Flemish school

“ They almost always paint man in a well-to-do condition and content with his lot. When they exalt him it is without raising him above his terrestrial condition. The Flemish school of the seventeenth century does no more than expand his appetite, his lusts, his energy and his gayety. Generally they leave him as he is. The Dutch school confines itself to reproducing the repose of the bourgeois interior, the comforts of shop and farm, out-door sports and tavern enjoyments, all the petty satisfactions of an orderly and tranquil existence. Nothing could be better adapted to painting ”

“ Take any picture of this old Flemish School, and regard it carefully, you will find that only so do its beauties strike you at all.... The old Flemish artists did always the thing that was within their powers, striving indeed by daily industry to increase the strength of those powers, but never hoping either by luck or momentary insanity to attain anything unattainable by patient thought and long-continued labour. ”

“ The style of these pieces is thoroughly Flemish; but wanting, alike in the ingenuity of Okenheim, and the expression of his followers. Still, the School did its work well. England had not fulfilled the promise of her first efforts; but she now made a new beginning, evidently under Flemish instruction, and never afterwards betrayed her trust.
Good work never fails to produce good fruit. ”

“ It is the presence of this desire, joined with improved symmetry of form, and increased freedom of development, which distinguishes The Third Flemish School, of which Josquin was the life and soul, from its ruder predecessors. This was the first School in which any serious attempt was made to use learning as a means of producing harmonious effect; and it was rich in Masters, who, however great their inferiority to their unapproachable leader, caught not a little of his fire. ”

“ Further, the Van Eyck method, requiring absolute forethought and forbidding any alterations, tended to a set of stock subjects treated more or less in the same way. "Thus the chief qualities of the Flemish School may be called Veracity of Imitation, Jewel-like richness of Colour, perfection of Finish, emphasis of Character, and Conservatism in design. These indeed are virtues enough to make a school of art great in the annals of time, even though they may never be able to win for it the clatter of popular applause. ”

“ 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 Flemish miniatures naturally followed on the lines of painting. The new style was essentially modern, freeing itself from the traditions of medieval illumination and copying nature. Under the hand of the Flemish artist the landscape attained to great perfection, softness and depth of colouring, the leading attribute of the school, lending a particular charm and sense of reality to his out-door scenes. His closer observation of nature is testified also in the purely decorative part of his work. ”

“ Action even to its utmost superiority was his forte, and for this one expression his colouring, by its vivid power and contrasts, was certainly very admirable.
The Dutch school is so blended with the Flemish, separating from both Rubens and Vandyke, and their immediate scholars, that it is difficult to speak of them as distinct schools. Fascinating as they undoubtedly are, they utterly abandon the power to teach for the art of pleasing. They are not for the public; have little to do with events of any great interest. There is a manifest descent from the high pretensions of art ”

“ The School of Holland—that northern School to which at last, in the great Seventeenth Century, supremacy in Art had moved—was perhaps the first to adequately feel the value of those immediate145 impressions which the Italians and the early Flemish had recognised chiefly to control, to alter, to enlarge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ It is difficult to determine, from the boasts in the German newspapers and the denials of exiled Belgians, just how many teachers and students had been scraped together by the beginning of 1917, but the faculty was a motley collection of German, Dutch and Belgian nonentities, and there were less than three students for every teacher. To-day there is only one student in agriculture, the subject that would naturally be most sought in a Flemish university. Of all the war-babies, this University of Ghent is surely the most anæmic. ”

“ A German military officer was appointed burgomaster of the town.
The government of occupation hoped to use education as a potent weapon for dividing the country. The Flemish language was proclaimed the only one permitted in the State and voluntary schools of Flanders. Even in Brussels, where French is spoken by a large majority of the population, Flemish was to be the only language of instruction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1883 a law was passed rendering the teaching of Flemish (or “Netherlands,” as both Dutch and Belgians prefer to call it) obligatory in all intermediate schools. At Ghent University, moreover, all lectures are now delivered in that language, as well as some of the courses at the Universities of Brussels and Louvain. Straws show which way the wind blows; and, though a trifle, it is a significant one, that the streets of Antwerp are now labelled in Flemish, as well as French, and that public xxivnotices, advertisements, &c., when not bi-lingual, are usually Flemish. ”

“ The Belgian people, without distinction of language, party, or condition, have, by impressive demonstrations, repudiated the faithless citizens who, joining hands with the enemy, have arrogated to themselves the right to speak in the name of the Flemings. The Flemings were the first to condemn the crime. To the protests of the Deputies and Senators and of the City Councils have been added those of the leading intellectual and political societies of Flanders. The Flemish Academy raised its voice to "affirm its fidelity to the Belgian Fatherland and its King." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Parochial Schools in New Netherlands.—A second type of colonial organization of education appears in the New Netherlands, as the country between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers was called during the period of Dutch control (1621-1674) . In contrast to the laissez faire attitude of Virginia, the foundation of schools was parochial. Instead of the chance endowment of schools wherever the benefactors happened to be located, a school was founded in connection with Calvinistic conception of universal education, as in Holland. every church. ”

“ The boundaries of the Flanders of history and of art, however, cover a considerable wider area than these two provinces. Over in France a considerable part of the Department du Nord was for centuries subject to the Counts of Flanders. On the other side, to the eastward, the cities of Antwerp and Malines were for many centuries independent of the Counts of Flanders, but their people spoke Flemish, their houses, churches and town-halls were built in the best style of Flemish architecture, and they became famous centres of Flemish art and learning. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ One very seldom notices that Spanish type of face which is so common elsewhere—at Antwerp, for instance. Here the race is almost unmixed, and the peasants speak nothing but Flemish to each other. Many of them do not understand a word of French, though in Belgium French is, as everyone knows, the language of public life and of literature. The newspapers published in Flemish are small, and do not contain much beyond local news. The result is that the country people in West Flanders know very little of what is going on in the world beyond their own parishes. ”

“ As in all Continental countries, there is nothing in Holland corresponding to the English public school System. The 'Gymnasia' prepare boys for the Universities, and the 'higher burgher' schools train them for commercial life and some professions, somewhat in the same way as English modern schools, but there the resemblance ends. As a rule, a Dutch boy's school life is limited to the hours he spends at lessons; the rest of the day belongs rather to home life. There are a few boarding schools in Holland, but the life in such schools in the two countries is different in almost every respect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One hears much in Belgium of the “Flemish Movement,” whose motto, adopted not long after the establishment of national independence, in 1830, is the Flemish sentence, “De taal is gansch het volk” (“The language is the whole people”) . This organized effort to foster Flemish traditions and literature had from the first the support of public men and writers, including Henri Conscience, Ledeganck, and Van Beers, who lent their voices and their pens to extol the heroic deeds of Flanders and to advance in every way possible the influence of the language in the kingdom. ”

“ It is endeavoured by a proclamation of the Prince Sovereign to restore the Flemish language in all public acts and pleadings at law, to the exclusion of the French, which during the union of Belgium with France, was alone allowed to be used, and pains were taken that in all schools the French language only should be taught. But it is a difficult task, to overcome the partiality of a people for their ancient dialect, and the Flemish language is still used by the lower classes even in those parts of Flanders which have been united for above a century to France. ”

“ A rough sketch of the inside of a Dutch school will doubtless be of interest. One of the few endowed schools in Holland may be taken as fairly typical of its class, but not of the State schools, though it competes with these and combines the classical and modern courses. It lies in the country, near a small village, and in this respect also differs from the 'Gymnasia' and 'higher burgher' schools, which are ail situated in the larger towns. One of the first things which attracts notice is the large number of masters. It seems at first that there are hardly enough boys to go round. ”