Chapter XV: Museum Promenades (1)

PICTURES AT THE HAGUE

There are two new Rembrandts in the galleries of the Mauritshuis, lent by Prof. A. Bredius, director of the Royal Picture Gallery at The Hague. Neither is an "important" picture in the professional sense of that word, but they are Rembrandts--at least one is indubitable--and that suffices. The more credible of the pair is a small canvas depicting Andromeda manacled to the rocks. Her figure is draped to the waist; it is a solid Dutch figure, ugly as the one of Potiphar's wife (in an etching by Rembrandt), and no deliverer is in sight. The flesh tones are rather cold, a cadaverous white, but it is a Rembrandt white. The picture as a whole is sketchy and without charm or mystery. Nevertheless, the lion's paws are there. The other shows us a woman reading at a table. The colouring is warm and the still-life accessories are richly and minutely painted. Not a likely Rembrandt, either in theme or notably so in treatment. We must bow, however, to the judgment of the learned Bredius who made the ascription. These two works are not as yet in the catalogue. It is a pity the catalogue to this gallery is not as complete as those of the Rijks Museum. To visitors they offer an abridged one, dated 1904. There are since then many new pictures, notably a sterling Chardin, marvellously painted, and an excellent landscape by Van Cuyp, both loans of Dr. Bredius.

Otherwise this little collection is as choice and as entertaining as ever. The usual tourist makes at once for the overrated Young Bull by Paul Potter and never looks at the magnificent Weenix across the room, the Dead Swan, with its velvety tones. The head of a young girl by Vermeer, with its blue turban and buff coat, its pearl earrings, is charming. And the View of Delft seems as fresh as the day it was painted. The long façade of the houses and warehouses and the churches and towers facing the river are rendered with a vivacity of colour, a solidity in drawing, and an absence of too marked literalism which prove that this gifted artist had more than one style. The envelope is rich; there is air, though it be stagnant. Down-stairs is an allegorical subject, The New Testament, which is not very convincing as a composition, but warm in tint. The Diana and Her Companions must have inspired Diaz and many other painters. But the real Vermeer, the Vermeer of the enamelled surfaces and soft pervasive lighting, is at Amsterdam.

No place is better than The Hague for the study of the earlier Rembrandt. Dr. Tulp's Anatomical Lecture is, after the Potter bull, the most gazed-at canvas in the Mauritshuis. It is not in a good condition. There are evidences of over-varnishing and cobbling; nor is it a very inspiring canvas. The head of Dr. Tulp is superb in characterisation, and there is one other head, that of a man with inquiring eyes, aquiline profile, the head strained forward (his name is given in the critical works on Rembrandt), which arrests the attention. An early composition, we are far from the perfection of The Syndics. The self-portrait of the painter (1629) is a favourite, though the much-vaunted feather in the head-gear is stiff; perhaps feathers in Holland were stiff in those days. But the painters flock to this portrait and never tire of copying its noble silhouette. The two little studies of the painter's father and mother are characteristic. One, of the man, is lent by Dr. Bredius. Rembrandt's brother (study of an old man's head) shows a large old chap with a nose of richest vintage. The portrait is brown in tone and without charm. The Susanna Bathing is famous, but it is not as attractive as Simeon in the Temple, with its masterly lighting, old gold in the gloom. The Homer never fails to warm the cockles of the imagination. What bulk! What a wealth of smothered fire in the apparel! The big Saul listening to the playing of David is still mystifying. Is Saul smiling or crying behind the uplifted cloak? Is he contemplating in his neurasthenia an attempt on David's life with a whizzing lance? His sunken cheeks, vague yet sinister eye, his turban marvellous in its iridescence, form an ensemble not to be forgotten. David is not so striking. From afar the large canvas glows. And the chiaroscuro is miraculous.

The portrait of Rembrandt's sister, the Flight Into Egypt, the small, laughing man, the negroes, and the study of an old woman, the latter wearing a white head-dress, are a mine of joy for the student. The sister's head is lent by Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot, the art expert.

There are only thirty-odd Rembrandts in Holland out of the five hundred and fifty he painted. Of this number eighteen are in the Mauritshuis. Holland was not very solicitous formerly of her masters. Nowadays sentiment has changed and there is a gratifying outcry whenever a stranger secures a genuine old master. As for the copies, they, like the poor, are always with us. America is flooded every year with forged pictures, especially of the minor Dutch masters, and excellent are these imitations, it must be confessed.

There are only four specimens of Frans Hals here; portraits of Jacob Pieterez, Aletta Hanemans, his wife; of William Croes, and the head of a man, a small picture in The Jolly Toper style. The lace collar is genuine Hals.

Let us close our catalogue and wander about the galleries. German and English are the tongues one hears, Dutch seldom, French occasionally. The Potter bull with the wooden legs is stared at by hundreds. As a picture painted by a very young man it is noteworthy. The head of the beast is nobly depicted. But what of the remainder of this insignificant composition with its toad and cows, its meaningless landscape? The Weenix swan is richer in paint texture. The Holbeins are--two anyhow--of splendid quality. Of the Rubenses it is better to defer mention until Antwerp is reached. They are of unequal value. The same may be said of the Van Dycks. Look at that baby girl standing by a chair. A Govert Flinck. How truthful! The De Heems are excellent fruit and flower pieces. Excellent, too, the Huysums, Hondecoeters, and Weenixes. There is a dead baby of the Dutch school (1661) which is as realistic as a Courbet. We admired the small Memlic, or Memling, and, naturally, the Metsus, Mierevelts, and Mierises. The Holy Virgin and Infant Christ, by Murillo, is tender and sleek in colour. It hangs near the solitary Velasquez of the museum, a portrait of Charles-Baltasar, son of King Philip IV of Spain. It is not a remarkable Velasquez.

The Pieter Lastman, a Resurrection of Lazarus, is of interest because this painter was a preceptor of Rembrandt. William Kalf's still-life is admirable, and the Aert Van den Neer moonlight scene (purchased 1903) is a lovely example of this artist. Indeed, all the minor Dutchmen are well represented. Potter's much-praised Cow in the Water is faded, and the style is of the sort we smile over at our own Academy exhibitions. The Van Goyen waterscapes are not all of prime quality, but there are two that are masterpieces. Amsterdam excels in both Van Goyens and Jacob Ruisdaels. The Distant View of Haarlem of the latter proved a disappointment. The colour is vanished quite, the general effect flat. The Bol portrait of Admiral de Ruyter is a sterling specimen. The Van de Veldes and Wouvermans are excellent. The Good Housekeeper of Dou, a much-prized picture, with its tricky light and dark. The Teniers and Ostades no longer interest us as they did. Perhaps one tires soon of genre pictures. The inevitable toper, the perambulating musician, the old woman standing in a doorway, the gossips, the children, and the dog not house-broken may stand for the eternal Ostade, while the merry-makings of David Teniers are too much alike. However, this touch of spleen is the outcome of seeing so many bituminous canvases.

Probably in no other painter's name have so many sins been committed as in Rembrandt's. His _chiaroscuro_ is to blame for thousands of pictures executed in the tone of tobacco juice. All the muddy browns of the studio, with the yellow smear that passes for Rembrandtish light, are but the monkey tricks of lesser men. His pupils often made a mess of it, and they were renowned. Terburg's Despatch is an interesting anecdote; so too Metsu's Amateur Musicians. There are the average number of Dutch Italianate painters, Jan Both and the rest, men who employed southern backgrounds and improvised bastard Italian figures. Schalcken's candlelight scenes are not missing, though Dou leads in this rather artificial genre. And every tourist led by a guide hears that Wouvermans always introduced a white horse somewhere in his picture. You leave Holland obsessed by that white animal.

Naturally the above notes hardly scratch the surface of the artistic attractions in this Hague gallery. Not the least of them is to look out on the Vyver lake and watch the swans placidly swimming around the emerald islet in the middle. The Mauritshuis is a cabinet of gems, and months could not stale its variety. There are important omissions, and some of the names in the catalogue are not represented at top-notch. But the Rembrandts are there, and there are the Potters, the Rubenses, the Van Dycks, the Jan Steens--his Oyster Feast is here--the landscape and marine painters, not to mention the portraiture, the Murillo, Palma Vecchio, and the Titian. The single Roger van der Weyden, an attribution, is a Crucifixion, and hangs near the Memlig. It is an interesting picture. Of the sculpture there is not much to write. Houdon, Hendrick de Keyser, Verhulst, Falconet, Blommendael, and Xavery make up a meagre list.

At Baron Steengracht's house--admission by personal card--on the Vyverberg there is a wonderful Rembrandt, Bathsheba After Her Bath, a golden-toned canvas, not unlike the Susanna over at the Mauritshuis. It was painted in 1643, about a year after he had finished The Night Watch, a jewel of a Rembrandt and the clou of this collection. There are some weak modern pictures and examples by Terburg, Metsu, Flinck, Jordaens, Cuyp, Potter, Brouwer--the smoker, a fine work; a Hobbema mill and others. In the Municipal Museum, full of curiosities in furniture, armour, and costumes, there is a gallery of modern paintings--Israel, David Bles, Mesdag, Neuhuys, Bisschop, J. Maris, Weissenbruch, Bosboom, Blommers, and Mauve. There are also Mierevelts, Jan Ravensteyns, Honthorst, Van Goyen, Van Ceulen, and a lot of shooting-gallery (Doelen) and guild panoramas; there are miles of them in Holland, and unless painted by Hals, Van der Heist, Elias, and a few others are shining things of horror, full of staring eyes, and a jumble of hands, weapons, and dry colours. But they are viewed with religious awe by the Dutch, whose master passion is patriotic sentiment.

There is the Huis ten Bosch (The House in the Wood), the royal villa, a little over a mile from The Hague, in which De Wit's grisailles may be seen. The Japanese and orange rooms are charming; the portraits by Everdingen, Honthorst, Jordaens, and others are of historic interest.

THE MESDAG MUSEUM

When we were last at The Hague the Mesdag Museum had just opened (1903). There was no catalogue, and while the nature of this great gift to the city was felt it was not until a second visit (in 1909) that its extraordinary value was realised. The catalogue numbers three hundred and forty-four pictures by modern artists, and there is also a valuable collection of objects of art, bronzes, pottery, furniture, and tapestries. Philip Zilcken (a well-known Dutch etcher) in his introduction calls attention to the rare quality of the Mesdag Museum and tells us that Mr. and Mrs. Mesdag van Houten bought for their own pleasure without any thought of forming a gallery for the Dutch nation. That came later. W.H. Mesdag is the well-known marine painter whose paintings may be seen in almost every gallery on the Continent. A native of Groningen (1831), he studied under Roelofs and while in Brussels lived with his relative, Alma-Tadema; the latter is a Frieslander. Mesdag excels in marines, painting great sweep of waters with breadth and simplicity. His palette is cool and restrained, his rhythmic sense well developed, and his feeling for outdoors truly Dutch. He belongs to the line of the classic Dutch marinists, to Van der Velde, Backhuizen, and Van Goyen. His wife, a woman of charm and culture, died in the spring of last year. She signed her work S. Mesdag van Houten. Her gift lies in the delineation of forest views, interiors, portraits, and still-life. Her colour is deep and rich.

A cursory walk around the various rooms on the Laan van Meerdervoort impresses one with this idea: with what envy must any curator of any museum in the world study this collection. Mesdag began gathering his treasures at a time when the Barbizon school was hardly known; when a hundred other painters had not been tempted by the dealers into overproduction; when, in a word, fancy prices were not dreamed of. The Alma-Tademas are among his best, little as we admire his vital marbles and lifeless humans. An early portrait of his wife is here. Bastien-Lepage has a preparatory sketch for Les Foins. Indeed, the Mesdag Museum is rich in _frottis_, painted-in pictures, by such men as Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Vollon, Millet, Dupré. As we admire the etchings of Mari Bauer, it was a new pleasure to see half a dozen of his paintings, chiefly scenes in the Orient. The same misty, fantastic quality is present; he manipulates his colour, thinly laid on, as if it were some sort of plastic smoke. Impressionistic as are these canvases, there is a subdued splendor in them all. Bauer feels the East. His etchings recall Rembrandt's line; but his paintings are miles away in sentiment and handling. Bisschop (1828-1904) is represented by a fine still-life, and among the various Blommers is one with children playing in the water and on the sands; vividly seized, this example.

The late Théophile de Bock was an interpreter of nature and his brush-work was fat and rich. His work is well known in America and gains in value every day (he died in 1904). There are fourteen specimens here of his best period. The Emile Bretons are early and therefore different from his commercial productions. Of the Corots, twelve in number, we did not see an insignificant one, not a weak one. The famous Early Morning and View at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon are hung. The first depicts a group of trees; to the right a narrow stream in which is reflected a cloudless sky. In the centre two women in white caps. The second is more elaborate in composition. The middle distance is occupied by picturesque buildings dating probably from the Middle Ages. In the foreground four persons are under the shadow of some trees. An unusual scheme for Corot. His well-known characteristics are present in the dozen; the tremulous leafage, the bright, pure light, the Italian softness. And what do you say to a half-dozen Courbets, all of his strong period, landscapes, still-life, a nude study, a dead roe, a sunlit path, and a lake scene! Good Courbets are not numerous, and these are good. The nude is a woman recumbent upon draperies. The _pâte_ is heavy but vital, the flesh tones glowing, and the silhouette firm, yet delicate. The portrait of the artist by himself is massive. It was probably painted in Ste. Pélagie.

Coutures two, twenty-five Daubignys, and one of his son Karl. Daubigny the elder is here in all his manners, dark pictures with big foregrounds, intimate bits of wooded interiors, sand-hills, streamlets, moonlights, coast scenes, evening effects, sunsets at sea, twilights, sheep, broken rocks, and a study in crayon.

Decamps and Delacroix come next in order. There are three of the former, among the rest his Poacher, and three of Delacroix, one a portrait of himself. Seven of Diaz, painted when his colour was most sonorous and brilliant, are here, with a study of an undraped female figure. La Mare is a sunlight effect in the forest of Fontainebnleau. Dupré has seven to his account, several of great tonal beauty. The one Fortuny is an elaborate etching of his Anchorite. The Josef Israels are strong. Jacque pigs and sheep; Klinkenberg's view of the Binnenhof; Mancini's bewildering chromatic blurs and sensuously rich gamut, and seventeen in number. This painter is seldom encountered in America. He should be better known; while his ideas are not particularly significant he is colourist for colour's sake, as was Monticelli. The three brothers Maris, Jakob, Willem, and Matthys (the latter living in London), are to be seen here in unexampled states. Mauve, too, with fourteen pictures. Both the Mesdags, Taco Mesdag, a brother and his wife are present. Also Ter Meulen, a gifted Dutch artist. We have seldom seen better George Michels. The Monticelli up-stairs is an unusual subject. It is a mountain path in the south of France. The sun is disappearing behind a cluster of trees. Rocks in the foreground. The scheme of colour is low for Monticelli, the forms sharply accented. He could see line when he wished. The smaller example is an interior, as rich as Monticelli knew how to lay the colours on.

Seven Millets, one the large exhibition picture Hagar and Ishmael, another the wonderful Resting Vintager. Alone these Millets would cause a sensation if exhibited elsewhere. The Hagar seems a trifle too rhetorical for the simple-minded painter. Brown predominates in the colour scale, the composition is rather conventional, an echo, perhaps, of the artist's Delaroche apprenticeship, but the Vintager is a masterpiece. Seated among the vines in the blaze of the sun, he is resting and has removed his heavy sabots. The relaxed attitude after arduous labour is wonderfully expressed. The atmosphere indicates stifling sultriness.

Ricard, Roelofs, Theodore Rousseau--halt! There are twelve of this French master, dramatic and rich. Descente des Vaches dans le Jura is the celebrated canvas refused at the Salon, 1834. But it is too bituminous in parts. A greater composition, though only a drawing, is Les grands chênes du vieux Bas-Bréau. Four large trees illumined by sun-rays. Two Segantinis, a drawing in chalk and pastel; Storm Van's Gravesande; seven Troyons, one, Le retour du Marché, a masterpiece; Vollon, still-life, fish, ivory goblets, violets; Weissenbruchs; Zilcken etchings and two De Zwarts. There is old Rozenburg pottery, designed by Colenbrander, scarce to-day; Dutch and Gothic brass, Oriental portières and brass, old Delft, Japanese armour, various weapons and lanterns, Gobelin tapestry, carved furniture, Dutch and Scandinavian, and a magnificent assortment of Satsuma pottery, Cmail cloisonné, Japanese bronzes, Persian pottery, Spanish brasses, majolica and bronzes and sculptures by Mattos, Constantin, Meunier, and Van Wijk--the list fills a pamphlet. Next door is the studio of the aged Mesdag, a hale old Dutchman who paints daily and looks forward to seeing his ninety years. In Holland octogenarians are not few. The climate is propitious; above all, the absence of hurry and worry. To see The Hague without visiting this collection would be a regrettable omission.

HALS OF HAARLEM

In writing of Holland more is said of its windmills than its flowers. It is a land of flowers. Consider the roll-call of its painters who their life long produced naught but fruit and flower pieces. Both the De Heems, the cunning Huysums, whose work still lives in the mezzotints of Earlom--like David de Heem, he was fond of introducing insects, flies, bees, spiders, crawling over his velvety peaches and roses--Seghers, Van Aelst and his talented pupil Rachel Ruysch, Cuyp, Breughel (Abraham), Mignon, Van Beyeren, Van den Broeck, Margaretha Rosenboom, Maria Vos, Weenix, A. Van der Velde, Kalf, and many others who excelled in this pleasing genre. Their canvases are faded, the colours oxidised, but on the highways and by-ways the miracle is daily renewed--flowers bloom at every corner, fill the window-boxes of residences, crowd the hotel balconies, and are bunched in the hands of the peddlers. A cart goes by, a gorgeous symphony of hues. Roses, chrysanthemums, dahlias, daisies, tufts of unfamiliar species, leaves that are as transparent lace, blushing wild roses, and what not. Ivy is used for practical purposes. On the steam-yacht _Carsjens_ at Leyden a wind screen is composed of ivy; you feel enclosed in a floating garden. Along the Vivjer berg, fronting the house of Baron Steengracht, is a huge boat-shaped enclosure of stone. It is full of ivy growing low. Dutch landscape gardeners are fertile in invention. They break the flat lines of the landscape with all sorts of ingenious surprises; bosky barriers, hedges abloom, elm-trees pared away to imitate the processional poplars of Belgium and France, sudden little leafy lanes--what quips and quirks we have come across a few miles away from the town! To see Haarlem and its environs in June when the bulb farms are alight with tulips must be a delightful spectacle. In the fall of the year you are perforce content to read the names of the various farms as the train passes. The many-coloured vegetable carts remind you that Snyders and Van Steen painted here.

The Groote Kerke, St. Bavo, at Haarlem, is a noble pile with a tall tower. One of its attractions is the organ (built in 1735-38) by Christian Müller; it was until a few years ago the largest in the world. Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops and five thousand pipes (thirty-two feet the longest) when manipulated by a skilful organist produce adequate musical results. We had the pleasure of hearing the town organist play Bach for an hour. He began with a few Bach chorales, then came A Mighty Fortress is Our God; followed by the A minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge fugue. The general diapasonic quality is noble, the wood stops soft, the mixtures without brassy squealing, and the full organ sends a thrill down your spine, so mellow is its thunder. Modern organs do not thus sound. Is the secret of the organ tone lost like the varnishing of Cremona fiddles and the blue of the old Delft china? There are no fancy "barnyard stops," as John Runciman has named the combinations often to be found in latter-day instruments. You understood after hearing the Haarlem organ why Bach wrote his organ preludes and fugues. Modern music, with its orchestral registration, its swiftness and staccato, would be a sacrilege on this key-board.

The bronze statue of Coster did not unduly excite us. The Dutch claim him as the inventor of printing, but the Germans hang on to Gutenberg. At Leyden there is a steam train to Katwyk-aan-See; at Haarlem you may ride out to Zandvoort, and six miles farther is the North Sea Canal. But as the Katwyk and Zandvoort schools flourish mightily in the United States we did not feel curious enough to make the effort at either town. Regrettable as was the burning of the old church at Katwyk, perhaps its disappearance will keep it out of numerous pictures painted in that picturesque region. Of course it will be, or has been, rebuilt. We walked in the forest of Haarlem and did not once think of 125th Street; the old town is slightly unlike its modern namesake. What a charm there is in this venerable forest. The Dutch of Amsterdam, less than half an hour away, come down here on Sunday afternoons for the tranquillity and the shade. You must know that the sun-rays can be very disturbing in July. The canals intersecting the town are pretty. They may be sinks of iniquity, but they don't look so. Naturally, they exhale mephitic odours, though the people won't acknowledge it. It is the case in Venice, which on hot August afternoons is not at all romantic in a nasal sense. But you forget it all in Haarlem as you watch a hay barge float by, steered by a blond youngster of ten and poled by his brothers. From the chimney comes a light smoke. Soup is cooking. You remember the old sunlit towpath of your boyhood; a tightening at your heart warns you of homesickness, or hay fever. Oh, to be on the Erie Canal, you exclaim, as you sneeze.

But the Town Hall Museum is hard by. It is the glory of Haarlem as the Rijks Museum is the glory of Amsterdam and Holland. A pull at the bell and the door is opened, a small fee is paid, and you are free to the room where are hung ten large paintings by the inimitable Frans Hals. Here are the world-renowned Regent pictures set forth in chronological order. Drop the catalogue and use your own eyes. The first impression is profound; not that Hals was profound in the sense of Rembrandt's profundity, but because of the almost terrifying vitality of these portraits. Prosaic men and women, great trenchermen, devourers of huge pasties, mowers down of wine-bottles and beer-tankards, they live with such vitality on the canvases of Hals that you instinctively lower your voice. The paint-imprisoned ghosts of these jolly officers, sharpshooters, regents, and shrewd-looking old women regents are not so disquieting as Rembrandt's misty evocations. They touch hands with you across the centuries, and finally you wonder why they don't step out the frame and greet you. Withal, no trace of literalism, of obvious contours or tricky effects. Honest, solid paint, but handled by the greatest master of the brush that ever lived--save Velasquez. How thin and unsubstantial modern painting is if compared to this magician, how even his greatest followers, Manet and Sargent, seem incomplete. Manet, with his abridgments, his suppressions, his elliptical handling, never had the smiling confidence of Hals in facing a problem. The Frenchman is more subtle, also more evasive; and there is no hint in him of the trite statement of a fact that we encounter in Bartholomew Van der Heist--himself a great painter. Hals had not the poetic vision of Rembrandt, but he possessed a more dexterous hand, a keener eye. Judged according to the rubric of sheer paint, sheer brush-work, not Rubens, not Van Dyck, was such a virtuoso. Despite his almost incredible swiftness of execution, Hals got closer to the surfaces of what is called "actual" life than any of the masters with the exception of the supreme Spaniard.

At Haarlem you may follow his development; his first big picture painted in 1616; his last in 1664. He died at eighty-four. But at eighty odd he painted two important canvases, the portraits of the regents and of the lady regents. More summary as regards the execution, with a manifest tendency toward simplifications, these two pictures are very noble. The group of ladies, each a portrait of character, pleases some more than the male group. They are not so firmly modelled, and into them all has crept a certain weariness as of old age; but what justness of expression, what adjustment of puzzling relations! One lady follows you over the gallery with her stern gaze. It recalls to us the last judgment look which a maiden aunt was wont to bestow upon us years ago. The men regents will live into eternity if the canvas endures. The shiny varnish is not pleasing, yet it cannot destroy the illusion of atmosphere that circulates about the vigorously modelled figures at the table. What a colourist! What nuances he produces on a restrained key-board! The tones modulate, their juxtaposition causes no harsh discords. The velvet black, silvery grays, whites that are mellow without pastiness, and the reds and yellows do not flare out like scarlet trumpets; an aristrocratic palette. Really you begin to realise that what you formerly considered grandfather tales are the truth. The great painters have been and are not with us to-day. It is not a consoling pill to swallow for apostles of "modernity." Hals is more modern than Sargent.

These corporation and regent pieces are chronologically arranged. No. 88 is considered the masterpiece. It shows the officers of the Arquebusiers of St. Andrew, fourteen life-sized figures. Again each man is a portrait. This was painted in 1633. The Regents of the Elizabeth Hospital (1641) has been likened to Rembrandt's style; nevertheless, it is very Halsian. Why, that chamber is alone worth the journey across the Atlantic. Hals shows us not the magic of life but the normal life of daylight in which move with dignity men and women undismayed by the mysteries that hem them about. He has a daylight soul, a sane if not poetic soul, and few painters before him so celebrated the bravery of appearances, the beauty of the real.

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

I

The wonderful Rijks Museum is the representative home of old Dutch art. The Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery excel it in variety, but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The Syndics and The Night Watch are worth a wilderness of other painters' work. The Night Watch has been removed from the old room, where it used to hang, facing the large Van der Heist, Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is only in temporary quarters; the gallery destined for it is being completed. We were permitted to peep into it. The Night Watch will hang in one gallery, and facing it will be The Syndics, De Stallmeesters. Better lighted than in its old quarters, The Night Watch now shows more clearly the tooth of time. It is muddy and dark in the background, and the cracks of the canvas are ill-concealed by the heavy coating of varnish. If all the faults of this magnificent work are more plainly revealed its excellences are magnified. How there could have been any dispute as to the lighting is incredible. The new catalogue, the appendices of which are brought down to 1908, frankly describes the picture thus:

"The Night Watch, or the Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and of Lieutenant van Ruytenburg. The corps is represented in broad daylight, leaving the Doele of the Arquebusiers. At their head, standing in the foreground about the centre, are the Captain and his Lieutenant conversing. The former wears a dark dress, the latter a yellow costume with a white sash, causing a brilliant effect of light. Near the Captain, also standing out in full light, is a little girl, a dead white cock hanging from her waistband."

Then follow the names of the other personages in this strange scene.

A commonplace happening is transfigured by the magic of a seer into a significant moment arrested in eternity. Rembrandt is a window looking out upon eternity. It was quite like the logical minded Frenchman, Eugène Fromentin, himself an admirable painter, to pick this canvas full of flaws. The composition is, true enough, troubled and confused. The draughtsmanship leaves much to be desired; hands are carelessly painted, the grouping haphazard, without symmetry, the general rhythm full of syncopations, cross accents, and perverse pauses--empty spaces, transitions not accounted for. And yet this painting without personal charm--it is almost impersonal--grips your soul. It is not alone the emotional quality of the paint. There are greater colourists than Rembrandt, who, strictly speaking, worked in monochrome, modelling with light. No, not the paint alone, not the mystery of the envelope, not the magnetic gaze of the many eyes, but all combined makes an assault upon nerves and imagination. You feel that Captain Cocq is a prosaic personage and is much too tall in proportion to the spry little dandy Lieutenant at his side. Invested with some strange attribute by the genius of the painter, this Dutchman becomes the protagonist in a soundless symphony of light and shadow. The waves that emanate from the canvas suffuse your senses but do not soothe or satisfy. The modern nervous intensity, missing absolutely in Hals and his substantial humans, is present in Rembrandt. We say "modern" as a sop to our vanity, but we are the "ancients," and there is no mode of thought, no mood that has not been experienced and expressed by our ancestors. Rembrandt is unlike any other Dutch painter--Hals, Vermeer, Teniers, Van der Heist--what have these in common with the miller's son? But he is as Dutch as any of them. A genius is only attached to his age through his faults, said a wise man. Rembrandt is as universal as Beethoven, a Dutchman by descent, as Bach, a Hungarian by descent, as Michael Angelo and Shakespeare. But we must go to Leonardo da Vinci if we wish to find a brother soul to Rembrandt's.

There is a second child back of that iridescent and enigmatic girl with the dead fowl. And the dog that barks as Jan Van Koort ruffles his drum, what a spectre dog! No, the mystery of The Night Watch is insoluble, because it is the dream of a poet. Its light is morning light, yet it is the mystic light of Rembrandt, never seen on sea or land. In The Syndics, that group of six linen-drapers, Rembrandt shows with what supreme ease he can beat Hals at the game of make-believe actuality. Now, according to the accustomed order of development, The Night Watch should have followed The Syndics. But it preceded it by two decades, and the later work contains far better painting and a sharper presentment of the real. The Night Watch is Rembrandt's Ninth symphony; but composed before his Fifth, The Syndics. One figure in this latter picture has always fascinated us. It is of the man, Volkert Janz, according to Professor J. Six, who stoops over, his hand poised on a book. Rembrandt has seldom painted with more sensitiveness eyes, subtle corners of the mouth, and intimate expression. This syndic is evidently superior to his fellows, solid, sensible Dutch men of affairs.

There is a landscape, purchased in 1900, a stone bridge, lighted by rays darting through heavy storm clouds. It is the Rembrandt of the etchings. Lovely is the portrait of a young lady of rank, though the Elizabeth Bas, in another gallery, will always be the masterpiece in portraiture if for nothing else but the hands. The Jewish Bride is bulky in its enchantments, the phosphorescent gleams of the apparel the chief attraction. The Toilet is heavy Rembrandt; while the anatomical lecture is repulsive. But the disembowelled corpse is more corpse-like than the queerly foreshortened dead body in the picture on anatomy at The Hague. The warrior's head, supposed to be a portrait of his father, is an ancient copy and a capital one. Old dame Elizabeth Bas, with her coif, ruff, and folded hands, holding a handkerchief, is a picture you return to each day of your stay.

Hals at Amsterdam is interesting. There is the so-called portrait of the painter and his wife, two full-length figures; the Jolly Toper, half-length figure, large black hat, in the left hand a glass; and the insolent lute-player, a copy, said to be by Dirck Hals, the original in the possession of Baron Gustave Rothschild at Paris. And a fine copy it is.

The three Vermeers are of his later enamelled period. One is a young woman reading a letter; she is seen in profile, standing near a table, and is dressed in a white skirt and blue loose jacket. The Letter shows us in the centre of a paved room a seated lady, lute in hand. She has been interrupted in her playing by a servant bringing a letter. To the right a tapestry curtain has been looped up to give a view of the scene. The new Vermeer--purchased from the Six gallery in 1908--is now called The Cook; it was formerly known as The Milkmaid. A stoutly built servant is standing behind a table covered with a green cloth, on which are displayed a basket of bread, a jug of Nassau earthenware, and a stone pot into which she is pouring milk from a can. The figure, painted almost full length, stands out against the white wall and is dressed in a lemon-coloured jacket, a red-brown petticoat, a dark-blue apron turned back, and a white cap on the head. The light falls on the scene through a window to the left, above the table.

This masterpiece is in one of the cabinet galleries. It displays more breadth than the Lady Reading a Letter, and its colouring is absolutely magical. The De Hoochs are of prime quality. Greater art is the windmill and moonlit scene of Hobbema, as great a favourite as his Mill, though both must give the precedence to the Alley of Middleharnais in the Royal Academy, London. But where to begin, where to end in this high carnival of over three thousand pictures! The ticketed favourites, starred Baedeker fashion, sometimes lag behind their reputation. The great Van der Helst--and a prime portraitist he is, as may be seen over and over again--is The Company of Captain Bicker, a vast canvas. When you forget Hals and Rembrandt it is not difficult to conjure up admiration for this work. The N. Maes Spinner is very characteristic. Cuyp and Van Goyen are here; the latter's view of Dordrecht is celebrated. So is the Floating Feather of Hondecoester, a finely depicted pelican. The feather is the least part of the picture. Asselijn's angry swan is an excellent companion piece. 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. A youth attired in dark habiliments, his back turned to the spectators, is pouring out wine or water. The canvas is large, the execution flowing; perhaps it portrays the disciples at Emmaus.

The portraits of Nicholas Hasselaer and his wife Geertruyt van Erp, by Hals, in one of the cabinets, are painted with such consummate artistry that you gasp. The thin paint, every stroke of which sings out, sets you to thinking of John Sargent and how he has caught the trick of brush-work--at a slower tempo. But not even Sargent could have produced the collar and cuffs. A Whistler, a full-length, in another gallery, looks like an unsubstantial wraith by comparison. Two weeks' daily attendance at this excellently planned collection did no more than fix the position of the exhibits in the mind. There is a goodly gathering of such names as Israels, Mesdag, Blommers, and others at the Rijks, but the display of modern Dutch pictures at the Municipal Museum is more representative. The greatest Josef Israels we ever saw in the style is his Jew sitting in the doorway of a house, a most eloquent testimony to Israels' powers of seizing the "race" and the individual. Old David Bles is here, and Blommers, De Bock, Bosboom, Valkenburg, Alma-Tadema, Ary Scheffer--of Dutch descent--Roelofs, Mesdag, Mauve, Jakob Maris, Jongkind, and some of the Frenchmen, Rousseau, Millet, Dupré, and others. The Six gallery is not so accessible as it was some years ago. No doubt its Rembrandts and Vermeers will eventually find their way into the Rijks Museum.

II

Who was Herri met de Bles? Nearly all the large European galleries contain specimens of his work and in the majority of cases the pictures are queried. That fatal (?) which, since curators are more erudite and conscientious, is appearing more frequently than in former years, sets one to musing over the mutability of pictorial fortunes. Also, it awakens suspicions as to the genuineness of paint. Restorations, another fatal word, is usually a euphemism for overpainting. Between varnish and retouching it is difficult to tell where the old master leaves off and the "restorer" begins. Bles, for example, as seen in the Rijks Museum, is a fascinating subject to the student; but are we really looking at his work? The solitary picture of his here, Paradise, is so well preserved that it might have been painted a year ago. (It is an attribution.) Yet this painter is supposed to have been born at Bouvignes, 1480, and to have died at Liège, 1521. He was nicknamed Herri, for Hendrick, met de Bles, because he had a tuft of white in his hair (a forerunner of Whistler). The French called him Henri à la Houppe; the Italians "Civetta"--because of the tiny owl he always introduced into his work. He was a landscapist, and produced religious and popular scenes. Bles has had many works saddled upon him by unknown imitators of Metsu, Joost van Kleef, Lucas, and Dürer--who worked at Antwerp between 1520 and 1550. Thierry Vellert was also an imitator. In the old Pinakothek, Munich, there is a Henricus Blesius, which is said to be a counterfeit, and others are in Karlsruhe, Milan, Brussels, and at the Prado.

The circular picture in the Rijks shows us in various episodes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden from the Creation until the Fall. Around the edge are signs of the zodiac. The colour is rich, the figures delicate. The story is clearly told and is not unlike a "continuous performance." You see Adam asleep and over him stoops the Almighty; then Eve is shown. The apple scandal and the angel with the flaming sword are portrayed with a vivid line that recalls the miniaturist. A rare painter.

Roeland Savery is an artist whose name, we confess, was not known to us until we saw his work in the Rijks. The rich _pâte_ and bouquet-like quality of his colour recall Monticelli. His compositions are composed, like Monticelli's, but much more spirited than the latter. A stag hunt, a poet crowned at the feast of animals, Elijah fed by the ravens, and the fable of the stag among the cows prove the man's versatility. He was born about 1576 and died at Utrecht, 1639. A pupil of his father, he first worked in Courtrai. The Bronzino Judith holding the head of Holophernes is a copy, the original hanging in the Pitti Palace. At Vienna there is a replica. Among the Bols (Cornelis, 1613-66) the portraits of Roelof Meulenaer and his wife, Maria Rey, attract because of their vitality and liberalism. Then we come across the oft-engraved Paternal Advice, by Gerard ter Borch (1617-81). Who doesn't remember that young lady dressed in white satin and standing with her back to you? The man in officer's uniform, admonishing her, is seated next to a woman drinking from a wine-glass. The texture of the dress and the artfully depicted glass are the delight of amateurs. As a composition it is not remarkable. The man is much too young to be the father of the blond-haired lady, and if the other one is her mother, both parents must have retained their youth. The portrait of Helena van der Schalcke is that of a quaint Dutch child standing; a serious little body carrying a basket on her right arm like a good housewife. It is a capital Ter Borch. Two beautiful Albert Cuyps are painted on the two sides of a copper panel. On one side two merchants stand at a wharf; on the other two men sit sampling wine in a cellar. The colour is singularly luminous.

Let us pass quickly the Schalckens and Gerard Dous. Dou's self-portrait is familiar. He leans out of a window and smokes a clay pipe. The candle-light pictures always attract an audience. Govert Flinck (1615-60, pupil of Rembrandt) is a painter who, if he lived to-day, would be a popular portraitist. Wherever you go you see his handiwork, not in the least inspired, but honest, skilful, and genial. Look at the head of the tax-collector Johannes Wittenbogaert, covered with a black cap. So excellent is it that it has been attributed to Rembrandt. Boland, we believe, engraved it as genuine Rembrandt. Gerard van Honthorst's Happy Musician is another picture of prime quality, and a subject dear to Hals. Hoogstratten's Sick Lady is an anecdote. The young woman does not seem very ill, but the doctor gravely holds up a bottle of medicine and you feel the dread moment is at hand. How to persuade the patient to swallow the dose? She is stubborn-looking. The Pieter de Hoochs are now in the same gallery with Rembrandt's Jewish Bride. These interiors, painted with a minute, hard finish, lack the charm and the colour quality of Vermeer. With sunlight Hooch is successful, but his figures do not move freely in an atmospheric envelope, as is the case with Vermeer's. The Small Country House is the favourite. In front of a house a well-dressed man and woman are seated at a table. She is squeezing lemon juice into a glass. Behind her a servant is carrying a glass of beer, and farther away a girl cleans pots and pans. The composition is the apotheosis of domestic comfort, conjugal peace, and gluttony. We like much more The Pantry, wherein a woman hands a jug to her little girl. The adjoining room, flooded with light, is real.

There is one Van der Helst we could not pass. It looks like the portrait of a corpulent woman, but is that of Gerard Bicker, bailiff of Muiden. A half-length figure turned to the left, the bailiff a well-fed pig, holds a pair of gloves in his right hand which he presses against his Gargantuan chest. His hair is long and curly. The fabrics are finely wrought. Holbein the younger is represented by the portrait of a young man. It is excellent, but doubtless a copy or an imitation. To view five Lucas van Leydens in one gallery is not an everyday event. His engravings are rare enough--that is, in good states; "ghosts" are aplenty--and his paintings rarer. Here they are chiefly portraits. Rachel Ruysch, the flower painter, has a superior in Judith Lyster, a pupil of Frans Hals. She was born at Haarlem, or Zaandam, about 1600, and died 1660. She married the painter Jan Molener. Her Jolly Toper faces the Hals of the same theme, in a cabinet, and reveals its artistic ancestry. Judith had the gift of reproducing surfaces. We need not return to the various Maeses; indeed, this is only a haphazard ramble among the less well-known pictures. Consider the heads of Van Mierevelt; those of Henrick Hooft, burgomaster of Amsterdam, of Jacob Cats, and of his wife Aegje Hasselaer (1618-64). Her hair and lace collar are wonderfully set forth. Must we stop before Mabuse, or before the cattle piece of the Dutch school, seventeenth century? A Monticelli seems out of key here, and the subject is an unusual one for him, Christ With the Little Children. The Little Princess, by P. Moreelse, has the honour, after Rembrandt, of being the most frequently copied picture in the Rijks. The theme is the magnet. A little girl, elaborately dressed, is seated. She strokes the head of a spaniel whose jewelled collar gives the impression of a dog with four eyes. In Vermeer's Young Woman Reading a Letter is a like confused passage of painting, for the uninstructed spectator. She wears her hair over her ear, an ornament clasping the hair. At first view this is not clear, principally because this fashion of wearing the hair is unusual in the eyes of a stranger.

Jan van Scorel was born at Schoorl, near Alkmaar, 1495. He studied under Jacob Cornelis at Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge at Utrecht. He died at Utrecht, 1562. When travelling in Germany he visited Dürer at Nuremberg; resided for a time in Italy. The Italian influence is strong, particularly in his Mary Magdalen, which formerly hung in the town-hall of Haarlem. A replica is in the residence of the head-master of Eton College, England. Mary is shown seated, richly attired. She holds in her right hand a box of perfume, her left hand, beautifully painted, rests on her knee. Behind is a mountainous landscape, distinctly Italian, beside her a tree. The head is north Lombardian in character and colouring, the glance of the eyes enigmatic. A curiously winning composition, not without _morbidezza_. Scorel has five other works in the Rijks. The Bathsheba is not a masterpiece. Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is conventional, but the Harpsichord Player was sold at Paris as late as 1823 as a Bronzino. Perhaps it is only attributed to Scorel. It is unlike his brush-work. The Painting of a Vault, divided into nine sections, five of which represent the Last Judgment, is a curiosity. The portrait of Emperor Charles V. as Pharaoh is pointed out by the gallery attendant, who then retires and diplomatically coughs in the middle distance.

The Mancini (pupil of Morelli and W.H. Mesdag) is entitled Poor Thing. A little girl stands in a miserable room; mice run over the floor. The colouring is rich. There are admirable Jakob Marises; but we wish to follow in the track of the old fellows. Adrian van Ostade's Baker is so popular that it is used for advertising purposes in Holland. The baker leans out of his door, the lower half closed, and blows a horn. Palamedes evidently repainted the same picture many times. An interior with figures, seated and standing; same faces, poses, accessories. Same valet pouring out wine; variants of this figure. A Merry Party is the usual title. At The Hague in the Mauritshuis there is another such subject; also in Antwerp and Brussels. But a jolly painter. Steen and Teniers we may sidestep. Also the artificial though graceful Tischbein. There is a Winterhalter here, a mannered fashionable portrait painter (he painted the Empress Eugénie), and let us leave the Titians to the experts. When you are in Holland look at the Dutch pictures. A De Vos painted topers and fishermen with gusto, and there is Vinckboons, who doted on scenes of violence. Fancy Vollon flowers in the midst of these old Dutchmen. The Frenchman had an extraordinary feeling for still-life, though more in the decorative Venetian manner than in Chardin's serene palette, or the literalism of Kalf. Whistler's Effie Deans, presented by the Dowager Baroness R. van Lynden in 1900, is not one of that master's most successful efforts. It is a whole-length figure painted in misty semi-tones, the feeling sentimental, un-Whistlerian, and, as we before remarked, wraith-like and lacking in substance when compared to Hals.

There is actually a Wouverman in which no white horse is to be discovered. On Van der Werff and the romantic landscapist Wynants we need not dwell. The miniatures, pastels, and framed drawings are of goodly array. Of the former, Samuel Cooper (portrait of Charles II.), John Hoskins, Peter Oliver, Isaac Oliver, Laurence Crosse, and others. English, Dutch, and French may be found. The Liotard and Tischbein pastels are charming. In the supplements of the catalogue we find underscored a Descent from the Cross, an anonymous work of the Flemish school (fifteenth century, second half). The dead Christ is being lowered into the arms of his mother. It is evidently a copy from a lost original in the style of Rogier van der Weyden. There are such copies in Bruges and elsewhere. Another composition is labelled as an anonymous work of undetermined school. The Christ hangs on the cross, on His right are the Virgin Mary, the holy women and St. John; on His left jeering soldiers and scribes. On either side of the composition is the figure of a saint much larger in size than the other figures; St. Cosmus on the left, St. Damian on the right. The background is a hilly landscape. An authority ascribes the work to the Catalonian school, date about 1440. There were giants in those days. Antonello da Messina has the portrait of a young man. It is an attribution, yet not without some claim to authenticity. The Jan Provosts are mostly of close study, especially The Virgin Enthroned. A certain Pieter Dubordieu, who was living in Amsterdam in 1676 (born in Touraine), painted the portraits of a man and a woman, dated 1638. Vivid portraits. We must pass over the striking head of Hanneman, the Lucas Cranach (the elder), and the thousand other attractive pictures in this gallery. The Rijks Museum could be lived with for years and still remain an inexhaustible source of joy.

ART IN ANTWERP