Ludolf Bakhuizen comes second in the succession of Dutch sea painters to W. van de Velde, and the reader is referred to the remarks on that painter (see under 149) for the general characteristics of them both. Whereas, however, Van de Velde preferred calms, Bakhuizen preferred storms, and even "voluntarily exposed his life several times," says a compatriot, "for the sake of seizing, in all its horrible reality, the effects of rough weather" (Havard: The Dutch School, p. 255). It cannot be said, however, that the result was very successful. There is, adds the same critic, a hardness about his forms and a want of transparency in his colours "which cannot be counterbalanced by the fury of upheaved waves or the furious driving of the heavy clouds across the sky." Bakhuizen, before he took to painting, was successively a book-keeper (his father was town-clerk of Emden) and a writing-master. Perhaps it is to his experience in the latter capacity that the hardness and "peruke-like" regularity of his waves are due. In his own day, however, his sea-pieces were very greatly esteemed. The King of Prussia was among his patrons, and the Tzar, Peter the Great, frequently visited his studios, and even himself took lessons of him. He made many constructive drawings of ships for that monarch. He was also an etcher, and the British Museum possesses a fragment of a sketch-book of his.
205. ITINERANT MUSICIANS.
J. W. E. Dietrich (German: 1712-1774).
Johann Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich was born at Weimar, where his father was court-painter. So precocious was his talent that when only in his eighteenth year he was himself appointed court-painter to Augustus II., King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. In 1743 he went to Italy, and after this visit he turned his name into Italian by signing it Dietrici (as in the picture dated 1745). He was afterwards appointed keeper of the celebrated Gallery at Dresden, a Professor of the Academy there, and Director of the school of painting attached to the porcelain manufactory. His pictures and etchings are numerous. In his original work his style remained German. But he had also a remarkable facility in imitating the works of other painters. "He did more," says Merritt, the picture-restorer, "to confound collectors than all other imitators put together. Hundreds of his imitations of the various masters have been sold to second-rate amateurs for original productions" (Art Criticism and Romance, i. 164).
206. THE HEAD OF A GIRL.
Jean Baptiste Greuze (French: 1725-1805).
To understand the great reputation which Greuze enjoyed in his day one should remember, besides the prettiness of his pictures in themselves, the contrast which they afforded in their subject-matter to the art around them. Look, for instance, at 1090 and 101-104. Those pictures are nearly contemporary with Greuze's, and are typical, the first of the mythology, the latter of the courtliness, and all of the sensuality, of the current art of the time. The return to nature, the return to simpler life and sounder morals, which inspired Rousseau, found expression in Greuze's domestic scenes and sweet girl faces. "Courage, my good Greuze," said Diderot of one of Greuze's pictures of domestic drama; "introduce morality into painting. What, has not the pencil been long enough and too long consecrated to debauchery and vice? Ought we not to be delighted at seeing it at last unite with dramatic poetry in instructing us, correcting us, inviting us to virtue?"[112] Greuze's art, in comparison with what was around it, was thus simple, natural, moral. Yet one sees now that something of the artificiality, against which his pictures were a protest, nevertheless affected them. For instance there is an obvious posing in this picture, just as there is a touch of affectation in 1154. Decidedly, too, Greuze "invests his lessons of bourgeois morality with sensuous attractions." There is neither the innocence nor the unconsciousness in the girls of Greuze that there is in those of Reynolds or Millais.
The life of Greuze is interesting for the curious instance it affords of the inability, which so many eminent men have shown, to know in what direction their best powers lay. Greuze's reputation rested on his genre painting—on his rendering of domestic scenes or faces; but his ambition was to figure as an historical painter. His one picture in this style—"Severus and Caracalla" (in the Louvre)—was painted in 1769 as his diploma work for the French Academy. They praised him for "his former productions, which were excellent," and not for "this one, which was unworthy alike of them and of him," and admitted him as a painter in the class of genre only. Greuze, who was vain and overbearing in the days of his vogue, was greatly incensed and ceased to exhibit at the Academy until after the Revolution. But his power had then begun to fail; the classic school reigned supreme; and Greuze, who had been unhappily married, and whose large earnings were squandered by extravagance and bad management, died in great poverty. He was born in Burgundy, of humble middle-class parents, in the little town of Tournus, where his modest birthplace may still be seen. His happiest productions were taken from the daily life of the middle-classes, and his sweet girl faces are unique in French art (Lady Dilke's article in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Morley's Diderot, vol. ii. chap. iii.).
Campbell's "Lines on a picture of a girl by Greuze" may be quoted of this picture:—
What wert thou, maid?—thy life—thy name
Oblivion hides in mystery;
Though from thy face my heart could frame
A long romantic history.
Transported to thy time I seem,
Though dust thy coffin covers—
And hear the songs, in fancy's dream,
Of thy devoted lovers.