Elizabeth W. Champney

“ We are charmed, but at the same time puzzled until we understand that Jacob Maris is not a realist; that it is many years since he has made a sketch from nature; that he seeks only to secure a harmonious composition, a symphony in color and line, and depends for his details upon his wonderful memory and imagination. His pictures are essentially Holland, but a Holland that one recognizes everywhere and nowhere. He constructs, demolishes, and reconstructs until he has created a landscape of his own that recalls the old, picturesque Holland which is so rapidly disappearing. ”

“ His street-scenes are full of light and movement, and are treated with daintiness, delicacy of touch, charm of color, and grace of style entirely unmixed with any sophistication, pose, or artificiality. The charm comes simply from his own fine nature, which makes it possible for him to discover latent refinement where it would escape a coarser man. We found his studio filled with delightful studies, made in pastel and in gouache, of river views in France and England, soft, gray idyls of dawn and twilight. ”

“ Each picture is to him a new problem of light, of color, of subject, from which is to be evolved an exquisite harmony. He is an idealist, a romancer with landscape. His pictures are not nature pure and simple, but nature viewed through his temperament. He transposes tones to a lower gamut, always preserving an impression of light either present or about to burst forth. The mists are light and shifting; dawn is just going to break; another moment, and the sky will be flooded with splendor ”

“ He is by preference the painter of poverty, and of that kind of poverty which sets its seal of deformity upon body and soul, which cramps the brain, coarsens the face, and frenzies the eye, or leaves it in lusterless despair. He is a tragedian who never goes beyond nature, but shows us her glooms and sterner phases with a realism touched with pathos — the Tolstoi of the painter's art. ”

“ William Maris, the youngest of these talented brothers, resides at The Hague, and makes a specialty of painting cattle and ducks. It has been said of him by an eminent art critic that no Dutch painter so well knows how to depict the life of an animal. There is a refreshing sensation in viewing one of his pictures, his skies are so clear, his foliage is so fresh and luxuriant. His ducks and ducklings are altogether charming. The canals on which they float are limpid, the water-cresses succulent, the reeds and rushes graceful. ”

“ The pools and puddles are very wet; the skies have wonderful clouds, full of light or delicately veiled.
Gabriel lives in a modest house near the suburbs. The walls of his studio and of an adjoining room, with the hall and the staircase, are covered with studies of landscapes — amber canals; old windmills of the Belgian type, set up on stilts, silhouetted against glowing sunsets; wide, dark fields threaded by lines of fire, where the water catches the sunset reflections; or morning skies, with turtledove clouds glinted with mother-of-pearl. Gabriel is a dreamer. ”

“ He is a most earnest and conscientious worker, with a sadness in his face not common to the Dutch painter; for even Israels, whose pictures are all tragedy and gloom, is debonair and blithe in person. Kever seems oppressed with premature gravity by the problems of life; and even while painting unconscious childhood he does so with a tender pity for the future, the forecast of which he seems to feel. There is no sentimentality; the children of his brush are real children, lovingly and yet realistically rendered. ”

“ Pastel is admirably handled by the Dutch, and by none more delightfully than by Therese Schwartze. Her portraits have wonderful tone, which envelops the subject with a deep, harmonious color supposed to be the attribute of oil-painting. She treats her heads in a broad, masterly manner, and invests them with dignity and refinement. We have nowhere seen a pastel portrait more absolutely satisfying than one of the artist's mother. ”

“ Mesdag is a notable housewife as well as a talented artist. Never was home more beautifully kept, its treasures of art and bric-à-brac being immaculate and in perfect order. Nearly all successful artists are picture-buyers, but few have so ample a fortune to devote to such acquisitions as Mesdag. His collection is famous, and comprises a large number of celebrated and valuable works by modern masters, chiefly of the French school. It is a painter's collection, each picture purchased, not because the artist was in the mode or the painting a sure investment, but because its buyer loved it ”

“ When reproached for the apparent carelessness with which he treats his figures, reversing the method of the older painters of street-scenes, who considered the figures as the picture, and the details of the street as mere accessories in the background, to be slurred over in order to give greater importance to the human interest, Isaac Israels defended his position by maintaining that the houses remain, and create a far more definite impression upon the eye than the passing, hurrying crowd, every face of which is immediately replaced by another, and its memory mingled, blurred, or effaced. ”

“ The Hague is the artistic center of Holland. Amsterdam, with her great gallery, her many talented artists, and her colony at Laren, is a close rival; but The Hague, as the seat of government and the residence of the aristocracy, is perhaps the better patron of art, while its academy attracts the student.
Of the artists residing at The Hague who have made their reputation, who have already "arrived," as the French express it, no one is better known to us than Josef Israels. ”

“ The work of this gifted woman deserves special mention, Broad, strong, and thoughtful, it displays a quiet power, a calm justness of perception, and a certainty of execution which have given her an enviable position both in Europe and America. She has built for herself a little studio at Laren, which is filled with careful studies of peasant life. She is severe with herself, and although a hard worker, exhibits but little.
Since the death of Mauve, Albert Neuhuys, of all the artists in the little colony, is best known to the world. ”

“ Kamerlingh Onnes, a young artist of Leyden, brought up among the pastures of its great botanical garden, and near the tulip-fields of Haarlem, may be said to be intoxicated with color, He is a pyro-technist in flowers, and pushes originality to experiment and eccentricity. He loves to treat them with novel effects of light, and he gives his paintings odd titles which smack a trifle of affectation. ”

“ He loves to paint the returning fleet as the keels grate on the sand and the boats are surrounded by groups of laughing, buxom, bare-legged fisher-wives, some hurrying shoreward with their baskets, and others wading out into the sandy surf for their share of the spoils. ”

“ Deafness shuts him away from much social intercourse; but with the barring of one gateway to the soul, that of vision seems to have been opened wider. He has a genius for finding compositions, and discovers a picture in every scene. ”

“ He is always an accomplished technician who loves to play with new problems.
A christening at FribourgOur compatriot Amy Cross, whose love for flowers was known among us before she went to Holland, has not abandoned them, Her studio is gay with the larger and more decorative varieties; but Dutch influences have drawn her more particularly to the study of figures. Possibly the most successful painter in this specialty is Margaretha Roosenboom, who paints roses of heroic size with an altogether enchanting tonality. ”

“ Popular applause and pecuniary success are never so dear to the artist as the esteem of his peers. To be given distinguished rank by those of his contemporaries whose opinion he respects is the sweetest reward which he can receive. ”

“ A military rendezvousZilcken relates that Mauve, when residing at The Hague, painted much with William Maris; but when sketching in company they nearly always seated themselves back to back; for Maris, a brilliant colorist, chose to outline his trees boldly against a glowing sky, while Mauve preferred a landscape illuminated by a diffused light, the trembling foliage bathed in an atmosphere of fine transparency, the skies lightly colored, aërial, and silvery. ”

“ Another student of character is H. J. Haverman, a young figure-painter, who, working at first in an academical, conventional manner, has latterly entirely changed his style, seeking the type and individuality in his portraits, paintings, and drawings. In method he is a modern, enamoured equally of art and human nature.
Tony Offermans is a figure-painter of the accepted Dutch school, and is by choice the apostle of the laboring class. He depicts the life of the workingman and the artisan. ”

“ Blommers's paintings nearly always depict some phase of family affection; the poverty which he paints is lightened by it, and is never unbearable. He finds sunshine where Israels shows us gloom.
Neighbors of Mr. Blommers, in the same lovely Van Stolk Park, are Mr. and Mrs. C. Bisschop, both noted portrait- and figure-painters. There are few houses in the world so richly fitted with beautiful antique furniture and objects of art. No pieces of modern furniture obtrude themselves in the midst of the medieval treasures. ”

“ Developed in this way, his faculty for appreciation, which demands a connoisseurship far higher than that of criticism, has gone out not only to the paintings of the acknowledged great men, but also to the men with futures, and especially the etchers, whom a meaner nature might have regarded, in some sort, as rivals. Several of these we should not have known but for his kindness.
Artistic ability is frequently inherited, but it as frequently takes a new turn, a different form of expression from that of the father. Perhaps the most talented of the sons of living Dutch painters is Isaac Israels. ”

“ He began his artistic career by painting military subjects in a most careful and finished manner, but has lately evolved an impressionism of his own in the life of the streets. He draws the façades of the shops and houses with care, then rapidly sketches in the moving figures, giving no more time to the drawing of each than it remains before the eye. ”

“ He is a hard worker, but one understands that work with him is luxury. There is no feverish haste, no worry, no drudgery, or weariness, but tranquil enjoyment from which he finds it difficult to tear himself away. ”

“ But he is honest at heart, or he would not love as he does this very honest and unworldly village, where he has built for himself a handsome studio, and buries himself half the year quite away from the fashionable English world, of which he is a favorite. ”

“ Some of these, as Isaac Israels, ten Cate, Bosch Reiz, and others, have studied in Paris, and have interested themselves in the problems attacked by the modern Frenchman; others, as De Zwart, Offermans, De Bock, and indeed the majority of the coming men, while distinctly original, belong virtually to the Dutch school as we know it, either in color tone or in subject. Still, among all this procession of the men of tomorrow there are no direct pupils or imitators of their elders, and some are seeking new and adventurous paths. ”

“ Bauer has been impressed by travel in the Orient, Der Kinderen by medieval decorative painting, others by the symbolists, the idealists, the impressionists, or the mystics; but all are deeply earnest, striving honestly and ably to express themselves, and deserve to be heard, and will be heard in the near future. ”

“ While his drawings at first provoke wonder, they do give the feeling of movement, of agitation, of transitoriness which he wishes to convey, and young Israels may be credited as being, so far, a discoverer. He is wealthy, and does not paint for the market; but it is a pity that these remarkable drawings cannot be seen in America, where they would certainly produce, a sensation. ”

“ There is a rough fireplace where a fire can be lighted, a cupboard-like alcove bed, a shelf of pewter and old delft, a quaint cradle, and other bits of peasant furniture.
"I find my pictures," he explains, "in the real homes of the peasants. I make sketches for them there, then arrange my models here, where I can paint more at my ease." ”

“ While these masters still hold their own, and cannot be passed over in any article on contemporary art in Holland, there have arisen a number of younger men worthy to be ranked with those who have already won fame, and of whom we are certain to hear and see more in the early years of the coming century. ”

“ With all his personal achievement, he is not a self-centered or a selfish man. His sympathies go out readily to his brother artists, and especially to younger aspirants. He is the teacher par excellence, and many of the younger painters have acquired their insight through him. ”