What I admired above all were hands by Rembrandt and Hals, hands full of life, though unfinished; for instance, some of the hands in the “Syndics of the Cloth Hall,” and in the “Jewish Bride.” And I felt much the same in regard to some heads, eyes, noses and mouths, which seemed to be laid on with one single stroke of the brush, and without any sign of retouching. Bracquemond has made such good engravings of them that one can appreciate the painter’s technique in the print.
But, Theo, how necessary it is, especially at the present day, to study the old Dutch pictures, and such of the French as those by Corot, Millet, etc. At a pinch one can well dispense with the others, for they often lead one further astray than one imagines. The thing is to keep at it, and to paint everything as far as possible at one go! What a real joy it is to see a Franz Hals! How different these pictures are from those in which everything seems to be painted in the same smooth way, like lacquer.
On the very same day on which I saw the old Dutch masters, Brouwer, Ostade, and above all Terborch, I just chanced to see a Meissonier—the one of the Fodor Museum.[20] Now Meissonier worked in exactly the same way as they did; his pictures are very deeply thought out and deliberated, but painted at one stroke, and probably with every touch quite right from the start.
I believe it is better to scrape an unsuccessful portion of one’s picture completely away and to begin again, than to keep on trying to improve it.
I saw a sketch by Rubens and another by Diaz almost at the same time. They were certainly not alike, but the creed of the artists who painted them was the same—the conviction that colour expresses form when it is in the right place with the right associations. Diaz in particular is a painter to the backbone, and is conscientious to the finger-tips.
I must refer once more to certain modern pictures, which are becoming ever more and more plentiful. About fifteen years ago people began to speak about “luminosity” and “light.” Even if this was right in the first place—and one cannot deny that the system produced very masterful works—it is now beginning to degenerate ever more and more throughout the whole of the art-world into an excessive production of pictures which have the same lighting on all four sides, the same general atmosphere as I believe they call it, and the same local colour. Is that good??? I do not think so.
Does the Ruysdael of van der Hoop (the one with the Mill) give one the impression of open air? Is there any atmosphere in it—any distance? The earth and the air constitute a whole and belong to each other.
Van Goyen is the Dutch Corot. I stood for a long while before the monumental picture in the Dupper collection.
As for Franz Hals’s yellow, you can call it what you like, citron amorti or jaune chamois, but what have you gained? In the picture it appears to be quite light, but just you hold something white against it.