Flemish Primitives

“ We wish that we could describe the Jan Steens, the Dous, the Mierises, and other sterling Dutch painters. There is the gallery of Dutch and Flemish primitives about which a volume might be written; their emaciated music appeals. In expressiveness the later men did not excel them. The newest acquisition, not mentioned in the catalogue supplements, is the work of an unknown seventeenth-century master, possibly Spanish, though the figures, background, and accessories are Dutch. Two old men, their heads bowed, sit at table. Across their knees are napkins. The white is from a Spanish palette. ”

“ Only with Hubert and Jan van Eyck (about 1360-1440) does the distinctively Flemish taste begin to show itself—the taste for delicate and minute workmanship, linked with a peculiar realistic idealism, more dainty than German work, more literal than Italian. It is an art that bases itself upon truth of imitation and perfection of finish: its chief æsthetic beauty is its jewel-like colour and its wealth of decorative adjuncts. The subsequent development of Flemish painting—the painting that pleased a clique of opulent commercial patrons—we shall trace in detail in the various cities. ”

“ Toward the close of the fifteenth century, the Dutch gained the ascendency over the others, which it has never since lost. This language is energetic and flexible, rich in synonyms and delicate shades, and from its fullness and strength, better adapted to history, tragedy, and odes, than to comedy and the lighter kinds of poetry. The Flemish, which still remains the literary language of the southern provinces, is inferior to the Dutch, and has been greatly corrupted by the admixture of foreign words. ”

“ Within a century, Flemish art is completely transformed. It appeals to the senses more than to the soul, and finds greatness in the display of physical effort and majestic lines more than in any spiritual fervour. ”

“ Far-seeing minds alone disapprove such excess, and respect only the energy represented by a finished execution whose perfect quiet charms superior men. The life of this essentially thrifty people amply fulfils the conditions of happiness which the masses desire as the lot of the average citizen.
A refined materialism is stamped on all the habits of Flemish life. English comfort is harsh in tone and arid in color; whereas the old-fashioned Flemish interiors rejoice the eye with their mellow tints, and the feelings with their genuine heartiness. ”

“ But this sort of sublime deformity is characteristic of the whole fancy and energy of these Flemish cities. Flanders has the flattest and most prosaic landscapes, but the most violent and extravagant of buildings. Here Nature is tame; it is civilisation that is untamable. ”

“ The small shopmen, and the men and women of the markets, all look and talk Flemish, and the environment is everywhere as distinctly Flemish as if one were standing on one of the little bridges which cross the waterways of Ghent or Bruges.
The men and women are broad-bodied and coarse-featured,—quite different from the Dutch, one remarks,—and they move slowly and with apparent difficulty in their clumsy sabots and heavy clothing. The houses round about are tall and slim, and mostly in that state of antiquity and decay which we like to think is artistic.
Such is Flemish Brussels. ”

“ Conscience was eventually to make his greatest successes in the description of contemporary Flemish life, but his historical romances and his popular history of Flanders helped to give a popular basis to a movement which had been started by professors and scholars. ”

“ I only know that while stolid, and unemotional ordinarily, they are intensely patriotic. They became highly excited during the struggle some years ago to have their Flemish tongue preserved and taught in the schools, and I remember the crowds of people thronging the streets of Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges, with bands of music playing, and huge banners flying, bearing in large letters legends such as "Flanders for the Flemings." ”

“ Individually the savants may quarrel as to their merits, but, taking them all together, these paintings—for the most part by Flemish artists—prove that the great traditions of Rubens and Van Dyck, Jordaens and Teniers, have not been forgotten in their native land and that modern Flemish art is a worthy successor to the greatness of the past. ”

“ ANTWERP FROM THE TIME OF RUBENS TILL TO-DAY
If there is one name more honoured in Flanders than any other—more often employed as the name of hotels, restaurants or cafés; more frequently on the lips of guides, caretakers and sacristans; more constantly in the mind of every tourist, be he or she American, English or Continental—it is the name of the greatest of Flemish painters, Peter Paul Rubens. ”

“ Professor cares nothing for either of these aspects of his career, but looks upon him as great for all time because he was an ardent friend and patron of the fine arts.
In this she is undoubtedly right, for no greater glory belongs to any of the long line of princes who ruled over Flanders than that which is associated with his reign—the birth at Bruges of the art of painting with oils and of the wonderful school of painting represented by the early Flemish masters. ”

“ The réseau was fine and compact, the flower resembling cambric in its texture; the designs still betraying the Flemish origin of the fabric—tulips, carnations, iris, or anemones—such as we see in the old Flemish flower-pieces, true to nature, executed with Dutch exactness (Fig. 108) . The city owed not its prosperity to the rich alone; the peasants themselves were great consumers of its produce. A woman laid by her earnings for years to purchase a "bonnet en vraie Valenciennes," some few of which still appear in the northern provinces of France at church festivals and holidays. ”

“ The Early Flemish School, covering roughly the period 1400-1500, was the result, the most important masters being Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Bouts, David, and Memlinc. (3.) It was now the turn of this school to influence that of Germany. The Flemish masters were great travellers, and the German masters were no doubt attracted to Flanders by the great technical skill there in vogue. Hence we now come to a second period in German painting—marked by Flemish influence. There is less of the mysticism and more realism; but with the realism there is an element of brutality and ugliness. ”

“ It had reaped little benefit from the fifteen years of union with Holland, and there was a general belief, among the Flemings themselves, that it would never recover its ancient position. The Flemish literary Renaissance was initiated by a small group of intellectuals, headed by Jan Frans Willems (1793-1846) , who exerted all their energy to revive Flemish customs, collect folk songs and traditions, and obtain a liberal interpretation of the Constitution which proclaimed liberty of language. ”

“ The vast extent of country which is swept by one of these Flemish prospects is really quite inconceivable, whilst the absence of a single hill to intercept the horizon upon either side, renders them as peculiar as they are surprising. ”

“ Even when moving the people all looked like wooden toys set in motion by strings—the strings in Flanders must be of gold: the Flemings seem to be all a money-making, money-loving people: they are fast recovering their activity after the Revolution.
The road to Bruges, fifty feet broad, solidly paved in the middle, seems, like all French and Flemish roads, to have been laid out by some inflexible mathematician: they are always right lines, the shortest possible between two points. ”

“ What shall we say of those other homely personages who fill the scene—symbols no less of Flemish character at its finest and of the enduringly domestic springs of Flemish national life? Claes the trusty fatherhood, Soetkin the valiant motherhood of Flanders, Nele her true heart, Lamme Goedzak her great belly that hungers always for more and yet more good things to eat and is never satisfied? Or what, again, of the tragic Katheline, half witch, half martyr, and the centre of that dark intrigue which seems to throb like a shuttle through the mazy pattern of the plot, threading it all into unity? ”

“ Once more the Flemish children shall laugh through Flemish lanes,
And gather happy garlands through fields of bygone pains,
And, as they run and cull their flowers, sing in their simple strains:
“These clovers are for English who fought to save this sod,
These lilies for the valiant French—may their souls rest in God!
And for the brave Americans we pluck this goldenrod.” ”

“ The artists of the Low Countries knew how to assimilate in the most complete fashion the artistic principles of other schools; but although drawing inspiration from foreign sources they knew how to imprint on their creations a particular cachet, which distinguishes Flemish work. They used to great advantage the colour of the material, the exigences of the climate and produced picturesque combinations.
The Fleming was the traveller par excellence of the Renaissance—sculptor, cabinet-maker, painter, architect, potter, weaver, goldsmith—we find him everywhere. ”

“ The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which comes of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that craving for liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the compactness of their ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted on their nature made the Flemish people a formidable body of men in the defence of their rights. ”

“ The change which has taken place on the littoral during the last fifteen or twenty years is extraordinary, and the contrast between the old Flanders and the new, between the Flanders which lingers in the past and the Flanders which marches with the times, is brought vividly before us by the difference between such mediæval towns as Bruges, Furnes, or Nieuport, and the bright new places which glitter on the sandy shores of the Flemish coast. ”

“ Witness the contrast between the bustling aggressiveness in the province of practical affairs and the metaphysical drift of modern Flemish art. To any one familiar with the visible materialism of the population in its external mode of living it may have seemed strange to notice how sedulously a numerous set among the younger artists of the land were facing away from their concrete environment, as though to their over-sensitive nervous system it were irremediably offensive. ”

“ Here as with us, the renewal of the moral world is the renewal of the ideal world; the Flemish and Dutch art of the seventeenth century, like the French art and literature of the nineteenth century, is the reaction of a vast tragedy performed for thirty years at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. ”

“ Much as these two books are marked by the effort to describe Flanders as it actually is, stronger than this effort is the yearning at the heart of them to escape from the present to the past. Every temperament exceeds reality. Flanders was here described in the sense of an ideal; but the ideal in both cases was projected on the past. Beauty young Verhaeren had sought in the monks, the symbols of the past; strength and the fire of life he had sought in the old Flemish masters. ”

“ Holland and Flanders, peopled by one race, vie with each other in the pursuits of civilization. The Flemish skill in the mechanical and in the fine arts is unrivalled. Belgian musicians delight and instruct other nations, Belgian pencils have, for a century, caused the canvas to glow with colors and combinations never seen before. Flemish fabrics are exported to all parts of Europe, to the East and West Indies, to Africa. The splendid tapestries, silks, linens, as well as the more homely and useful manufactures of the Netherlands, are prized throughout the world. ”

“ The pictures, over which I could but throw a passing glance, were all by Flemish painters, and of that character which so essentially displays their chief merits of richness of colour and tone—Gerard Dow and Ostade, Cuyp, Van der Meer, and Terburg—those admirable groupings of domestic life, where the nation is, as it were, miniatured before you; that perfection of domestic quiet, which bespeaks an heirloom of tranquillity derived whole centuries back. You see at once, in those dark-brown eyes and placid features, the traits that have taken ages to bring to such perfection ”

“ The old people suppose he comes to us for the sake of my father's instruction. French people as we are become, we are still old Flemish, if not at heart, yet on the surface. Even in French Flanders, at Douai and Saint Omer, as I understand, in the churches and in people's houses, as may be seen from the very streets, there is noticeable a minute and scrupulous air of care-taking and neatness. Antony Watteau remarks this more than ever on returning to Valenciennes, and savours greatly, after his lodging in Paris, our Flemish cleanliness, lover as he is of distinction and elegance. ”

“ As a result of this propaganda the Flemish language was placed on an equality with French in law, and in administration, in 1873 and 1878, and in the schools in 1883. Finally in 1886 a Flemish Academy was established by royal authority at Ghent, where a course in Flemish literature had been established as early as 1854. ”

“ County of Flanders, and with these old towns—all of which are hard by—we can plan our journeys chronologically, so to speak, visiting first the monuments that date from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, then those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and so on. In that way we not only can keep the little history we know straight, but we can trace with our own eyes the gradual development of Flemish architecture and art. ”