty expanse of cloudy sky in the foreground a bleaching-ground and some houses reminding us, by the manner in which they are introduced, of Hobbema. The prevailing tone is cool, the sky singularly beautiful, and the execution wonderfully delicate. A flat country with a road leading to a village, and fields with wheatsheaves, is in the Dresden Gallery. This is temperate in colouring and beautifully lighted. Equally fine is an extensive view over a hilly but bare country, through which a river runs; in the Louvre. The horseman and beggar on a bridge are by Wouvermans: here the grey-greenish harmony of the tone is in fine accordance with the poetic grandeur of the subject. A hill covered with oak woods, with a peasant hastening to a hut to escape the gathering shower, is in the Munich Gallery. The golden warmth of the trees and ground, and the contrast between the deep clear chiaroscuro and soft rain-clouds, and the bright gleam of sunshine, render this picture one of the finest by this master.