Chapter V

It is when we come to the work of his pupils, Bega and Dusart, that we realise best Ostade’s finer qualities.

Cornelis Pietersz Bega was born at Haarlem in 1620, and died there of the plague in 1664, fully twenty years before his master.

According to Houbraken’s story, his real name was Begyn, which he changed to Bega after being turned out of his father’s house for his youthful escapades. The story is not incredible of such a youth as he appears in his portrait, gay and somewhat vain-looking, with long curling locks.

Bega’s etchings are thirty-eight in number, and have a very distinctive air. Certain characteristics seem to indicate that his original bent was towards a decorative treatment of his subject. His drawings show a care for the happy disposition of drapery, remarkable in this school. He has a feeling for large design, combined with great indifference to human character. But such treatment was alien to the Dutch school in general; nor did Dutch peasants lend themselves at all willingly, so it seems, to passive decoration. Certainly a pupil of Ostade’s would have no encouraging influences to help him forward on such lines. So, though Bega adopts in part the themes and general handling of his teacher, the rather flat design which he affects, his frankly artificial chiaroscuro, his use of light and shadow as masses of black and white rather than as opportunities of mystery, contrast strongly with Ostade’s solid modelling, his pervading atmosphere, and his pre-occupying human interest. One perceives that the master’s influence could not altogether swamp the pupil’s natural impulse: but neither wins the day, and the result is an unsatisfying compromise.

_The Tavern_ (Fig. 11) is a very characteristic plate. It is very brilliant, and makes a powerful impression at first sight. But it does not bear close study. There is a want of subtlety in it, and a want of feeling; a certain hardness, combined with a certain cleverness, that repels.

Bega’s two other large plates, also of tavern scenes, reveal just the same qualities, and need not be further particularised.

In technical character, these etchings recall the Spanish etcher Goya, who was also fond of producing a sharp, vivid, emphatic effect by a similar artificial manner of lighting. Not improbably Bega’s etchings may have been known to Goya, and given him a suggestion.

Bega had apparently no tenderness, and little or no interest in

humanity. This deficiency, in one of the Dutch school, and trained in the Dutch tradition, is notable. One has only to turn from his mother and baby sitting by the window (B. 21) to Ostade’s _Child and Doll_, to feel what a difference lies between the two.

Cornelis Dusart was a much later scholar. At Bega’s death he was only a child of four, and he survived Ostade many years, living on till 1704. When Ostade died, he finished his master’s uncompleted pictures, but kept them till his death in his own possession.

Some of Dusart’s etchings, as for instance _The Village Fête_ (B. 16) have a pleasing effect, with well-managed light and shade; but they cannot be compared with the similar pieces by Ostade, whose method is here carried on, but in an inferior manner. Yet he has a vein of his own, a gross, riotous, extravagant vein, with a great fondness for violent action. In the plate called by Bartsch _Le Violon Assis_ (B. 15), which was too large to be reproduced here, his specific qualities appear to great advantage.

One seems to hear an hilarious din merely from looking at it. The fiddler plays with a wild fantastic energy; one peasant accompanies him with crashing tankard and roaring chorus; another sits bent and sullen with his head on his hands. The landlord, with huge frame and round paunch, looks on with twinkling eyes. A woman by the great chimney, on which hangs the notice of a sale of tulips and hyacinths, “Tulpaan en Hyacinthen,” calls a child to her. The roomy background with its beams and rafters, is drawn and lighted with extraordinary skill. As a page of daily life, fresh and vivid, this etching deserves the fullest praise.

Dusart in his later years devoted himself to mezzotint, and produced a great deal in this manner. These engravings, some of which represent in Dusart’s extravagant way, the joy in Holland at the taking of Namur in 1695 by William III., are more interesting historically than artistically. It was not till the middle of next century that mezzotint, the invention of which does not date from much earlier than Dusart’s birth, reached its perfection in the hands of the English engravers.

THE ETCHERS OF LANDSCAPE