Esther Singleton

“ Very often Van Mieris shows us a spacious and magnificently decorated hall, in the background of which a richly dressed lady and her lover are walking; again he allows us to peep into a charmingly furnished room where a lady in white satin is playing the lute to entertain her guest, a handsome cavalier in black velvet; or we surprise a lady as she is about to drink a glass of wine which a page offers her on a silver salver. At other times we find a group of ladies and gentlemen about to enjoy a light repast ”

“ We cannot help noticing the masterly manner in which the artist has rendered the fur of his dead hare, crimsoned with blood; and how lovingly he has caressed the plumage of the neck and crop of his partridges, and reproduced the beautiful lustrous black of the cock, whose wings are splashed with white; how he has made us feel the velvet of the skin at the joining of the muscles, and accentuated the feet and claws. ”

“ On the road, in the middle distance behind Adriaen, is the carriage that has brought them here,—an open four-wheeled chariot, with red seats, drawn by two fine dappled-gray horses, whose harness a servant in gray is examining. On the right, a shepherd is lying on the grass, near a flock of sheep and a goat. In the background is a meadow with cattle, a winding stream, a house half hidden in the woods, and the distant line of the horizon. The landscape has all the delicacy of a Wijnants, but more breadth and harmony. ”

“ When Sir Joshua Reynolds visited the Prince of Orange's collection, he saw these pictures and noted: "Fruits by De Heem, done with the utmost perfection."
His Greatness as a Painter of Fruits, Flowers, and Insects.—De Heem was one of the greatest painters of still life in Holland; no artist of his class combined form and color more successfully. His drawing is correct, and his colors are brilliant and combined harmoniously. He is familiar with every object of stone and silver, every flower, whether humble or gorgeous, every fruit of Europe or the tropics, every twig and leaf and blossom. ”

“ Unlike the moment of Rembrandt and Ruisdael, which is fixed for all eternity, with Vermeer the moment vibrates in the light. The shadows lose their sharp outlines, and the fine brush-work suggests the living change and play of the light. Rembrandt paints light in darkness and lets it glow in the dark, or streaming into it, or in a broad flood of brilliance; but Vermeer prefers to set darkness or twilight against the light. For interiors, Vermeer has another palette and mode of painting than for the outdoor pictures. ”

“ Blanc on Troost's Style.—"What we admire in him to-day is the talent of the painter properly so-called, the art of enlightening and grouping his figures and placing them on the stage, the brush-work, the selection and quality of the tones,—in other words, order, chiaroscuro, color, and touch. A man of wit, he shines in composition; although adroitly calculated, his own humor always appears spontaneous and natural. ”

“ Holland, because of its water-ways, is a silent country and the impression of silence and peace is marvellously reproduced in Van Goyen's pictures. He never allows a brilliant tone to disturb the uniformity and harmony of his watery landscapes; but behind the clouds that float across the sky you divine the far-away sun, like a light behind a curtain. The famous View of the City of Dordrecht, by the latter, signed and dated 1634, is a splendid example of his qualities and style. ”

“ Like Metsu, Ter Borch is particularly fond of making music a motive of his pictures. A timid love often expresses itself to the notes of a mandolin or lute; sometimes we surprise a musical party singing and playing instruments; a lady composing music or trying a new piece for the first time, while her gallant and richly dressed lover stands by her side. Sometimes we see a young lady quite alone in jacket of puce-colored velvet plucking her lute, which rests on her satin skirt. ”

“ All the light which the artist saw fall upon his town, he has succeeded in concentrating at once in this picture, the broad, masterful, sure painting, the luminous colors, the clear sky which arches over the town, all excite our highest admiration. ”

“ In the infinite little world of great nature Rachel finds no creature unworthy of her brush—not even the snail that crawls on the leaf and is hunted away by the gardener, nor the little worm who moves his variegated rings and spins his thread, destined to clothe magnificent ladies, as he elevates himself into the air. Those insects that we deem vile she honors in her paintings: she lets them lie on her marble tables, crawl on the stem of the glass in which her peonies and pinks are arranged; and she even allows them to devour the plums and grapes of her picturesque collations. ”

“ It is only in the distance that hounds and huntsmen are seen hunting the hare, while the poor animal is already dead and hanging by its foot to a branch of a tree in the foreground. A brilliant gamecock, one or two partridges, some ribbons and flowers, and a big garden vase will accompany the hare and form a charming picture for the mere delight of the eyes. Truth, finesse of local color, delightful light and shade, [Pg 152] exquisite handling, and the whole technique of art are employed to make us admire this still life. ”

“ Indeed, there is only a large mill with a round, tower-like base in the ordinary fashion of the country, and three women who are returning to the village. There is nothing to excite the imagination. Yet, notwithstanding, you are filled with an irresistible melancholy. The character and nature of the people are so strongly marked that you are taken out of yourself and transported by the force of the artist's heart and creation. ”

“ A frightful sacrifice of a woman's head to a robe of satin, the unheard-of triumph of an accessory—a charming infraction against all the principles of art—we might call it a colossal fault—but a privilege only allowed to great artists. The painter has by this aroused our curiosity regarding the face of the young girl, who has turned away her head, and so we have to imagine her blushing cheeks and her lowered eyelids. ”

“ The sides of this glass cup reflect several times and in different views the street with the most magical and astounding way, and in the very centre you see the reflection of the painter himself, holding his palette. On one side of the cup are placed, on a glass dish, four superb peaches and some roasted chestnuts; on the other side are bunches of red and white grapes. Butterflies and other insects add to the illusion, and the vine and peach leaves are artistically used to decorate the beautiful pyramidal group that stands out from a looped-back curtain of brownish yellow. ”

“ If the chance be given him he mirrors all these things in the still pool near a cottage, the reaches of a sluggish river, or the swirl of a stream that feeds a busy mill. The same spot will furnish him with several pictures. One mill gives him repeated opportunity of charming our eye. And this wonderful artist, who is only second to Ruisdael because he had not Ruisdael's versatility and did not extend his study equally to downs and rocky eminences or torrents and estuaries,—this is the man who lived penuriously, died poor, and left no trace in the artistic annals of his country. ”

“ Her Truthfulness to Nature.—"Whether she is painting the flowers of the gardens or those of the field, which she [Pg 96] groups so beautifully on marble tables and calls around them fluttering butterflies and droning bees, or beautiful ripe fruits that refresh the eyes and mind, Rachel is always truthful, graceful, and clever. A colorist, she frankly selects the brightest tones and combines them marvellously; a draughtsman, she reproduces splendidly the most complicated forms, while preserving to each plant its individual elegance, its aspect, its way of holding itself, and foreshortening." ”

“ Though his landscapes are severely and moderately toned, generally in an olive key, and often attuned to a puritanical gray or russet, they surprise us, not only by the variety of their leafage, but by the finish of their detail as well as the boldness of their touch. With astonishing subtlety light is shown penetrating cloud, and illuminating—sometimes transiently, sometimes steadily—different portions of the ground, shining through leaves upon other leaves, and multiplying in an endless way the transparency of the picture. ”

“ Among the Dutch landscape painters perhaps there is not one, unless it is Van der Hagen, who would have dared to paint this monotonous plain, all the lines of which are horizontal, all the clumps and rows of trees of the same height, and in which the only objects in the foreground are a cottage half hidden among trees, and, a little farther on, a low sandy hill which does not rise beyond the level of the middle distance. The vast stretch of country is traversed by so many courses of water that it almost looks as if it were threatened with an inundation. The meadows are on a level with the sea ”

“ The circumstances and the way it is painted deprive the picture of all disgust. In contrast with his predecessors, Rembrandt has painted his doctors, not as if they were having their photographs taken and gazing at the spectator, but in the most natural way—some looking at the body and some at the lecturing Dr. Tulp, Tulp himself quiet, and explaining his subject with the greatest authority. The body is painted in a masterly manner and the portraits are beyond all praise. ”

“ Love of Nature seen in his Earlier Works.—"In these works we see the youthful painter turning exclusively to Nature: a clump of bushes on a dune; a glimpse of the 'Haarlemer Hout'; a grove of trees on the shore, he paints exactly as he saw them. But how he saw them! In these early pictures his color is brighter, his manner of painting thicker and stronger than in his later works. Instead of the beautiful clouds for which Ruisdael was so famous, we often see the sky still painted in a more antique manner, with striped clouds in the style of his uncle Salomon. ”

“ A big nail, an earthen pot, a skimmer, a few onions with their shining skins, a broom, a jug of water, and a towel lying on a barrel,—with such simple things he makes a beautiful picture. Perhaps in the background the cook and her dog are discerned. Kalff never allows figures to become too prominent, for he wishes his still life to catch and hold the spectator's interest.
The picture by this artist in the Rijks has for its subject a silver vase, of elegant form, and a porcelain dish filled with oranges and lemons. The objects are tastefully arranged and beautifully painted. ”

“ If he sees in the street a servant coming home from market loaded with vegetables, counting what she has spent and what she is going to steal from the change, there is a picture already made. In the public square he stops to study the faces of the simple dupes gathered around a charlatan vaunting his elixir, teaching the practice of love-philtres, and drawing teeth painlessly. His artist's eye finds motives readily at hand ”

“ This is one of the very few pictures that can be seen of Van Dyck which is in perfect preservation; and on examining it closely it appeared to me a perfect pattern of portrait-painting: every part is distinctly marked, but with the lightest hand and without destroying the breadth of light; the coloring is perfectly true to nature, though it has not the brilliant effect of sunshine, such as is seen in Rubens's wife; it is nature seen by common daylight. ”

“ Beauty to him lies in the silent woe with which the survivors stand in a house of death; in the attitude of the old wife left alone, who spreads her hands stiffly out to the fire, as though she might win a spark of life from the smouldering hearth ”

“ How did he always know how to discover the paintable spot? Frankly, his fancy sometimes made the hills somewhat higher than we really find them at Haarlem; indeed, sometimes, he created landscapes with so poetic a flight, or we might say he sometimes composed them to such an extent that in truth we might seek them in vain in Holland; as, for instance, the great pictures in the Munich museum. We are, therefore, forced to conclude that he had seen Claude Lorraine's pictures, and wanted to paint somewhat in the same spirit. In Haarlem he was painted by Wouwermans, and as a fine little cavalier. ”

“ The sky has darkened in sympathy, as it were, with this epic combat, where two splendid specimens are using their beaks and claws with the greatest fury, and the brilliant feathers fly in all directions. Splendid in color, furious of action, and beautiful in its arrangement of light and shade, it deserves its great reputation. ”