Hippolyte Taine

“ Examine the landscapes of Van der Neer and you will obtain some idea of the vast sluggish streams which, on approaching the sea, become a league wide, and lie asleep, wallowing in their beds like some huge, flat, slimy fish, turbid and feebly glimmering with scaly reflections. The plain is oftentimes below their level, and is only protected by levees of earth. You feel as if some of them were going to give way; a mist is constantly rising from their surfaces, and at night a dense fog envelopes all things in a bluish humidity. ”

“ Artists, in other respects, lack no process and no preparation; they understand perspective, they know the use of oil, and are masters of modelling and relief; they have studied actual types; they know how to paint dresses, accessories, architecture and landscape with wonderful accuracy and finish; their manipulative skill is admirable. One defect only still chains them to hieratic art, which is the immobility of their faces and the rigid folds of their stuffs. They have but to observe the rapid play of physiognomies and the easy movement of loose drapery, and the renaissance is complete ”

“ Distrust the maxim that the best painter is he who is the most dissipated. Unworthy of the name of artist is he who leads an evil life. Painters should never dispute or enter into strife with each other. To squander one's property is not a meritorious art. Avoid paying court to women in your youthful days. Shun the society of frivolous women, who corrupt so many painters. Reflect before you depart for Rome, for the opportunities to spend money there are great, and none are there for earning it. ”

“ No nation, it must be noted, lives alone in the world; alongside of the Flemish renaissance there existed the Italian renaissance, and the large tree stifled the small plant. It flourished and grew for a century; the literature, the ideas and the masterpieces of precocious Italy imposed themselves on sluggish Europe, and the Flemish cities, through their commerce, and the Austrian dynasty, through its possessions and its Italian affairs, introduced into the North the tastes and models of the new civilization. ”

“ And, indeed, when we regard the sculptures of the time, such as the chimney of the Palais de Justice and the tomb of Charles the Bold at Bruges, the church and monuments of Brou, we see the promise of an original and complete art, less sculptural and less refined than the Italian, but more varied, more expressive and closer to nature, less subject to rule but nearer to the real, more capable of manifesting spirit and personality, the impulses, the unpremeditated, the diversities, the lights and darks of education, temperament and age of the individual ”

“ Shake off the middle age entirely! Depict the modern man for us as you find him within you and outside of you. Paint him vigorous, healthy and content with existence. Forget the meagre, ascetic and pensive spirit, dreaming in the chapels of Hemling. If you choose a religious scene for the motive of your picture, compose it, like the Italians, of active and healthy figures, only let these figures proceed from your national and personal taste. You have a soul of your own, which is Flemish and not Italian ”

“ They still paint small pictures, suitable for genre subjects; they almost always preserve the strong and rich coloring of the preceding age, the mountains and blue distances of John Van Eyck, the clear skies vaguely tinged with emerald on the horizon, the magnificent stuffs covered with gold and jewels, the powerful relief, the minute precision of detail, and the solid honest heads of the bourgeoisie. But as they are no longer restrained by hieratic gravity they fall, in attempting to emancipate themselves, into simple awkwardness and ridiculous inconsistencies. ”

“ This art mixes up nature promiscuously, according to its own disordered fancies; it is unconscious of the true forms and the true tint of trees and mountains: it makes its figures howling, and introduces amidst the costumes of the period grotesque monsters similar to those promenading through the kermesses. But all these intermediary objects are natural, and insensibly lead on to its final state, which is the knowledge and love of actual life, as the eye contemplates it. ”

“ Holland, in like manner, is simply a pasturage, a natural tillage, which, instead of exhausting the soil, renews it, providing its cultivators with the amplest crops, and affording to the consumer the most strengthening aliments. In Holland, at Buicksloot, there are millionaire cow-herds, the Netherlands ever seeming to the stranger to be a land of feasting and good cheer. If you turn from agricultural to industrial results, you will everywhere encounter the same art of utilizing and making the best of things. ”

“ Like a small river receiving a large stream, the mingled waters of which are disturbed until the foreign affluent imposes its more powerful tint on the entire current, so do we find the national style, invaded by the Italian, dappled irregularly and in places, gradually disappearing, only rarely rising to the surface, and at last sinking into obscure depths, whilst the other displays itself in the light and attracts universal attention. ”

“ Painting, which is epic in the hands of Hubert Van Eyck, becomes idyllic in those of Hemling and almost worldly in those of Quintin Matsys. It gets to be pathetic, interesting and pleasing. The charming saints, the beautiful Herodias and the lithe Salome of Quintin Matsys are richly attired noble dames and already laic; the artist loves the world as it is and for itself, and does not subordinate it to the representation of the supernatural world he does not employ it as a means but as an end. ”

“ In the seventeenth century Holland, remaining free, occupies for a century the place which England now holds in the world of to-day. It is in vain for Flanders to fall back into Spanish hands, to be ravaged by the wars of Louis XIV., to be surrendered to Austria, to serve as a battle-ground for the wars of the Revolution; she never descends to the level of Spain or Italy; the partial prosperity she maintains throughout the miseries of repeated invasion and under a bungling despotism shows the energy of her inspiring good sense and the fecundity of her assiduous labor. ”

“ Here, as in the painting of portraits, the chain is complete; the metal of all its links is national: through Breughel, Paul Bril and Peter Neefs, through Antonis Moor, the Pourbus and the Mierevelts, it joins on to the Flemish and Dutch masters of the seventeenth century. The rigidity of ancient figures is relaxed; a mystic landscape becomes real; the transition from the divine to the human age is accomplished. ”

“ If we visit their country and read their journals, those at least not got up in Paris, we seem to have fallen upon the provinces, and even lower. Polemical discussions are gross, the flowers of rhetoric stale, humor rudely indulged, and wit pointless; a coarse joviality and a coarse anger supply the material; their very caricatures seem to us stupid. If we attempt to ascertain their contributions to the great edifice of modern thought we find that patiently and methodically, like honest and faithful workmen, they have hewn out a few blocks. ”

“ Chroniclers arise like Châtelain, and pamphleteers like Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde, but their unctuous narratives are inflated; their overcharged eloquence, coarse and crude, recalls, without equalling it, the rude color and vigorous grossness of their national art. They have scarcely any literature at the present day. Their only novelist, Conscience, seems to us, although a tolerable observer, dull and unrefined. ”

“ Even nowadays the great musical endowment of being able to sing in parts is encountered even amongst the populace; the coal-miners organize choral societies; I have heard laborers in Brussels and Antwerp, and the ship caulkers and sailors of Amsterdam sing in chorus, and in true time, while at work and in the street on returning home at night. There is no large Belgian town in which a chime of bells, perched in the belfry, does not every quarter of an hour amuse the artizan in his shop and the trader at his counter with the peculiar harmonies of their sonorous metal. ”

“ Excepting his native stimulus he is Italian, and no longer belongs to his race; scarcely more than a fragment of costume or the simple attitude of a stooping old man connects him with his country. Nothing remains to the painter but to abandon it entirely. Denis Calvaert establishes himself at Bologna, enters into competition with the Caraccis, and is the master of Guido. Flemish art accordingly seems, through its own course, to suppress itself for the advantage of another.
And yet it still subsists underneath the other. In vain does the genius of a people yield to foreign influences. ”

“ The sea threatened them; after forcing it back, they avail themselves of it to traffic with all nations. The winds sweep unimpeded across their flat country and over the turbulent ocean; they make them swell the sails of their vessels and move the wings of their windmills. ”

“ It is necessary to see the comfort of their apartments, especially the houses of the middle classes - carpets, waxed cloths for the floors, warm and heat-saving chimneys of iron and porcelain, triple curtains at the windows, clear, dark and highly polished windowpanes, vases of flowers and green plants, innumerable knick-knacks indicative of sedentary habits and which render home life pleasant, mirrors placed so as to reflect the people passing in the street together with its changing aspects ”

“ Still, at the present day its inhabitants are obliged to guard the soil against the rivers and the sea. In Belgium the margin of the sea is below the level of the water at high tide, the polders or low spots thus reclaimed displaying vast argillaceous flats, with a slimy soil tinged with purple reflections, between dykes, which, even in our days, sometimes break away. The danger in Holland is still greater, life there seeming to be very precarious. For thirteen centuries a great inundation has taken place, on an average, every seven years, besides smaller ones ”

“ Compared with other nations of the same stock and with a genius no less practical, the denizen of the Netherlands appears better balanced and more capable of being content. We do not see in him the violent passions, the militant disposition, the overstrained will, the bull-dog instincts, the sombre and grandiose pride which three permanent conquests and the secular establishment of political strife have implanted in the English ”

“ Sow a number of seeds of the same vegetable species in different soils, under various temperatures, and let them germinate, grow, bear fruit and reproduce themselves indefinitely, each on its own soil, and each will adapt itself to its soil, producing several varieties of the same species so much the more distinct as the contrast is greater between the diverse climates. Such is the experience of the Germanic race in the Netherlands. Ten centuries of habitation have done their work; the end of the middle ages shows us that, in addition to its innate character, there is an acquired character. ”

“ The foundations of every town and village in Friesland are artificial constructions. It is estimated that seven and a half billions of francs have been expended on protective works between the Scheldt and the Dollart. Life has to be purchased in Holland. And when from Harlem or Amsterdam you see the enormous yellow surf beating against that narrow strip of mud, and enclosing it as far as the eye can reach, it is evident that man, in casting this sop to the monster, obtains safety at a low rate. ”

“ They ignore that spiritual turmoil, those eruptions of suppressed feeling which give to style a tragic accent, and that vagabond fancy, those exquisite and sublime reveries which outside of life's vulgarities reveal a new universe. ”

“ In the older cities the house often stands with its gable to the street, festooned with arcades, branchings and leafage, which terminate in a bird, an apple or a bust; it is not, as in our cities, a continuation of its neighbor an abstract compartment of vast barracks, but an object apart, endowed with a special and private character, at once interesting and picturesque. Nothing could be better kept and cleaner. ”

“ A man there, who gives a dinner party, knows how to make his wines succeed each other in such a way as not to impair the taste and have as many as possible consumed. As to the pleasures of the ear and the eye, they understand them as well as those of the palate and the stomach. They instinctively love the music which we only appreciate through culture. In the sixteenth century they are first in this art ”

“ It always recovers. These are temporary, while that is eternal; it belongs to the flesh and the blood, the atmosphere and the soil, the structure and degree of activity of brain and senses; all are animating forces incessantly renewed and everywhere present, and which the transient applause of a superior civilization neither undermines nor destroys. ”

“ Sometimes the ocean runs up and forms inner seas like that of Harlem, or deep gulfs like the Zuyder Zee. If Belgium is an alluvial expanse, formed by the rivers, Holland is simply a deposit of mud surrounded by water. Add to all this an unpropitious soil and a rigorous climate, and you are tempted to conclude that the country was not made for man but for storks and beavers. ”

“ Mabuse, Morstaert, Van Orley, the two Pourbus, John Van Cleve, Antonis Moor, the two Mierevelts and Paul Moreelze produce excellent portraits; often, in the triptychs, the faces of the donataires, arranged in rows on the shutters, form a contrast in their homely sincerity, calm gravity and profound simplicity of expression with the frigidity and artificial composition of the principal subject; the spectator feels himself quite re-animated; instead of manikins he finds men. ”

“ Nothing is more opposed to Germanic and Flemish genius, which sees things as they are in their entirety and complexity; which, in man, takes in, besides man in general, the contemporary, the citizen, the peasant, the laborer, this citizen, that laborer, that peasant; which attaches as much importance to the accessories of a man as to the man himself ”