THE period of the great struggle of the Netherlands for religious and political independence from the yoke of Spain and the Inquisition was not propitious for the fostering of the Fine Arts. Not only did the troubled provinces, as was quite natural, slacken in artistic production, but a vast portion of the treasures owned by churches and monastic establishments were destroyed by the fanaticism of Protestant iconoclasts. The separation of the Protestant North from the Catholic South by the Utrecht Union in 1579 became in a way the determining factor for the future course of painting in Holland and in the Belgic provinces. The Dutchmen practically had no further use for religious painting, and devoted themselves more exclusively to the domestic genre, portraiture, and landscape; whilst the Flemings applied themselves largely to infusing new vitality into the representation of Scriptural characters and incidents which, through constant mechanical repetition, had become mere allegorical hieroglyphics, or generalised ideas without the all-important sense of pulsating life. This regeneration was the great deed of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), who, whilst still benefiting from the example of the great Italians, remained the very embodiment of Flemish character and thought, and became the founder of the second important period of Flemish national art. He was a man of exuberant vitality and boundless energy, endowed with a creative force unequalled in the whole history of art. He must rank for all time among the very giants of the brush, with Rembrandt, Titian, and Velazquez, his contribution to the progress in pictorial art being the use of pigment and sweeping brushwork as a constructive element—an advance as significant as the Venetians’ admission of light into the pictorial scheme, which with the Florentines was based entirely on linear design.

PIETER BRUEGHEL

But before considering the magnificent array of close on fifty authentic works by the master which form part of the French national collection, reference will have to be made to a few Flemish artists of the singularly barren decades that precede the advent of Rubens. First and foremost among these is Pieter Brueghel (or Breughel) the Elder (1530–1569), who was born at Breda in 1530, became a pupil of Pieter Koeck, and died at Brussels in 1569. In spite of his early travels in Italy—which were then already considered indispensable for the completion of an artist’s training—he remained unaffected by the all-pervading Italian influence. He was pure Flemish in thought and expression, and devoted himself to the realistic painting of peasant life. Certain realistic features which make his pictures sometimes appear obscene and coarse to modern eyes are merely an expression of the humour of his age. The exquisite little painting, The Beggars (No. 1917), which is fully signed

is probably some satirical political allusion to the revolutionary party who called themselves the Gueux (beggars). A similar political significance is probably the intention of The Parable of the Blind (No. 1917a). The single file of blind men following their blind leaders into a river is meant to satirise the moral blindness of the artist’s compatriots following their political leaders into disaster. This excellent version of Brueghel’s famous masterpiece at Naples was bought at the Leys sale at Antwerp, in 1894, for £724. The type of picture to which the elder Brueghel owes his sobriquet “Peasant Brueghel” is exemplified at the Louvre by two little panels, A Village (No. 1918) and Peasants Dancing (No. 1918a), which can, however, only be accepted as school pictures.

JAN BRUEGHEL

Of Brueghel’s two sons, Pieter the younger, known as “Hell” Brueghel, is not represented at the Louvre, which, on the other hand, boasts possession of eight examples from the brush of “Peasant” Brueghel’s second son, Jan (1568–1625), known to fame as “Velvet” Brueghel, either owing to his love of splendid apparel or to the velvety softness of his brush. He began as a still-life and flower painter, in which capacity he often collaborated with Rubens. Having journeyed to Rome in 1593, he devoted himself more exclusively to landscape enlivened with many small figures, for which some Scriptural or mythological subject generally provided the excuse. Where his pictures contain figures on a larger scale, they are generally put in by Rubens, Rottenhammer, or Van Balen. The last-named is certainly responsible for the figures in Air (No. 1920), one of a series of the Four Elements, painted by Jan Brueghel for his Roman patron, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, in 1621. To the same series belongs Earth, or The Earthly Paradise (No. 1919), a subject often repeated by him, as for instance in the versions at The Hague and at Budapest. Of his other pictures at the Louvre The Bridge of Talavera (No. 1925), and the Landscape (No. 1926), are signed and dated brueghel, 1619, and j. brueghel, 1620, respectively. The Battle of Arbela (No. 1921) is a characteristic work with many minutely wrought figures. The Landscapes (Nos. 1923 and 1924) are of doubtful authenticity, and were formerly attributed to Paul Bril. They are not now exhibited.

There are scarcely any Flemish characteristics in the art of Paul Bril (1556–1626), the younger brother and pupil of Matthias Bril. He was born at Antwerp, but worked nearly all his life in Rome. There is little to distinguish this precursor of Poussin in the art of landscape from his Italian contemporaries. In Duck Shooting (No. 1908), Diana and her Nymphs (No. 1909), and Pan and Syrinx (No. 1911) the figures are believed to have been painted in by Annibale Carracci. The Fishermen (No. 1910) bears his signature pa. brilli, and the date 1624.

THE FRANCK FAMILY

Although the Louvre owns no picture by Frans Floris, the head of the Italianising mid-sixteenth-century Antwerp school, his uninteresting style may be studied in The Story of Esther (No. 1989) by his pupil Frans Franck (1542–1616). To that second-rate artist’s son, Frans Franck the Younger (1581–1642), who already benefited to a certain extent by the example of Rubens, is given in the official Catalogue Ulysses recognising Achilles among the Daughters of Lycomedes (No. 1991a). The Parable of the Prodigal Son (No. 1990), which is also catalogued under his name, is obviously by his son Frans Franck iii., since the date 1663 precedes the signature, and F. Franck the younger died in 1642.

Frans Pourbus the Younger (1569–1622) was born at Antwerp, but spent the later part of his life in Paris, where, like his father, he enjoyed considerable reputation as a portrait painter. He had previously been working at the Mantuan Court, and became painter to Marie de MÉdicis after 1609. Although he occasionally produced altarpieces like the rather uninspired Last Supper (No. 2068) and St. Francis receiving the Stigmata (No. 2069), he was essentially a portrait painter. In this capacity he belongs rather to the age that was coming to a close than to the new era initiated by Rubens. His portraits are quite soundly painted, rich in colour, and convincing as likenesses, but lack depth of character and suavity of touch. By far his best pictures at the Louvre are the Portrait of Henri IV. (No. 2071) and the large Portrait of Marie de MÉdicis (No. 2072), in which the details of the costume are particularly noteworthy. Less important is another Portrait of Henri IV. (No. 2070), and one of Guillaume du Vair (No. 2074).

Octavius van Veen, or Otto Venius (1558–1629), the painter of The Artist and his Family (No. 2191), owes his fame more to the fact that he was one of the three masters under whom Rubens studied than to any intrinsic merit of his art.

PETER PAUL RUBENS

The Louvre owes its almost unequalled wealth in paintings by Rubens to the master’s relations with Marie de MÉdicis and her Court; and to this reason is due the fact that by far the largest portion of the fifty-one authentic works wholly or partly from his brush, which now form part of this great collection, date approximately from, or immediately before and after, the time during which he was busy with the famous series painted by order of that queen for the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace, and now to be seen in a setting appropriate to their florid sumptuousness in the new Rubens Gallery at the Louvre. Even so, the collection comprises examples of every phase of the master’s colossal activity—religious and historical compositions, allegorical paintings, landscapes, portraits, still life, and even genre-pieces, like the Kermesse (No. 2115), in which he successfully competes with Teniers on a ground peculiarly his own.

Born at Siegen in 1577, Rubens received his artistic education at Antwerp from Tobias Verhaecht, a landscape painter, Adam van Noort, and O. van Veen. At the age of twenty-three he went to Italy and entered the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, studying in their own country the works of the great Italian masters, and especially the Venetians, from whose glorious colour he derived more benefit than from his early training. With the exception of a journey to the Court of Philip III. at Madrid, where he was sent on a mission by the Duke of Mantua in 1603, Rubens spent the eight years from 1600 to 1608 in the various Italian centres, and especially in Rome, where he painted, about 1606, the little Landscape with Ruins (No. 2119), which is of interest not only as showing to what degree he was at that time influenced by the Roman school, and by the Carracci, but also as being the very first landscape known to have been produced by him. The same view of the Palatine Hill is to be recognised in the background of the Four Philosophers at the Pitti Palace, and in the portrait of Woverius in the Arenberg collection. Of about the same time, though the figures would appear to have been added at a considerably later date, is the Landscape with a Rainbow (No. 2118).

RUBENS AT ANTWERP

Having returned to Antwerp in 1608, and married his first wife, Isabella Brant, in the following year, Rubens, who was now made Court painter to Archduke Albrecht, entered upon a period of stupendous artistic activity, which extended to about 1621, when he began to divide his time between art and diplomatic missions, and, having previously organised a vast studio with an army of assistants, often left the execution of his brilliant sketch designs to less capable hands. This early Antwerp period is not particularly well represented at the Louvre, although the collection includes The Virgin surrounded by the Holy Innocents (No. 2078)— a Virgin of characteristic Flemish coarseness and fulness of form, in the midst of a dense swarm of delicious, plump, dimpled, wingless angel-children, whose rosy baby-flesh is painted with inimitable mastery. The picture was painted about 1615, six years before The Virgin and Child within a Garland of Flowers (No. 2079), executed in 1621 for Cardinal Federigo Borromeo. The tasteless floral wreath in this picture, as in the similar versions at Munich and New York, is from the brush of Jan Brueghel. To about the year 1615 belongs also the Christ on the Cross, with the Virgin, the Magdalen and St. John (No. 2082), which can, however, hardly be entirely from the master’s own hand. The mass of unbroken vermilion in the robe of St. John is one of Rubens’s favourite devices at that period. The Resurrection of Lazarus (No. 2081) is the original sketch for the Berlin picture.

In 1620, when Rubens undertook to paint a series of thirty-nine Miracles of SS. Ignatius Loyola and FranÇois Xavier for the ceiling of the Jesuit Church at Antwerp, the business-like organisation of his studio was an acknowledged fact, as may be gathered from the terms of the agreement which stipulated that the master himself should provide the designs, though the execution was to be entrusted to his most competent assistants. The actual paintings were destroyed by fire in 1718, but of the original sketches seventeen have been preserved, and are now distributed between the Louvre, the Vienna Academy, the Museums of Gotha and Brussels, and the Dulwich Gallery. The four in the La Caze collection at the Louvre are Abraham’s Sacrifice (No. 2120), Abraham and Melchisedek (No. 2121), The Elevation of the Cross (No. 2122), and The Coronation of the Virgin (No. 2123). The whole series, but especially the first two of these, is remarkable for the boldness of the foreshortening, calculated for the position of the panels on the ceiling, and for the swift bravura and inimitable expressiveness of the brushwork. To the same period belongs Philopoemen recognised by an Old Woman (No. 2124), which is essentially a brilliant still-life study for a lost picture.

THE MÉDICIS SERIES

We come now to the series of twenty-one large allegorical paintings, designed by Rubens and executed mostly by his pupils, from 1621 to 1625, for the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace for Marie de MÉdicis, whose by no means inspiring career had to furnish the subjects for the series. It was a thankless task which could only be accomplished by a tour de force—by removing the events of the queen’s life from actuality into the sphere of mythology and allegory. That the strange mingling of the real and the ideal should sometimes verge on the grotesque was almost inevitable—as inevitable as that the work of his assistants should have failed to do full justice to the master’s conception, even if it was “pulled together” by the easily recognisable touches added by Rubens to the finished panels. The florid exuberance of design and colour was entirely in keeping with the purpose and the surroundings for which the paintings were intended. It is impossible here to enter into a full description of this extensive series, or to define exactly Rubens’s share in each of the eleven pictures. We must confine ourselves to the brief enumeration of the subjects in the order in which they are now to be seen in the new Rubens Gallery. The series begins with The Fates spinning the Destiny of Marie de MÉdicis (No. 2085). Then follow The Triumph of Truth (No. 2105); Henri IV. receiving the Portrait of Marie (No. 2088); The Marriage of Marie by Procuration with Henri IV. (No. 2089); Marie landing at Marseilles, Nov. 3, 1600 (No. 2090); The Marriage at Lyons, Dec. 10, 1600 (No. 2091); The Birth of Louis XIII. at Fontainebleau, Sept. 27, 1601 (No. 2092); Henri IV. leaves for the War with Germany and entrusts the Government to the Queen (No. 2093, Plate XXI.); The Coronation of the Queen (No. 2094); Apotheosis of Henri IV. and the Queen’s Regency (No. 2095); The Queen’s Journey to Ponts-de-CÉ (No. 2097); Exchange of the Two Princesses, Nov. 9, 1615 (No. 2098); The Prosperous Regency (No. 2099); The Majority of Louis XIII. (No. 2100); The Queen’s Nocturnal Flight from Blois (No. 2101); The Reconciliation of the Queen with her Son (No. 2102); The Conclusion of Peace (No. 2103); and Marie’s Interview with her Son (No. 2104). But The Birth of Marie de MÉdicis, at Florence, on April 26, 1575 (No. 2086); The Education of Marie by Minerva, Mercury, Apollo, and the Graces (No. 2087); and The Gods in Olympus protecting the Queen’s Government (No. 2096), which belong to the same series, have been placed in another room.

Of the first and the last paintings the Louvre owns the original sketch on one panel, by Rubens, for The Triumph of Truth and The Fates spinning the Destiny of Marie (No. 2110), the other preliminary sketches being at the Hermitage and the Munich Gallery. It is interesting to note that all these sketches are designed in a very light key, almost in grisaille, with touches of rose and other tender colour notes, so that apparently Rubens’s assistants were allowed great liberty in the matter of colour.

MÉDICIS PORTRAITS

Several other pictures by Rubens at the Louvre—all of them portraits—are more or less directly connected with the MÉdicis series, and were painted between 1621 and 1625. These are the Portrait of Anne of Austria (No. 2112), which was formerly known as Elizabeth of Bourbon; the Portrait of Francesco de’ Medici (No. 2106), Grand Duke of Tuscany, and father of Marie de MÉdicis, which was painted for the Luxembourg Gallery; the Portrait of Johanna of Austria (No. 2107), daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand, and wife of Francesco de’ Medici; the Portraits of Marie de MÉdicis (Nos. 2108 and 2109) (the former in the character of Bellona, and both studio works with the final touches added by the master); and the Portrait of Baron Henri de Vicq (No. 2111), who, as Flemish Ambassador to the French Court, was instrumental in procuring Rubens the important commission for the Luxembourg pictures. This admirable portrait was bought at the King of Holland’s sale in 1850 for £637.

To the same period belongs the beautiful Portrait of Susanne Fourment (Rubens’s handsome, large-eyed sister-in-law, whose features are best known from the Chapeau de Paille at the National Gallery), which is still officially catalogued as Portrait of a Lady of the Boonen Family (No. 2114); and the important composition Lot’s Flight from Sodom (No. 2075), which bears the rare full signature and date

to prove the master’s satisfaction with his own handiwork. It is a design of carefully studied rhythm, dramatic expressiveness, and subtly harmonised colour, carried out with the swift sureness of his later work.

In 1627, a year before his mission to Spain on behalf of the Infanta Isabella, widow of the Archduke Albrecht, Rubens designed for his patroness an important series of tapestries, which were, as was his wont at that period, sketched out by him, executed by his assistants, and touched up by his own hand. The tapestries were subsequently presented by the Infanta to a convent at Madrid; some of the paintings for them perished by fire, others were preserved at the Convent of Loeches, near Madrid. Two of these, The Prophet Elijah in the Desert (No. 2076) and The Triumph of Religion (No. 2083), were part of General Sebastiani’s loot from Spain, and were bought by the Louvre for £2400; whilst four others, now at Grosvenor House, were bought by the Marquis of Westminster for £10,500. Of about the same date is the brilliant Adoration of the Magi (No. 2077), with its Titianesque scheme of strong red, blue, and golden yellow, of which a replica is in an Irish private collection.

LATE WORKS BY RUBENS

The closing decade of Rubens’s life is represented by five pictures of considerable importance. Of Queen Tomyris with the Head of Cyrus (No. 2084) there is an earlier, large, and deservedly famous version in Lord Darnley’s collection; but the Louvre picture exceeds it in beauty of design and in unity of colour. It was painted about the same time (cca. 1632) as Religion crowned by a Genius (No. 2126), one of the sketches for the ceiling at Whitehall. Of peculiar interest, owing to its unfinished state which reveals the master’s method of portraiture, is the superb portrait group of HÉlÈne Fourment, the Artist’s Second Wife, and Two of her Children (No. 2113, Plate XXII.). Only the heads, which are remarkable for an intensity of expression that is rarely to be found in Rubens’s paintings, are finished. All the rest is loosely and thinly sketched in sepia heightened with swift touches of brighter colour. It was painted about 1636, which is also the approximate date of A Flemish Kermesse (No. 2115), an almost unique instance of the master applying the exuberant energy of his magic brush to a subject in which the expression of intense vitality and full-blooded sensuousness assumes the aspect almost of bestiality—which, however, in no way detracts from the artistic value of the painting. To turn from this to A Joust by the Moat of a Castle (No. 2116) is to pass from coarse realism to pure romanticism, inspired probably by the associations of the picturesque Castle of Steen, which Rubens had bought in 1635, and which forms the setting for this scene of knightly prowess. This, and the marvellous and strangely modern little Landscape (No. 2117), in which the morning sun is seen rising from the autumnal mist, belong to the closing years of Rubens’s life. He died at Antwerp on May 20, 1640.

ANTHONY VAN DYCK

Born at Antwerp in 1599, Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), after having worked a few years under Hendrick van Balen, entered Rubens’s studio in 1615, and soon became so conversant with the method of his famous master, that he was at an early age entrusted with the execution of important designs. Before he had reached his twentieth year he was a member of the Guild of St. Luke, and had acquired a reputation second only to that of Rubens himself. The Portraits of Jean Grusset Richardot, President of the Netherlands Council, and his Son (No. 1985), which was bought in 1784 for 16,001 livres, so closely resembles the work of Rubens, especially in the brilliant flesh-painting, that the picture—a posthumous portrait, by the way—for a long time passed under the elder master’s name, although it is now admitted by the best authorities to be an early picture by Van Dyck.

Van Dyck paid a short visit to England in 1620. He went to Italy in the following year, studying the works of the great masters, and especially of Titian, and finally settling in Genoa, where he remained until his return to Antwerp in 1628. During these years he devoted himself almost exclusively to portraiture, in which he endeavoured successfully to emulate the golden warmth of colour which had drawn him towards Titian. Unfortunately this, to some the most attractive, phase of Van Dyck’s art is but indifferently shown at the Louvre, the only example being a Portrait of a Man (No. 1976).

Some of the master’s most precious works at the Louvre belong to his second Antwerp period, which extended from his return from Genoa in 1628 to his departure for England in 1632. It was probably then that he painted The Virgin and Child, with the Penitent Sinners (No. 1961) (Mary Magdalen, David, and the Prodigal Son), in which the influence of the Venetian colourists is so clearly to be noticed. Indeed, the bosom of the female penitent is copied from the nymph in Titian’s Education of Cupid at the Borghese Gallery, of which there is a drawing in the Chatsworth Sketch-book with the comment in the artist’s handwriting, “quel admirabil petto.” Shortly after his return from Italy he also painted The Virgin and Child with Donors (No. 1962), one of his greatest masterpieces. The Madonna is of a youthful, pure type, vastly different from the buxom Flemish women so often depicted by his master in saintly characters. The painting of the Infant’s body is as admirable as that of the kneeling Donors, and a spiritual connection is established by the action of the Child and the expression of the man towards whom He is holding out His hand.

The companion groups A Gentleman and a Child (No. 1973) and A Lady and her Daughter (No. 1974), date from about 1630. They are full of that aristocratic distinction which is the hall-mark of Van Dyck’s Genoese portraits, and which in his later English period was apt to degenerate into effeminacy. This air of distinction is also to be noted in the children, although they are perfectly natural in action and expression, and have none of that stiffness which makes so many of the earlier masters’ portraits of children look like undergrown men and women. The imposing equestrian portrait of Francisco d’Aytona, MarquÉs de Moncada (No. 1971), Generalissimus of the Spanish troops in the Netherlands, which in its general disposition recalls the portrait of Charles i. at Windsor Castle; the small study for it of the same sitter’s head and shoulders (No. 1972); and the portrait of The Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, Regent of the Netherlands (No. 1970), in the costume of the Sisters of St. Clare, whom she had joined after the death of her husband the Archduke Albrecht, belong to the same period. Then also was painted the Rinaldo in the Garden of Armida (No. 1966), which is probably the picture bought from the artist at Antwerp by Endymion Porter, on behalf of King Charles i., in March 1629, for the price of £78.

“LE ROI À LA CHASSE”

Van Dyck’s manner of life in England, as the petted Court painter of Charles i., and the factory-like output of his well-organised studio at Blackfriars, are too well known to need further comment. In justice to his fair fame it is necessary to draw a clear distinction between the innumerable replicas turned out by his assistants under his guidance, and such magnificent original works from the master’s own brush as the glorious Portrait of King Charles I. of England (No. 1967, Plate XXIII.), known as “Le Roi À la Chasse,” which is one of the proudest possessions of the French national collection. The king is seen, resting his gloved hand on a stick, in a glade, with the sea in the distance. Behind him are two attendants and his white charger pawing the ground in impatient action. The king’s noble, quiet dignity is such as to dominate the entire composition, without, however, the slightest hint of the theatrical. Here, as in most of his English portraits, Van Dyck has departed from the glowing sumptuousness of his earlier Venetian palette, and arrived at a cooler, mellow, and more personal harmony of decorative colour. As if conscious of the superior merit of this picture, which is more than a mere portrait of the king, and depicts the very personification of royalty, the artist, who was not in the habit of signing his pictures, inscribed on a stone the lettering

Painted for the king in 1635 for £100, it passed through many hands before it was bought by Louis xv. for Mme du Barry, by whom it was ceded in 1775 to his successor for 24,000 livres.

To Van Dyck’s English period, which only terminated with his death in 1641, belong the group of Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, and Rupert, Prince of Bavaria (No. 1969), and the Portrait of James Stuart, Duke of Lennox (No. 1975)—not the Duke of Richmond, as stated in the official Catalogue—in the character of Paris. Another twelve pictures are catalogued under Van Dyck’s name, but they are either of minor importance, or, like the Three Children of Charles I. (No. 1968), mere studio repetitions.

FRANS SNYDERS

The powerful personality of Rubens dominated the art of Flanders during the seventeenth century. His direct or indirect influence is traceable in the art of most of his contemporaries and of the painters of the next generation, who divided his artistic heritage without attaining to his universality. Thus his collaborator Frans Snyders (1579–1657), after studying under “Hell Brueghel” and H. van Balen, acquired the bravura of his brushwork and his unrivalled skill in depicting animals in violent movement from Rubens, in whose pictures of the chase he frequently painted the animals, whilst he often had to seek the assistance of other painters for the figures introduced into his own compositions. Among the thirteen pictures from his brush at the Louvre (Nos. 2141–2153) the Wild Boar Hunt (No. 2144) serves best to illustrate Snyders’s power to suggest the furious onrush and wild excitement of the chase. His skill as a still-life painter may be judged from the masterly treatment of the wet glittering fish in the large Fish Merchants (No. 2145).

JACOB JORDAENS

Whatever appears coarse in the art of Rubens is accentuated to the point of grossness in the paintings by his fellow-student under Van Noort, Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678). He is the painter of Le Roi boit (No. 2014) or The Twelfth Night Feast, which is by no means the best of his many versions of his favourite subject. He was a realist who, as may be seen from this picture and from the Concert after a Meal (No. 2015), found his most congenial subjects in the carousals of Flemish merrymakers, which he depicted with more than a touch of coarse humour. That his temperament and limitations debarred him from achieving success in the higher flights of art is clearly shown by his large but by no means noble canvas Christ driving the Moneylenders from the Temple (No. 2011). On the other hand, his firm grasp of character stood him in good stead in portraiture. The so-called Portrait of Admiral de Ruyter (No. 2016), which was bought in 1824 for £800, is a good example.

We can only briefly refer to a number of seventeenth-century Antwerp painters, who were either pupils of Rubens or close followers of his tradition. Gonzales Coques (1614–1684), the painter of the admirably lighted Family Party (No. 1952), was essentially a portrait painter who became known as “the little Van Dyck,” although his manner had more in common with that of the Dutch “small masters” than with the tempered elegance of Charles i.’s Court-painter.

Gaspar de Crayer (1584–1669), a pupil of Raphael van Coxie, modelled his art entirely on Rubens, and was equally successful as a portrait painter and in his religious compositions. Both phases of his art figure in the Louvre collection, which owns the St. Augustin in Ecstasy (No. 1953) and the life-size Equestrian Portrait of the Infante Ferdinand, Governor of the Netherlands (No. 1954). It was a portrait of the same sitter that led to Crayer’s appointment to the position of Painter to the Infante’s Court, accompanied by considerable emoluments.

Abraham van Diepenbeeck (1596–1675), Pieter van Mol (1599–1650), and Paul de Vos (1593–1676) need not here detain us. They are all capable followers of their master’s style, without any personal distinction. David Ryckaert (1612–1661), the third of four artists of the same family that bore this name, is outside the immediate circle of Rubens. His Interior of a Studio (No. 2137), which bears the signature “d. ryc. f. 1638,” is of peculiar interest as a document illustrating the milieu in which a Flemish artist of that period lived and worked.

Gerard Seghers (1591–1651), the painter of St. Francis in Ecstasy (No. 2140), although a pupil of Van Balen and Abraham Janssens, and indirectly, through Manfredi, of Caravaggio, must be counted among those who were influenced by the dominating personality of Rubens. An important pupil of Snyders was Jan Fyt (1611–1661), who excelled as an animal painter and colourist. He was at his best when he treated animals more in the manner of still life, but remained vastly inferior to his master when he tried to emulate his hunting scenes. Not all the five pictures catalogued under his name can be accepted as his own work. His great skill in rendering the varied textures of furs and feathers may be judged from Game in a Larder (No. 1993), which is unquestionably authentic although it does not bear the signature which testifies to his authorship of A Dog devouring Game (No. 1994).

ADRIAEN BROUWER

Both the Flemish school and the Dutch have an equal right to claim Adriaen Brouwer (1605 or 6–1638), who, born at Oudenarde, carried on the tradition of Bouts and the elder Brueghel. While still young, he was at Haarlem powerfully impressed by the art of Frans Hals, although it is extremely doubtful that he ever actually worked in his studio. Finally, having settled at Antwerp in 1631, he benefited by the example of Rubens. The Smoker (No. 1916), in spite of the doubts that have been cast upon it, is a characteristic work of his at the time when, inspired by Frans Hals, he adopted a full impasto instead of his earlier glazes. It is signed with his initials “ab” in the bottom corner on the right. The handling is far coarser than that of the later Interior of a Tavern (No. 1912), which is quite Rembrandtesque in the rendering of light and chiaroscuro. His inclination towards grimacing expression often made him depict such scenes as The Operation (No. 1915), in which the patient’s face is contorted with pain, while the surgeon is bandaging his left shoulder.

Brouwer was the master of Joos van Craesbeeck (1606–1654?), who not only closely followed his teaching, but actually painted many replicas of Brouwer’s pictures which still pass under the better known artist’s name. The Artist painting a Portrait (No. 1952d) was supposed to represent, and to be from the brush of, Brouwer, when the picture was bought for the Louvre. But on technical grounds it must be given to Craesbeeck—quite apart from the extreme improbability that the dissolute Brouwer, who spent most of his time in low taverns, should have lived in the elegant, not to say luxurious, surroundings here depicted, and died young. There can be no doubt that the painter seated before his easel, to whom a man-servant is offering a glass of wine, is Joos van Craesbeeck.

DAVID TENIERS

There is at the Louvre no picture by the elder David Teniers (1582–1649), who therefore only interests us here as the father and first master of the much greater artist David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690), who completed his artistic education under Rubens, without, however, abdicating his own personality. Indeed, those of his pictures which reflect the manner of Rubens too closely are of little account in the achievement of the younger Teniers, who only begins to be himself when he devotes his prolific brush to the social life of his contemporaries, and especially of the lower classes. His pictures constitute the most realistic and convincing record of the tastes, manners, and amusements of his time. His types are full of character, but without the exaggerations so often found in Brueghel and Brouwer. What he retained of Rubens, even in his Village FÊtes, Tavern Scenes, Dances, and Carousals is the application of the great master’s principles of light and harmonious colour. But apart from this, he rejected the “grand style” and the conscious search for beauty. The ugliness of his types and gestures led Louis xiv. to exclaim in front of his pictures, “Ôtez-moi ces magots-lÀ!”

Few painters are as exhaustively represented at the Louvre as the younger Teniers. The Catalogue includes no fewer than thirty-nine entries under his name, two of which, in the La Caze collection (Nos. 2189 and 2190), are copies after pictures by Lotto and Titian respectively in the collection of the Archduke Leopold William, Governor of the Netherlands, to whom Teniers was appointed Court painter. It would serve no purpose here to enumerate the long list of Kermesse, Village FÊte, and Alehouse Scenes in the French national collection. Among his most deservedly famous masterpieces is The Return of the Prodigal Son (No. 2156), which belongs to a series of which another scene is to be seen at the Dulwich Gallery. The subject is really only a thinly veiled excuse for the painting of a genre piece of the contemporary life of the better classes of his country. The scene of the feast is laid outside a country inn that figures in many of Teniers’s pictures. Fully signed, and dated 1644, the picture belongs to the beginning of Teniers’s very best period. In The Temptation of St. Anthony (No. 2158) he rivals Bosch in the invention of grotesquely fantastic monsters. Among other important works by the master in the Louvre must be mentioned The Denial of St. Peter (No. 2155), a painting of exquisite silvery quality, signed and dated

The Works of Mercy (No. 2157); the Village FÊte (No. 2159); and the Peasants dancing by an Inn Door (No. 2161), which was stolen from the collection in 1815 and returned in the following year with a letter explaining that it had been removed by a Frenchman who feared that it might fall into the hands of the Allied Forces.

By Teniers’s pupil, FranÇois Duchatel (1616?–1694?) is the excellent Portrait of a Gentleman (No. 1960). Duchatel is a very rare master, whose style in portraiture so closely resembles that of Gonzales Coques that his pictures have been at times ascribed to that painter. Jacob van Artois (1613–1684?), the painter of the Landscape (No. 1901) in the La Caze room, was one of the leading Flemish landscape painters of his time, and frequently collaborated with Teniers, who added the figures to some of his landscapes. He was the master of Cornelis Huysmans (1648–1727), who frequently assisted the battle painter, Van der Meulen, and is here represented by eight pictures (Nos. 2002–2009). Among the landscape painters of that period must also be mentioned Jan Siberechts (1627–1703), who spent the closing years of his life in England, but does not seem to have had much influence on the evolution of the English landscape school. By him is the Rustic Scene (No. 2140a).

PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE

Both Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674) and Adam Frans van der Meulen (1634–1690), though born at Brussels, resided in France the best part of their life, and are therefore generally classed with the painters of the French school, which accounts for their being represented at the Louvre in a manner which is quite out of proportion to their artistic significance. Still, if Philippe de Champaigne appears second-rate when compared with Rubens and Van Dyck, he is unquestionably the leading portrait painter of the contemporary French school in which he received his training. His powers were insufficient for the higher flights of imagination, and when his ambition led him to such compositions as Christ in the House of Simon (No. 1927) or Christ celebrating Easter with His Disciples (No. 1928), he was as dull and bombastic as most of his French contemporaries, whom he far excelled as a colourist. His portraits, on the other hand, are painted in a broad, honest, straightforward manner which has nothing in common with the monotonous pompousness of his age, as may be seen from the admirable group of two nuns in prayer, Mother Catherine Agnes Arnaud and Sister Catherine de Sainte-Suzanne (No. 1934). The younger of the two nuns represents the artist’s daughter, who was healed from paralysis by a miracle recorded by a Latin inscription on the wall. The twenty pictures from Philippe de Champaigne’s brush, which are actually on view, also include the fine group of the two architects FranÇois Mansard and Claude Perrault (No. 1944), bought in 1835 for the low price of £80; The Provost and Aldermen of Paris (No. 1945); and the signed and dated portrait of Robert Arnaud d’Andilly (No. 1939).

VAN DER MEULEN

Van der Meulen, a native of Brussels and pupil of Snayers, was the historiographer of Louis xiv.’s campaigns and victories. He was invited by Colbert to come to Paris, and was first employed to furnish designs for the Gobelins manufactory. Afterwards he accompanied Louis xiv. on his warlike expeditions, which he immortalised in numerous large paintings, most of which are now at the Louvre and in the ChÂteau at Versailles. His paintings are of considerable topographical interest, as they give accurate representations of the aspect of famous towns and fortresses in the seventeenth century, as in the Entry of Louis XIV. and Marie-ThÉrÈse into Arras (No. 2035), a similar scene at Douai (No. 2033), and the Arrival of the King in the Camp before Maastricht (No. 2040). It was Van der Meulen who founded the “tactical school” of battle painting, which substituted the orderly movement of masses for the wild mÊlÉe of the hand-to-hand combat. Whole armies are seen advancing or retreating in long lines from a high vantage-ground which is generally occupied by the considerably larger figures of the army-leaders on rearing and caracoling horses, and looking for all the world like “gens de qualitÉ qui joueraient aux Échecs avec des soldats de plomb.” The official Catalogue mentions no fewer than twenty pictures by Van der Meulen.

MINOR FLEMISH PAINTERS

With the exception of Justus Sustermans (1597–1681), who was Van Dyck’s fellow-student under H. van Balen and afterwards rose to great fame as Court painter to Grand-Duke Cosimo ii. of Tuscany (whose kinsman Leopold de’ Medici is portrayed in No. 2154), and Pieter Neefs (1577?–1661?), whose Church Interiors (Nos. 2059–2064) are remarkable for the faultless accuracy and precision of his architectural drawing, there are no other painters of the Flemish school whose works at the Louvre require close attention. We must content ourselves with the mere mention of the landscape painters Jan Frans van Bloemen, called Orizonte, a follower of Poussin and Claude; Jan van Breda, Francisque Millet, and Mathys Schoevaerts; Carl van Falens and Anton Grief, painters of hunting scenes; Jan Miel, who worked most of his life in Italy and was completely influenced by the masters of that country; the still-life painter Gaspard Pieter Verbruggen; the battle painter Sebastiaen Francken; and the prolific painter of large altarpieces, Jacob van Oost the Elder. With Balthasar Paul Ommeganck (1755–1826) and the still-life painter Jan Frans van Dael (1764–1840) we reach the beginning of the nineteenth century, a period of absolute stagnation in Flemish art which preceded the brilliant revival of the modern Belgian school.