Sunsnakes.
Double. Single.
Of course throughout the natural working of Time’s processes, the merging of myths and the blending of conceptions, certain bold and salient developments, if projected with sufficient force and persistency, must ever remain paramount. This is the case with the Svastika and with that other symbol, that of the lotus, with which it is almost invariably found in conjunction. There are many indeed who claim that the two symbols are indivisible. Professor Goodyear, no mean authority, is specially insistent on this point. He holds that it is the lotus that is the keynote of decoration. The lotus, he contends, is the Tree of Life, or rather the accepted Tree of Life is really the lotus in one or another of its many aspects. The spiral scroll, he urges, comes from the bent sepals of the lotus much exaggerated, which being squared becomes the Greek fret or meander or key pattern, and this doubled forms the Svastika. ¶ The Lotus and the Tree of Life will form the subject of the next article.
[Previous articles of this series were published in Nos 1 and 3, for March and May, 1903.]
THE COOK ASLEEP, BY JAN VERMEER OF DELFT, IN THE COLLECIION OF MONSIEUR RUDOLPHE KANN
⇒
LARGER IMAGE
THE DUTCH EXHIBITION AT THE GUILDHALL
❧ ARTICLE I.—THE OLD MASTERS ❧
THERE is every probability that the current exhibition of early and modern pictures by Dutch artists will prove to be one of the most popular which has yet been held at the Guildhall; not, indeed, because it is of finer quality than its predecessors, but from the fact that the pictures are well within the grasp of the average man. There is nothing incomprehensible to those least acquainted with Dutch art, and there is something that will appeal to all. It must have occurred to many with regard to pictures of Holland by artists of varying nationality that only the Dutchman really grasps the subtleties of the country. All the rest look upon it with alien eyes, and give us but the external form. They never get behind the veil and infect us with that indefinable exquisiteness and charm so characteristic of Holland with its pastoral flats, pollard willows, canals, picturesque craft and windmills and, most wonderful of all, that delicate atmosphere softening the harshest lines into a melodious ensemble, and overhead the immensity of sky, vast in its expanse and with its delicacies of blues and greys. The finest Dutch landscape painters have always painted in a minor key; whenever they seek to modulate into the major they lose themselves and become commonplace. This applies equally to Rüysdael and to Jacob Maris; doubtless it is an expression of the national temperament of the Dutchman. Generally upon emerging from a contemplation of the old men into a modern artistic environment a feeling of repulsion creeps over one, but this is not the case here. Rüysdael and Rembrandt seem strangely in harmony with Maris and Mauve, and in this fact may be found a plea for the endurance of the latter. A very different impression is given, for instance, when one leaves an eighteenth-century French picture and comes to a modern French landscape. The modern Dutch school have maintained the traditions of their predecessors, and one of them at least—Jacob Maris—is worthy to be put on the same plane as Rüysdael and Hobbema. ¶ In the small gallery upstairs the student of seventeenth-century Dutch art will find much to admire, still more to interest him, and not a few examples which will tax his ingenuity as to attribution. Among these last are some of the six pictures ascribed to Rembrandt. The most important, and perhaps the one which should attract the most attention, is the large landscape Le Commencement d’Orage, which is surpassed by little in the landscape work of Rembrandt for poetical intensity and incisive truth. This picture is by most modern critics denied to Rembrandt; as the question is one which must be fully dealt with, its discussion may conveniently be postponed to the end of this paper. ¶ When we leave this and come to the portraits we find but one, the Portrait of the Painter’s Son Titus, which has any serious pretensions to be considered as coming from his brush. Against this, however, nothing can be urged in point of quality. Of the Dutch master’s last and finest manner—it is dated 1655—it has all the pathetic realism of his unsubdued genius. It is interesting to compare this canvas, which is undoubtedly a portrait of Titus, with that of the same boy in the Wallace collection. As this is dated authentically 1655, the Hertford House picture should be painted within the next year, or at the latest in 1657, whereas it is approximately dated in the catalogue 1658–60. On the score of quality there is little to choose, but perhaps the English picture is in a better state of preservation. The Head of a Man, a careful work, and with many good qualities to recommend it, is in all probability a work of Solomon de Koninck, who was one of those pupils of Rembrandt who assimilated most of his technicalities. The extreme timidity of many of those points in which the bolder qualities of Rembrandt would be brought into play, such as the handling of the nose, mouth and hair, go far to convince us of the correctness of this attribution. Coming to The Portrait of the Artist, it appears quite incomprehensible that a picture of such inferior artistic qualities should have been seriously considered for so long a period as a work of the master. Coming from the collections of M. de Calonne, the Marquis Gerini and Mr. Agar, engraved by Seuter and Townley, quoted in Smith, it serves to show the hazy idea of even the best connoisseurs in the early days of the last century. Such a work would be difficult to affiliate upon any of the best known of Rembrandt’s pupils. The weakness of the drawing and lack of power and roundness are clearly the work of but a second-rate man of the period. The signature, moreover, presents no claim to serious consideration. In Ruth and Naomi is possibly to be found the work of a very interesting painter of the school of Rembrandt—Karel Fabritius, who is little known yet in this country. It is painted with remarkable strength and solidity, and although not a great achievement, is worthy of comparison with some of those pictures which are ascribed to the greater light upon very slender foundation. The picture, however, is in such bad condition and has suffered so much that no one can tell what it may have been when fresh. ¶ More interesting upon the whole than the representation of Rembrandt and his School is that of Frans Hals. His so-called Admiral de Ruyter (which is not a portrait of that admiral) for decision and fearless handling has not an equal in the gallery. It is not Hals as we see him at Hertford House, careful and conscientious, though successful, but the spontaneous, daring master whom we find at Haarlem and in the Louvre, at Cassel and St. Petersburg. It is the Hals that we not only admire but also love, the wonder of the cultured art-loving public, and—may we add it?—the despair of the modern portrait painter. Such brushwork has only been equalled, we shall not say surpassed, by a few masters, of whom Velasquez stands out prominently. When, however, we turn to Van Goyen and his Wife and Child, we have another instance of more than doubtful attribution. The landscape is probably by Van Goyen, for it has many of his characteristics of tree draughtsmanship and sober colour. The figures, however, betray nothing of Hals beyond his influence, and even the latter is only just allowable. They are well and strongly painted in parts; but Hals would never be guilty of such loose handling as is observable in the child in the foreground or such weak drawing as the foot of Van Goyen betrays. There is but little from which to deduce an attribution with any degree of certainty. The present ascription is part of that system which insists on fathering upon Hals all the portraits in this manner and of this period, in much the same way as in the past all portraits which betrayed any of the technicalities of Rembrandt were attributed to that master.