Malcolm Bell

“ Yet it is as a teacher that the artist is seen at his highest: he would sooner point out the true way to those who seek it than admonish those who have wandered. He never wearies of emphasizing the reality of the power of Love, the fallacy underlying the fear of Death. To the early masters Death was a bare and ghastly skeleton, above all things to be shunned; to Watts it is a grand, impressive figure, awful indeed but not horrible, irresistible but not ruthless, a bringer of rest and peace, not to be rashly sought but to be welcomed when the inevitable hour shall strike. ”

“ The transition from the loving care bestowed upon the splendid study of the gnarled and shattered willow-tree in front, through the more broadly yet quite adequately expressed foliage behind it on the left, to the slight yet all-sufficient treatment of the river and landscape beyond it on the right, shows a precise adaptation of the necessary means to the desired end, which, had no other line of Rembrandt's etching come down to us, would have been enough to stamp him as the finest known exponent of the art. ”

“ There was, on the other hand, but a single objection to the scheme—the parting with his mother; and to such an affectionate and home-loving nature as Rembrandt's the difficulty can have been no small one. Still, a man has to do a man's work in this life. Adriaen, his brother, and Lysbeth, his sister, were there to minister to her comfort, while Amsterdam was no great distance away; and though, doubtless, it was not altogether without tears that the widowed Neeltje consented to the departure of her youngest son, the decision was taken, and the consent yielded at last. ”

“ Believing devoutly in the high mission of didactic art, he strove ever to carry out his part of it faithfully. To quote his own words: “My intention has not been so much to paint pictures that charm the eye, as to suggest great thoughts that will appeal to the imagination and the heart, and kindle all that is best and noblest in humanity”; and his tenet is that the main object of the painter should be “demanding noble aspirations, condemning in the most trenchant manner prevalent vices, and warning in deep tones against lapses from morals and duties.” ”

“ In such a plate as the "Blind Tobit" (B. 42) there is not a detail of the technique which other men could not have done as well; but for such another presentment of the hurried, helpless groping for the door by a blind, weak old man not yet inured to the perpetual darkness that has fallen on him, we must wait for a second Rembrandt—and the wait is likely to be long. ”

“ To the same early masters Love was usually a mere distributor of sensual pleasures, a tricksy spirit instinct with malice and bringing more harm than happiness to humanity, though neither was of much moment. Watts has not altogether ignored this view, and in “Mischief” (1878) has portrayed Man, love-led, entangled among the thorns of he world; but, in the main, Love to him is the chief guide and helper of mankind along the barren, rock-strewn path of life, through whom alone he can attain the higher levels, and who triumphs in the end over Death itself. ”

“ Of recent years pewter has taken its place among the articles sought after by collectors, and its cost has so materially and rapidly increased that the manufacture of vessels, guaranteed of course genuinely antique, bids fair to become once more a paying industry. Unfortunately the various enactments compelling each maker to stamp his ware with a definite touch mark seem at all times to have been very generally evaded or ignored, and experience alone is therefore the only safe guide to distinguishing new from old. ”

“ The course of true love in this case ran smoothly enough; the young people soon came to an understanding; no difficulties were raised by Sylvius, who acted as Saskia's guardian; and the marriage was only deferred till Saskia came of age. The union, indeed, from a worldly point of view, was unexceptionable. Saskia, it is true, was of a good family, while Rembrandt sprang from the lower middle class, but he had already carved out for himself a rank above all pedigrees. Saskia was twenty, and he, with all his fame, was only twenty-six. ”

“ In the first the kindly old lady, whoever she may be, wears a large white hood shading her forehead. The right side of her face, with the exception of the prominence of the cheekbone, is in shadow, and the strong light falling on the left side of the head brings into relief the wrinkles by the nose and at the corner of the mouth, and the soft fleshy forms of the cheek and jaw. ”

“ In the first, “Love and Life,” exhibited in 1885, a replica of an earlier picture in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and of another version presented by him to the Luxembourg, Paris, Love, a figure in the prime of manhood, leads and supports the slender, clinging girl who symbolizes Life up to the craggy mountain-top, while he partly shields her from the blast under a broad wing. Of this he himself said, “Probably ‘Love and Life’ best portrays my message to the age. Life, represented by the female figure, never could have reached such heights unless protected and guided by Love” ”

“ The merit of the work is no less dubious ground for judgment; for while producing, over and over again, masterpieces of the art that have never been equalled, [Pg 92] he at other times, through carelessness, indifference, or perhaps ill-health, turned out and left for future ages stuff which most far inferior men would have obliterated there and then. We can only decide each for ourselves that such or such a plate is in no way worthy of Rembrandt, but, unless we have the courage of M. Legros, we cannot go on to assert definitely that therefore it is not his. ”

“ Watts's lesson on the theme of death. Stretched on a bier and reverently sheeted lies a corpse; strewn neglected on the ground lie the ermine robe of worldly rank, the weapons of the warrior, the lute of the musician, the book of human learning, the palmer's robe of late repentance and the roses of fleeting pleasures ”

“ Among all the portraits of Rembrandt, real or supposed, there is none which makes one feel so strongly that here, indeed, one is face to face with him, as he saw himself when he sat drawing from the mirror in front of him. ”

“ He expresses his ideas for the most part in terms of beauty, an idealized, classical beauty of form, a glowing, Venetian beauty of colour, though his conviction of the deadly danger of heaped-up riches, which he vindicated in his life as well as in his work, has, in such cases as “The Minotaur” (exhibited in 1896) “Mammon” (1885) and “Jonah” (1895) , where the unveiled vileness of Cruelty and Greed is fearlessly depicted, driven him to the presentment of sheer ugliness or brutality. Far oftener a vast, all-embracing tenderness inspires his work; it is the sorrow, not the sin, that stirs him. ”

“ Beginning with the early etchings of himself or the members of his family, often mere drawings on copper, with little or no appeal to the variety of line and tone obtainable in etching, he may follow the artist's sure and rapid development, until he finds him master of every method the art permits. He may trace the progress of his work, from a first sketch of an idea, dashed off on the copper in one sitting, to the high perfection of such an elaborate portrait as that of "Burgomaster Six." ”

“ Of recent years old Sheffield plate after long neglect has come into fashion again, and genuine articles in good condition have greatly gone up in value, often exceeding in cost those of more modern date in sterling silver. Concurrently fraudulent imitation has regrettably increased. In some cases the whole object is a modern reproduction in electro-plate, but more often really old articles from which the original plating has been worn off in course of time have been replated, both equally being in the eyes of the connoisseur unworthy of serious attention and comparatively valueless. ”

“ The grandeur and dignity of his style, the ease and purposefulness of his brushwork, the richness and harmoniousness of his colouring—qualities partly his own, partly derived from his study of Italian masters at an early and impressionable age—are acknowledged even by those to whom his elevated educational intentions are a matter of indifference, if not of absolute disapprobation; while many, to whom his exceptional artistic attainment is a sealed book, have gathered courage or consolation from the grave moral purpose and deep human sympathy of his teaching. ”

“ A far more satisfactory production, indeed the best of the year, is "The Descent from the Cross by Torchlight" (B. 83) , with its bold drawing and coarse yet effective handling, but, like all the work of 1654, it has serious and obvious defects; while the last to be noted, "The Game of Golf" or Kolf (B. 125) , is yet another instance of Rembrandt's contentedly signing a work which would disgrace a man without a tithe of his genius, and is one of those plates which, if it be authentic—and no one else that I know of disputes it—renders any test of genuineness by workmanship impossible. ”

“ One would have supposed that such devoted art-patrons as the Dutch people of that time, would have hailed with delight the creation of such a masterpiece by one of themselves, and would have showered praises and commissions upon its creator. The very contrary seems to have been the fact; nor is the reason far to seek.
Holland at that time abounded in Guilds and Companies, civil and military, Boards of Management of this or that Hospital or charitable Institution, and a perfect craze for being painted in groups animated one and all. ”

“ The world is exceptionally well provided with opportunities of judging of the qualities of G. F. Watts's art, for with a noble generosity he presented to his country a representative selection of the best work of his long life. ”

“ He has grown stout, his throat hangs in puffy folds below his chin, his nose has coarsened, and he bears his two-and-forty years but badly; but if his face has aged, it has also strengthened, he has learned as well as suffered, and, if there is no longer in his eyes the look of undoubting self-approval, there is still the same keen, penetrating gaze of observation, and a wiser self-confidence born of trials and labours past and overcome. ”

“ Impossible to drive, yet easy enough to lead, a giant in his studio, a child in his business relations with the world outside its doors, he should have found some steady practical head to regulate his household affairs and introduce some order and economy into his haphazard ways. Such, unfortunately for him in the end, Saskia was not. ”

“ Leyden, again, was a University town, where religion and philosophy were more thought of and more sought after than such a trifle as art, as indeed is still the case in some University towns that could be mentioned; while Amsterdam was a city of prosperous traders making more money than they knew how to spend or employ, and ready enough to devote some of their superfluity to portraits of themselves and wives, or pictures of incidents and places, and it was clearly desirable that one able and willing to satisfy their wishes in this respect should be upon the spot. ”