IN the Berlin Gallery are two small examples of Holland Landscape with the Hamlet of Rhenen. They are by Hercules Seghers, whom Bode points to as the father of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape. Similar in general design, they are distinguished by a fine sweep of almost clear sky, swimming with vapor, from which a level country, dotted with the roofs and church towers of a hamlet and threaded by a stream, stretches in pale-yellow tones, broken up with brownish shadows, to the foreground. The identification of the scene and the assignment of these pictures to Seghers have been made possible by comparison with some etchings of the same artist that modern Dutch research has discovered. By the same means other pictures, including a Landscape in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, which used to be attributed to Rembrandt, have been restored to Seghers. This one again shows a plain, intersected by a stream, but bounded on the right by the abrupt shoulder of a mountain, whose top is merged in dark cloud, while the rest of the sky is an open expanse of whitish light. In the contrast of this with the dark tones of the ground, weirdly interspersed with fitful gleams, there is an extraordinary impressiveness. It is no wonder that it was mistaken for a Rembrandt; and the interest in Seghers deepens when it is ascertained that Rembrandt himself was strongly influenced during his earlier years in Amsterdam by the older artist. This has been proved by a comparison of certain of the etchings of the two men.

Hercules Seghers, in fact, seems to have been in his own day very much what Michel was to the modern revival of landscape-painting in France. He was a forerunner of the later movement, but unrecognized by the world, while almost the only records that exist of him are documentary evidences of debts. He was born in 1590, probably in Haarlem; worked in Haarlem, Utrecht, and The Hague, but chiefly in Amsterdam, where he died about 1640.

In the few examples of his work that still survive, we can trace the twofold tendency of Dutch landscape: in one direction its note of simple truthfulness to the facts of nature, and in the other the tincture of these facts with a romantic spirit. And, in addition to thus setting the motive, Seghers proclaimed the Dutch artist’s fondness for effects of sky, for tonalities of grays and browns, sparingly enlivened with greens.

For the Dutch landscapists were tonalists. With the single exception of Jan Vermeer, who approximated the plein-air of modern art, they transposed the hues of nature into a scheme of color which is none the less arbitrary and unnatural, although it preserves the values of nature’s coloring. In comparison with the naturalistic achievements of the modern artist, who studies nature in her own environment of light and renders her hues as actual light affects them, the Dutch artist was a composer on the theme of nature, but not a naturalist. The same, however, in only a less degree, is true of the Barbizon artists. They, too, were composers of schemes of tonality, so that, students of nature though they were, their landscapes will not compare in naturalness of suggestion with the work of many a modern man who will probably never enjoy their fame. Let me add that I do not mean to imply by this the essential superiority of the modern landscape-painter. That is another question, and only to be decided by each person for himself, according as he selects or does not select naturalistic representation as the standard of his taste. To one who does not the tonal transposition may seem preferable. Both methods, indeed, have their warrant in art.

But I press the distinction because, unless it is recognized, Dutch landscape-painting cannot be properly appreciated. If people approach it, and it is my experience that many do, with modern plein-air achievements in their eye and basing their judgment upon them, they can only suffer disappointment. The Dutch paintings will seem “old-fashioned,” false to nature, and uninspired. On the other hand, once the necessary attitude is assumed of accepting this transposition of color and light phenomena of nature into an equivalent of tonal values, proper appreciation is possible. Then one begins to study the examples partly for the quality of their tonality, partly for the degree in which they embody the character and spirit of the landscape, and partly, and probably chiefly, for the quality of the artist’s personality infused into them.

REMBRANDT

Rembrandt was a master of both landscape motives, able alike to record with truthfulness the physical aspects of a scene or to infuse it with romantic suggestion; and nowhere more remarkably than in his etchings. In these, with a few lines that summarize the salient features of the scene, or with tonal effects of light and shade that elaborate and enrich the facts, he executed plates of pure landscape or of landscape as a setting for the figures. Among his paintings the examples of pure landscape are rare. The beautiful Tobit and the Angel of the National Gallery may be considered one, as the figures are insignificant, and another, which, however, is a sea-piece, is in the Liechtenstein Gallery (No. 606): water, dotted with a boat and a few distant sails, stretching back to a low horizon, over which spreads a vast open creamy sky, with some finely buoyant clouds. It is as a setting to figures, especially in the Biblical subjects, that Rembrandt’s use of landscape may best be studied. Here it serves as an orchestration to the theme, enriching it with sensuous and emotional suggestion, and giving a free range to the artist’s romantic and dramatic imagination.

PHILIPS KONINCK

Rembrandt’s best-known pupil in landscape was Philips Koninck, who was born in Amsterdam, 1619, and died there in 1688, some of his career being spent abroad. The character of his work suggests that he, too, may have been influenced directly by Hercules Seghers, for he affected far-reaching panoramas of flat country, interrupted by occasional low hills and traversed by streams. A fine sky extends above the ground, which is constructed in tones of warm pale yellow, olive green, and reddish brown. Notwithstanding the comparatively large size of the canvases and the extent of the scene included, the latter has been felt so synthetically, as well as comprehensively, that there is no lack of unity. An excellent example is The Dunes, “The Valley of the Rhine near Arnheim,” owned by Sir William van Horne of Montreal. Another memorable example is in the Dresden Gallery, Dutch Landscape, a view from the dunes looking across the level country. This canvas is scarcely so large, but involves the same sense of bigness. The foreground, which shows some red-roofed cottages amidst the olive greens, is constructed in an ample way; a river occupies the middle distance, and the further plain is dotted with little trees. Overhead is a sky of drabbish gray and rosy cream. The Berlin Museum owns a handsome example with figure and cattle in the foreground, and the Rijks Museum contains two. Here also are to be seen four portraits by Koninck of Joost van den Vondel, two at the age of seventy-eight and two at eighty-seven; the subject evidently being a friend of the artist, for on the back of one of the pictures is a dedicatory inscription.

The great nursery of Holland landscape was the city of Haarlem. Van Goyen, it is true, belonged to Leyden, while Amsterdam, which produced Seghers and Koninck, in course of time claimed many others. But the majority were citizens of Haarlem or at least spent a portion of their working life in that city. They include Salomon van Ruisdael and his nephew Jacob; Pieter Molyn, Jan Wynants, Allart van Everdingen, and the painters of landscape with animals and figures, Philips Wouwerman, Adriaen van de Velde, and Nicolaes Berchem.

Salomon van Ruisdael (about 1600-1670), it has been conjectured, may have been a pupil of Van Goyen’s because of a similarity between the early work of both, that has lead to their pictures being attributed to each other. But later the similarity disappears, Van Goyen displaying an ampler and more poetic style, while Salomon van Ruisdael continues to be the industrious painter of landscapes that, while admirably faithful to the appearance of nature, are comparatively prosaic in feeling. While he was a member of the Guild of St. Luke in Haarlem and lived there continuously, he visited other cities, for some of his pictures exhibit views of Leyden, Dordrecht, and Nimwegen. The characteristic of his work is a quiet, homely dignity, that, while it gives a pleasant record of the Holland of his day, seldom stirs one to enthusiasm. Perhaps his chief claim to recognition is that he was the teacher of Jacob van Ruisdael.

Pieter Molyn (about 1600-1661) was a successful teacher, who had the capacity to foster the individuality of his pupils. Among these the most famous was Gerard Terborch, who occasionally collaborated with his master by introducing figures into his landscapes. Molyn’s own pictures were inclined to be meager in composition, and dryly precise in execution.

Jan Wynants (about 1605-1679), again, was fortunate in having a collaborator, for more than one hundred and fifty of his pictures were enlivened with figures by that skilful and attractive artist, Adriaen van de Velde. They add brilliance and animation to landscapes that in themselves are painstaking but apt to be monotonous.

Allart van Everdingen (1621-1675) is not to be confounded with his brother CÆsar, who was a rather indifferent painter of portraits, genre and historical pictures. Allart was a pupil of Pieter Molyn and then worked in Sweden, subsequently spending seven years in Haarlem and the last twenty-two years of his life in Amsterdam. His fame also rests on his connection with Jacob van Ruisdael, who was induced by the success of Everdingen’s Swedish landscapes to abandon the direct study of nature and to invent scenes of romantic impressiveness. In the Rijks Museum there is a chance, in Nos. 2078 and 907, to compare side by side the work of these two men. The result, I think, is to discover that, while they may use practically the same material in the same way, Ruisdael gives a character to each object, that makes you feel as if he had penetrated into the heart as well as the marrow of the scene, while Everdingen remains merely a lover and recorder of the picturesque.

AERT VAN DER NEER

Van der Neer was born in Gorkum in 1603, and died in poverty at Amsterdam in 1677. In his youth he was steward in the family of the Van Arkels, and at this time only occasionally indulged his love of painting. Later he devoted himself to art, but found few purchasers for his pictures and was continually harassed by creditors, and at one time, like Jan Steen, kept a tavern. He is distinguished particularly for his winter and moonlight scenes, the best of which date from about 1646. They exhibit not only a close study of nature but a poetic feeling, which is deep and sincere and often very impressive. He was a painter of moods, expressing the sentiment usually in delicate tonalities, so delicate, indeed, that his pictures, hidden away in the corners of galleries or confronted with more robust pictures, seem at first monotonous and cold. It is not until, as Bode points out, they are isolated in a good light that their merit becomes apparent. This famous expert also compares the method of Van der Neer’s moonlight scenes with that of Rembrandt’s interiors. The latter projects a shaft of light into the hollow gloom, while Van der Neer represents a concavity of light, the luminosity of which is heightened by the shadows. His method, in fact, is the exact reverse of Rembrandt’s.

Two memorable examples of his moonlight scenes appear in the Berlin Gallery, where one is impressively somber, while the other is dramatically stirred by the yellow and red flare and turbid smoke from a burning house, and figures in movement agitate the foreground. Others are in the National Gallery and in the Imperial Art Museum at Vienna. The example in the latter shows a darkened canal, with a boat, stretching back to a town that broods beneath a sky in which the moon rides at full, surrounded by fleecy clouds.

In the Vienna Gallery also is an example of one of his winter scenes, others appearing in the National Gallery and in the Wallace Collection. In these the artist indulges in a freer and livelier use of color, though the animation of the ground and its group of figures does not interfere with the delicate observation and sensitive feeling, that still regulate his treatment of the skies. It is on this that Van der Neer, like all painters of poetic moods, relies chiefly for expression.

In one of Van der Neer’s landscapes in the National Gallery, cattle were painted by Cuyp. The reminder may serve at this point of our story for an introduction to the important part played in Holland landscape by those artists who enlivened it with figures and animals.

LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES AND ANIMALS

The popularity of this branch of painting in the seventeenth century can be explained by its affinity to genre painting. It is but a step from depicting a party of people in an interior to showing them engaged in some sport or occupation in the open air. The same tendency to depict the incidents of Dutch life, or to use such incidents as the theme of a pictorial presentation, appears in both; and some of the artists of this out-of-door genre, Wouwerman, Adriaen van de Velde, Cuyp, and Berchem, reached proficiency that compares favorably with the masterpieces of interior genre. As for the fondness for depicting cattle, we may recollect how Troyon, after visiting Holland, turned from pure landscape to cattle studies, while every observant visitor to that country has enjoyed the spots of rich color which the grazing herds make in the far stretches of green pasture. They form one of the notable features of the Holland landscape, and it would have been surprising if the painters, so intent on the study of their home surroundings, had overlooked it. The signal member of this group of painters is Paul Potter.

PAUL POTTER

Potter is the prodigy among Dutch artists. At the age of twenty-two he produced a masterpiece that, despite its shortcomings, has compelled the admiration of the world. This is a work of trenchant, even brutal force, while the majority of his work, especially in his later years, wins by its charm of persuasiveness. He is personally known to us through the beautiful portrait by Van der Helst. It was painted in the year of Potter’s death, and shows him a man of distinguished mien, with soft auburn hair curling upon his shoulders, and a face that is marked by a high forehead, heavy-lidded eyes, a strong nose, and full, impulsive lips; a face upon which consumption has set the impress of fell refinement.

THE YOUNG BULL PAUL POTTER

HAGUE MUSEUM