I. S. Williams

“ We need hardly talk, of such world-famed paintings as Paul Potter’s bull or Rembrandt’s school of anatomy. Only in that Potter the animal is as he was in the very flesh — it seems odd the twist of a little tuft behind a bull’s shoulder should have been immortalized — and the judges who assisted at the Hague exhibition some weeks ago might have classed him with any of the beasts that were shown in the yard. ”

“ The jolly burghers who fèted the peace of Munster will live on in their every lineament till the colours and the canvas perish by age or accident. For, like truth, Dutch art is eternal, and must always win admiration although it may find few enthusiastic worshippers. ”

“ But there are no great national battle-pictures of those struggles of the War of Independence when Dutchmen fought Spaniards waist deep in the water; and while Backhuysen and Vandervelde launch fleets of peaceful merchantmen and herring-boats, there are no souvenirs of Lumé de la Marck and his desperate beggars of the sea. It is a loss, no doubt; and yet the stranger gains far more than he loses. He feels, if he does not confess, the winning charms of conscientiousness, patience, and perseverance. ”

“ There is the screech of the fiddle from where the musician sits throned high on his cask, and you can see that the peasants who are clattering out of time to the music are shouting with the full force of their lungs, while laughter is shaking the sides of the fat hostess who is standing with arms akimbo, and of that other ancient with the blue-veined beer jug in his hand. You have had enough of the vulgar debauch and want something from more refined society. ”

“ What can be more perfect in its way than that stretch of weed-grown moat, sleeping half in the shadow, half in the sunshine, under the venerable city wall, with its bartizans and turrets and embattled gate, and the steep, moss-grown house gables, rising behind it. ”

“ Far as eye can reach stretches that dull flat of rank, rich, unwholesome-looking green they have seen so often, with the shadowy sails of the more distant windmills vaguely breaking the horizon. There is the straight network of ditches arranged rectangularly to drain the superabundant moistures into the broad canal with its deep-laden barges and an occasional trekschuit. ”

“ In landscape, for example, a Salvator who has nursed his genius in the savage solitudes of the Abruzzi may carry his recollections with him to Rome, and reproduce them with the vigour that carries irresistible conviction in the quiet seclusion of the palace of his Roman patrons. But the picturesque genius of a Salvator working upon a solid foundation of observation and experience is sure to betray a score of tolerably competent imitators into weaknesses and indiscretion. ”

“ Dotted about everywhere are the groups of great coarse-bred cattle, often watery sky-blue in their colour like the milk they yield in such profusion — the cattle that enliven the pieces of Cuyp and Paul Potter. ”

“ We may dispense with Murray and Baedeker when we take for our guides the ideas we have picked up, almost unconsciously, among the works of the Dutch masters scattered through our English galleries.
Rural Holland must always remain what it always has been, but the cities have changed somewhat with the manners and customs of the citizens. It is the older Holland you have an opportunity of studying in the galleries of the Hague and Amsterdam. ”

“ Only it is as dull and uncharacteristic as fashionable life generally is, and the conscientious painter has made no attempt to idealize. A lady, young, fat, and fair, in pearls and a white satin stomacher, is listening to the vapid nothings of a handsome and stupid cavalier in inlaid cuirass and Terburg’s inevitable slashed satin trunk hose. ”

“ If he has little excitement, he has a great deal of quiet enjoyment. He is never elevated above earthly things by such a transcendent masterpiece of genius as the “Transfiguration, nor entranced by a face so heavenly as the Madonna’s of San Sisto. ”

“ But it dates from the period when chivalrous courage, constancy, and self-sacrifice had given Holland an actual history, when its substantial burghers found money to spare for matters comparatively frivolous, and when artists ranked among the recognized guilds that were decently remunerated like other handicrafts. From the first, Dutch artists turned their attention to the real, making little pretension to inspiration and showing few signs of imagination. ”

“ Italians generally, and the school of Venice especially, are too apt to deck the Virgin with jewels and robe the Fathers in silks and brocades, while the simple fishermen of Galilee find themselves grouped round a board which is loaded with dainties and groans with golden plate. ”