Chapter I

Adriaen van Ostade was born in Haarlem, at the end of 1610. The researches of Dr. Van der Willigen have placed this fact beyond doubt, and the old tradition of his having been born at Lübeck must therefore be set aside. In the baptismal register for December 10, 1610, there is entered the name of Adriaen, son of Jan Hendricx, of Eyndhoven, and of Janneke Hendriksen. On the 2nd of June, 1621, the birth of Isack, son of the same parents, is recorded.

These dates have always been associated with the births of the brothers Ostade, and there are other grounds for identifying them with the Adriaen and Isack just mentioned.

Jan Hendricx was a weaver, and in consequence of the religious persecutions of the time, left his native Eyndhoven, a village in North Brabant, for Haarlem. This was some time before 1605, for in that year, already a burgess of the town, he married. He had several children; and in a document of 1650, two of them are mentioned as brother and sister to Adriaen and Isack, who are thus proved to have been his sons. The name of Ostade was taken from a hamlet close to Eyndhoven. Adriaen is first mentioned with this surname as a member of the civic guard, in 1636.

Haarlem, M. Vosmaer has said, is in two things like Florence. It is a city of flowers and a city of artists. Its archives show that from an early time the arts flourished and were fostered there. Money was never grudged for fine work in every branch of skilful industry, no less than for good painting and good sculpture. The goldsmith, the potter, the leather-worker, the stone-cutter, could find employment for their powers and remuneration worth their skill. Haarlem was, in fact, a type of those busy and prosperous cities where it seems that art thrives best; for though art and commerce are often supposed to have a natural disagreement, history shows them to have been the most apt companions.

But the city of Dierick Bouts, of Albert van Ouwater, of Jan Scorel, was at the time of Ostade’s birth, in a condition even more favourable for the production of fine work than it had been in the fifteenth and following centuries. In 1573 occurred the famous siege by the Spaniards. Those who had borne the burden of those terrible days were now growing old; but the young generation received and handed on their heroic memories, unembittered by thoughts of loss, suffering, or defeat. And when, in 1609, peace came, and the United Provinces, acknowledged by Spain, turned to enjoy their victorious repose, there was added the sense of triumph to that of trials endured. It was the great time for Holland. Her soldiers were famed as the finest in Europe. Her navy was the most powerful, the best-manned. Her cities grew, and wealth poured into them. A universal well-being pervaded the country, and a spirit of joy and of expansion, like the glow of health, diffused itself in the citizens.

It was natural that art, too, should feel this new influence. And in Haarlem, where the siege had destroyed so much of the old town, and modern buildings of warm red brick had sprung round the vast surviving monument of the middle ages, the Groote Kerk of St. Bavon; in Haarlem especially, a new spirit, intensely modern, began to possess the rising painters. From art which lavished its parade of dexterity on the old mythological fables, handled without heart or meaning, from the smooth and pallid conventionalities of Cornelis Corneliszoon, and the extravagant cleverness of Goltzius, these men turned to the life that was around them. Among them were artists like Jan de Bray, Esaias van de Velde, Dirk and Frans Hals. It was in the studio of Frans Hals that the young Ostade learnt to paint. Already in 1616, Hals had painted his superb group of the civic guard, and was now in the fulness of his extraordinary power. The exuberant joy and energy, the confident sincerity, the swift and certain touch, intimate with realities, that marked Hals, were typical of the country and the time. Life--that is the

absolute necessity for such an artist: for him everything that has life is a possible subject, a possible realm to conquer. A subject that he cannot feel, as well as conceive, his instinct rejects at once. A great pride of life is what characterises Hals’ pictures human life in all its fulness he accepts: unhindered by the shrinkings of more fastidious natures, he enjoys with a robust enjoyment.

It is the same also with Ostade; but the pupil was too individual an artist to repeat his master. Ostade felt, perhaps, that he could never rival those magnificent portrait-groups, and his own preferences, his own gifts, led him to a different choice of subject.

Perhaps some who have seen Ostade’s pictures and found them coarse and ignoble, have imagined the painter of them to be equally coarse and ignoble-looking as his boors. His portrait shows him a man of somewhat severe, keen countenance, in plain attire; a grave man, one would say, with humour lurking in his gravity, as often happens; it is a portrait that might be taken for that of an Englishman of the Commonwealth. Ostade was, in fact, a well-to-do citizen of the middle class. His collection of pictures, sold at his death in 1685, was, as we know from the _Haarlem Gazette_, extensive; and the fact that it contained two hundred of his own paintings, proves that he was, unlike so many of his compeers, far removed from want.

Of Ostade’s life, apart from his production, we know almost nothing. He was a member of the _Oude Schuts_, the ancient and honourable Company of Arquebusiers. He was married twice; first, in 1636, to Machtelgen Pietersen, who died in 1642; and again to a second wife, whose name is not known, by whom he had a girl, Johanna Maria. This daughter married a surgeon, Dirk van der Stoel, into whose hands Ostade’s etched plates and proofs passed at his death.

In 1647 and 1661 Ostade is mentioned as a member of the government of the Guild. In 1662, he was dean of the Guild. An incident of his earlier years is of interest, as showing his liberal spirit. In 1642 he joined Salomon Ruysdael, at a meeting of the Guild, in protesting against the policy of protection, which inspired Haarlem Guild, like many others, to oppose the importation of works of art from other towns or their sale in Haarlem.

Ostade seems never to have travelled, like many of his countrymen, beyond the borders of Holland, nor ever to have changed his home, except from one street of Haarlem to another.

He died in 1685.

On an early afternoon of May his body was carried from his house in the Kuis-straat to the Groote Kerk, a little company of his friends following.