  Ground-floor of the Stedelijk Museum.—A short walk from the Rijks down Paulus Potter Straat brings us to the Stedelijk (Municipal) Museum, built in 1892-95. The ground-floor is devoted to uniforms, weapons, and pictures of the Schutterij of Amsterdam, and a series of rooms furnished in the style of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, including an old Dutch kitchen. Its Pictures of the History of the Netherlands.—An extraordinary collection of pictures by AllebÉ, IsraËls, Rochussen, and other well-known painters, treating of the history of the Netherlands, deserves a passing glance, for there are no less than 250 small canvases, all of the same dimensions and similar treatment. A more curiously monotonous effect would be impossible to imagine; but, to use a Dutch term, they are decidedly symmetrisch. The Gallery of Modern Pictures.—Ascending the stairs we reach the gallery of modern pictures. The collection consists of about 200 paintings gathered by a society founded in 1874, and is very rich in fine examples of the modern Dutch school. Mauve's Sheep on the Dunes.—One of the gems of the modern landscapes is Mauve's Sheep on the Dunes. The sheep, all of which have their backs to the spectator, the rolling dunes with their tall, waving grass, the shepherd boy and his dog, are all painted with equal skill; and over the still landscape hovers a poetic feeling that communicates itself instantly to the spectator. Mauve is also represented by A Fold and Woodmen. Anton Mauve.—Anton Mauve (1838-89) was a native of Zaandam, and the son of a clergyman. He studied under the cattle-painter, Van Os, who was not particularly pleased with his pupil. After his apprenticeship was over, he began to paint little pictures in the neat manner and conventional style of his master. Mauve lived in Oosterbeck, "the Barbison of Holland," for a time, and at a later period spent his winters in Amsterdam and his summers in The Hague, where he could enjoy Scheveningen and the dunes. A Dutch writer, A. C. Loffelt, says: His Style.—"The poetry of Mauve's art, its tenderness, the unobtrusive, quiet sadness of the scenery and people which attracted him most; the homeliness, humor, and domestic happiness which he interpreted in his interiors and scenes of country and village life, can only be appreciated by people of the same descent." The same critic tells us that Mauve lived for a time in a farm-house, near Dekkersdinn. His Favorite Themes.—"Here Mauve found some of his most important and favorite themes, such as poor cots built in or near the downs, where slender, poorly nurtured women tended a few sheep or a goat, or occupied themselves in bleaching linen. His painting had not yet gained that transparency and brilliancy of tone which the artist acquired in subsequent years. At this time his work was gray, but not always pellucid or silvery. Thus it came to pass that critics and public began to talk of 'The Gray School,' for a few other artists painted in the same neutral scale of tints. "As we walk in the rural lanes, beneath the slender birches wrapped in their mantle of silver-gray haze, or watch the chequered sunlight dancing into the secluded nooks of some emerald meadow, when we hear the echoes of the tinkling sheep-bells on the moors, we think 'There lives Mauve!'" MAUVE Sheep on the Dunes MAUVE Sheep on the Dunes His Truthful Painting of Sheep and Cattle.—Mauve is, perhaps, best known by his flocks of sheep painted under all conditions and at all seasons and times of day; but not The Early Training of Josef IsraËls.—For a whole generation Josef IsraËls has stood at the head of modern Dutch art. Born in 1827, at Groningen, the son of a money-changer, he carried money-bags in his early years to the banking-house of Mesdag. He studied under Jan Adam Kruseman, and at first painted historical pictures; lived in the Ghetto in Amsterdam, and nearly starved in Paris, where he studied in the Delaroche school. The Themes of his Paintings.—It was in Zandvoort, near Haarlem, that he discovered his true bent, and began to depict the seafaring man and the peasant in their homely every-day life. His people are all humble, and most of them are broken by poverty and sorrows. For more than thirty years his pictures have occupied the place of honor in all the Dutch exhibitions; and on his seventieth birthday he was made Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau, and was the recipient of many gifts and congratulations. In this gallery hang a number of pictures dating from various periods. Among them are Fisherman's Children, Rustic Interior, After the Storm, Passing the Mother's Grave, Margaret of Parma and William of Orange (one of his earliest efforts), Old Jewish Peddler, and a Study of a Head. ISRAËLS Fisherman's Children ISRAËLS Fisherman's Children Veth's Appreciation of IsraËls.—The artist himself is represented in a statuette by F. Leenhoff, which stands in one of the rooms, and also in a portrait by J. Veth, who sympathetically writes: "The choicest pictures by this master are painted in a truly mysterious way, simply by the nervous vigor of an untaught hand with heavy, sweeping shadows and thick touches of paint, which "And yet, notwithstanding, all this exists, as far as possible, in the clear, simple execution of the old Dutch painters, and there is one great family resemblance between the nineteenth century master and those who are the classics among the petits maÎtres." Each of his Pictures a Harmonious Whole.—"The resemblance—the revived tradition—is to be seen in the fact that IsraËls, like the old Dutch painters, nay, even more than they, always aims at the sober, general harmony of the whole work. It is wonderful how discreet the effect is of a picture, for instance, by Pieter de Hooch, with all its elaborate execution; how splendidly it holds together, how strong yet delicate the construction is. It is this great quality of presenting an absolutely organic whole at one impulse which seems to have passed into IsraËls from his precursors, who otherwise painted so utterly differently. Indeed, it is in this concentrated power, in this self-contained harmony, the outcome of one glance, as it were, and of one impetus, that we may discern one of the principal features of IsraËls's art. There is nothing in his work that asserts itself alone, nothing detached, nothing that plays any part but that of strengthening the whole." His Aim to paint the Truth, rather than to produce Studied Effects.—"Those who really understand the sincerity of his art know that he rejects everything approaching to working for effect—everything that looks like rule of thumb; and that he in fact never consciously troubles his head about studied effects or beauty. Beauty to him lies in the silent woe with which the survivors stand in a house of death; in the attitude of the old wife left alone, who spreads her hands stiffly out to the fire, as though she might win a spark of life from the smouldering hearth; in the way in which the decrepit old man sits with resigned dejection in his gloomy hovel, staring into his old dog's eyes; in the stupefied wretch who sits on a broken bench, where, behind him, his dead wife lies stretched on her bed; in the woful gleam in the eyes of the huckster who sits in front of his dirty booth, with a motley collection of rags above his head, watching us so mysteriously; in the sad old woman Roelofs, Painter of A Marshy Landscape.—Familiar to the Holland traveller is the Marshy Landscape, so true to nature and so charming in color. If he had painted nothing else, Willem Roelofs (1822-97) would deserve his reputation because of this work. ROELOFS Marshy Landscape ROELOFS Marshy Landscape This painter was born in Amsterdam and was a pupil of H. van de Sande Bakhuijzen for about a year; then he remained for six years in Utrecht; and settled in Brussels, where he remained forty years, finally returning to Holland. This painter's chief desire is to express himself poetically. The Inexhaustible Supply of His Favorite Subjects.—"His pictures are truly beautiful: cattle standing up to their knees in rich green pasture land; luxuriant meadows; secluded pools reflecting the blue sky and the moving clouds; lakes with floating lilies; rivers, streams, noble trees, canals, and the thoroughly Dutch windmill. Roelofs may be called the pioneer in our country of a broader school of painting, especially that pertaining to landscape. Much of this he may be said to have taken from the French.... Of late years he has added more cattle to his pictures; but whether cattle or trees, land or water, they are painted with the firm belief that they needed no embellishment, but were good enough to be represented exactly as they were. For Roelofs will not invent a subject. And why, indeed, should he do so? Is the supply exhausted? He does not think so, for no summer passes but he packs up his paint-box and with his little stool, his easel, and his umbrella, goes off either to Noorden, or Abcoude, or to Voorschoten, to study nature again and again, as if he did not know her well already." J. Maris, Skilful in producing Ethereal Effects.—Of Jacob Maris, Zilcken writes: "No painter has so well expressed the ethereal effects, bathed in air and light, through floating silvery mist, in which painters delight, and the characteristic remote horizons blurred by haze; or again the gray yet luminous weather of Holland, unlike the dead gray rain of England, or the heavy sky of Paris." This artist may be studied in this gallery by A Beach, two Views of a Town, The Ferry, and The Two Windmills, which latter represents two windmills standing as sentinels over a rather dreary landscape at the edge of a river and a canal. His Training and his Aim in Art.—Jacob Maris (1837-99) was born in The Hague and was sent to Stroebel's studio, and later studied in the Antwerp Academy of Drawing. He was also a pupil of Louis Meyer in The Hague, and in 1865 went to Paris and studied with HÉbert. Returning to The Hague, he devoted himself to landscape. He painted views of streets, country lanes, small hamlets, windmills, canals, rivers, and, sometimes, genre pieces. In all his work his aim was to make an impression. One day he said: "A picture is finished as soon as you can see what it is intended to represent." Marius on the Beauty of his Work.—The Dutch critic, G. H. Marius, writes: "If you stand before one of Maris's pictures for a long time you discover many objects which you had not noticed at first—houses, bridges, trees, all looming out of the mellow misty light which is diffused over the entire canvas.... What an endless variety of windmills he immortalizes! Some of his canvases have but a small solitary windmill, while others have a crowd of these gigantic, cumbersome structures. Some pictures have a fringe of them upon the horizon. "However simple the subject, it is ofttimes made almost dramatic by the rays of the setting sun, or by the brilliancy of a silver-lined cloud. These effects of light and shade are rapidly passing, and we gaze with admiration upon the skilful work of a Willem Maris's Relish for painting Cows.—Willem Maris (1844- ) studied with his brothers Jacob and Matthys, and all three worked together. As early as 1868 he sold a picture which found its way to The Hague Gallery. This, representing cattle in a green meadow, at once showed his talent for painting warm sunlight. A typical picture of Cattle hangs in this gallery; for the chief subjects of Willem Maris's pictures are cows in meadow lands; sometimes they are waiting to be milked, or are being milked; sometimes they are standing or lying under the trees; and sometimes they are knee-deep in one of the lakes. Mr. Marius says: Willem's Style contrasted with his Brother Jacob's.—"The two brothers Maris [Jacob and Willem] treat their skies in exactly opposite manners. The one depicts clouds, threatening storm, and changeable weather, whereas the younger brother gives us only sunshine and a sky of turquoise blue; if, however, clouds are introduced, they are like small white feathers or like the petals of a white rose. Each in his own way true to nature, and beautiful to gaze upon, yet methinks that we must give the preference to the one who gives us that greatest of all blessings, sunshine. "A very favorite aspect of his is a cloudless sky, the brightest of suns, and part of the canvas thrown into deep shade, producing a wonderful contrast. "Another bewitching feature, so truly Dutch, in Maris's landscapes, is the rising mist after the heat of the day. It rises from the meadows at sunset and covers the land like a cloak, especially after a hot day when the ground has been baked." A Socialistic Artist with Romantic Visions.—Matthys Maris, the second of the three, joined his brother Jacob in Paris, and eventually he settled in London. "Thys Maris found rest and isolation in a suburb of London; a few faithful friends, such as Swan (the animal painter) and Van Wisselingh, break in occasionally upon his solitude. But his ideas are still socialistic, not only theoretically, but materially; and, without looking around, he gives what he receives. On this point he is likewise very sensitive. To be waited on by another, although that service is paid for, he considers humiliating; and, in order to avoid such a possibility, he lives without the comfort of attendance. "Many might pass by the works of Maris without even noticing them; many may consider them impossible and inexplicable, and pass on, almost out of humor, perhaps even angry with them; the rational spectator will put questions to which he will receive no satisfactory replies. "Though in his early years he painted still-life pieces, his fame rests chiefly on his visionary women seen in his romantic dreams, and portrayed with the clouds and mists of dreamland about them." In this gallery The Bride represents him worthily. A. NEUHUYS By the Cradle A. NEUHUYS By the Cradle Two Pictures representing Albert Neuhuys.—Albert Neuhuys, born in Utrecht in 1844, studied in the Academy of Drawing in Antwerp, and settled in Amsterdam, the painter of landscapes and scenes from homely and humble life. He is represented by The Doll's Dressmaker and By the Cradle, which represents a mother leaning over the cradle of her baby lying comfortably on pillows. It is interesting to note how thickly the artist has spread the paint on the canvas. A Characteristic Picture by Christoffel Bisschop.—Christoffel Bisschop (1828-1904) may be studied by The Lord Gave and the Lord hath Taken Away, Sunday in Hindeloopen, Sister of the Bride, and Winter in Friesland, also called Repairing Skates. This is a very characteristic and typical picture. Friesland is not only the home of a BISSCHOP Winter in Friesland BISSCHOP Winter in Friesland Christoffel Bisschop.—Christoffel Bisschop is the Dutch colorist par excellence. He entered the studio of Schmidt in Delft, and worked at The Hague under Huib van Hove. He also studied in Paris with Le Comte and Gleyre, and in 1855 established himself in The Hague. A visit to the quaint town of Hindeloopen charmed his artistic eye, and henceforth the peasants, with their gay costumes, and the brightly painted furniture and quaint houses, have furnished themes and settings for his pictures. H. W. Mesdag.—Born in Groningen in 1831, Hendrick Willem Mesdag was destined to follow the family business of banking. Art, however, claimed him; and after painting for several years as an amateur he started work in Brussels in 1866. Except for the criticisms of Roelofs, Alma-Tadema, and other artists, Mesdag may be said to be self-taught. In 1869 he removed to The Hague, so that he could be near Scheveningen, for he had found his special talent. "I must go and live near the sea," he said, "gaze upon it daily, not only for weeks, but for months and years; watch and study its every movement, this ever-changing element, this amazing, stupendous work of the Almighty!" In 1870 he exhibited at the Paris Salon, and his Breakers in the North Sea received the gold medal. His fame was now established. France has decorated Mesdag more than once, and one of his sea pictures hangs in the Luxembourg. His Style.—Mesdag is a realist, and with broad, bold strokes of the brush he portrays what he sees and feels. He depicts the ever-changing ocean in all its moods, at all times of day and in all seasons; and the life of the fisherfolk on the shore and in the fishing-boats is also treated with sympathy. His Calm Sea by Sunset, painted in 1878, and Fishing-boats at Sea and Beach, the two latter painted in 1895, belong to this gallery. "High up in the scale, and standing somewhat apart, is Henry William Mesdag, the marine painter. Into a branch of art which had been treated in so masterly a fashion in former centuries by Willem van de Velde and Van Capelle, not to speak of Lodewijk Backhuysen and Bonaventure Peeters, he introduced a thorough reform. In the beginning of the century he was preceded by men of note, such as Schotel, Waldorp, Meyer, Greive, Van Heemskerck, Van Beest, Van Deventer; but their chief aim was to remain true to the tradition of the great period. They painted pretty little ships sailing on calm seas, their white sails catching a gentle breeze and reflecting the rays of the sun; or again they would paint large vessels, driven before a gale over mountainous waves. But the one was as artificial as the other; their water was like glass, their ships as if made of tin, their skies seemed cut out of oilcloth, and not one showed that he felt any love for the sea. "Mesdag was the first to paint the sea as it is, the turbulent, restless, omnipotent, unlimited sea, that free, majestic, and mysterious element which cannot be brought within any formula, but can only be rendered in its tossing and pitching, peopled by its 'children of the sea' living on its shores or drifting on its billows. He studied every movement of the waves, every tint of the water, every change in the ever-changing sky; he bade good-bye to large vessels, huge castles of the sea, and took to painting small ships and fishing smacks, the cottages, so to speak, of the ocean. His painting is as broad and manly as the element wherein he moves and the space it covers; not as soft and transparent as the works of landscape painters,—those who give us meadows and downs,—but yet a revelation." MESDAG Sunrise on the Dutch Coast MESDAG Sunrise on the Dutch Coast Other Works in the Stedelijk by Modern Artists.—Other works by modern artists worthy of attention are: A Survey of Modern Dutch Art.—A brief survey of modern Dutch art, condensed from the learned pen of Max Rooses, will not be unwelcome, particularly as we shall meet many more examples of the modern artists. The French Neo-Classical School.—He tells us that the group of Dutch and Belgian figure-painters of the beginning of the century were descendants of the French neo-classical school; and until 1850 the principles of David, Gros, and Girodet were highly respected. The best-known representatives were John William Pieneman in Holland, and Bree, Navez, and Paelinck in Belgium. The Romantic School.—Thereupon followed the Romantic school, whose leaders in France were EugÈne Delacroix, Horace Vernet, and Descamps; in Belgium, Wappers and De Keyser; in Holland, Huib van Hove, Herman Ten Cate, Charles Rochussen, Stroebel, and Van Trigt. This school departed from the academic tendency of its predecessors, The Secret of the Success of the Romanticists.—Another source helped to swell the stream of Romanticism in Holland. The artists of the neo-classical school, with their pompous but severe forms, paid more attention to line than to color. They took their example from the Italians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their successors set themselves to study the masters of their own country, and learned to appreciate the rich coloring, the warm lights, and harmonious tones of the golden period of their own art. We can see that they were filled with admiration for the effects of light and color in Rembrandt's works and in those of De Hooch, Gerrit Dou, and Ter Borch. Not only did they find subjects for rich and warm coloring and pleasing treatment in the history of former days, but also in that of their own times. They took, in fact, a great step forward in that they observed the daily life around them, and kept in touch with their fellow-creatures, their ways and habits. To this group belongs Hubert van Hove, who was the first to admire the works of the old masters, and again to carry on the broken tradition; Charles Rochussen, Stroebel, to whom the effects of light and color were particularly attractive; and Herman Ten Cate and Van Trigt, the talented painters of romantic scenes derived from history. ISRAËLS Old Jewish Peddler ISRAËLS Old Jewish Peddler Josef IsraËls, a Brilliant Painter in this Group.—To this group belongs Josef IsraËls in his earliest works. During this period of his brilliant career he was filled with enthusiasm for all that is sweet, joyous, and charming in the world, all that is fair in youth and nature; this is the period of his Children of the Sea, his Fishwomen, and his Knitting Girls. Later his subjects became more serious, and more serious, too, the claims of his art. Many followed IsraËls's example. The group of admirers of the master, those who saw the world as he did,—though with their own eyes,—may be called the pith and kernel of the A New Party opposed to the Romanticists.—In opposition to these "champions of twilight and tenderness" arose those who preferred the real and substantial: Breitner; Sosselin de Jong, the portrait-painter; Witkamp; ThÉrÈse Schwartze, and Van der Waay. A similar movement took place in landscape-painting. The most important landscape-artists in the first half of the nineteenth century were Kobell, Koekkoek, and Schelfhout. Their great ideal was a careful, almost painful, working out of detail; they selected subjects rich in material, masses of big trees against water, producing great effects of light and shade. They sought to captivate the eye by an abundance of detail, and to depict woods and meadows with a smoothness which was more artificial than natural. Bilders, Roelofs, and their Followers.—What was called the picturesque in a landscape became unnecessary to the younger men of the newer school; they painted Nature in its own beauty and in the simplicity of its charm, as they saw it in their daily lives. Of this group Bilders is the most important. He admired in the landscape, not a favorite spot, or a pretty pool, or a gayly colored cow; he saw rather land and meadow and wood in the mass, as one whole, beautiful by reason of its grand lines, its rich tones. William Roelofs went a step further; his first works differ little from those of his predecessors, but by degrees he tore himself away from the accepted style and became a true reformer. It was no longer the color or the beautiful contours of a view that attracted him, but the country itself, the vegetation, the verdure, the cattle in the meadows, the sky that seems always holiday-making, the ever-changing clouds, always full of beauty. A whole school followed in this new track,—Van de Sande Bakhuijzen, Mevrouw Bilders van Bosse and Mevrouw Mesdag, Van Borselen, Storlenbeker, GabriËl, who depicted with extraordinary fidelity both land and sea; John Vrolijk, whose cows are always grazing in sunny meadows under a brilliantly blue sky; De Haas, whose cattle are more heavy and massive; Du Chattel, who prefers the effect of light in Spring and in Autumn; Apol, who devotes himself almost exclusively to snow scenes, producing singularly charming effects of the sun shining upon monotonous whiteness; Mari Ten Kate, De Bock, WijsmÜller, Weissenbruch, and Tholen. Another Step in the Modern Direction.—Another step in the modern direction was taken by artists who gave themselves up entirely to the impression of the landscape, and painted exactly what they saw; Ter Meulen, for instance, who loves Nature for the mood which she awakes in him, and who understands so well how to convey light and tone into his clever and refined pictures; Anton Mauve, and the brothers William and Jacob Maris, were also accomplished interpreters of nature, and all that lives and moves therein. J. MARIS Two Windmills J. MARIS Two Windmills Modern Dutch Painters pursuing Independent Lines.—Of other modern Dutch painters pursuing different lines may be mentioned Bosboom, who devoted himself chiefly to the interiors of old churches, bringing out the play of light and shadow among the pillars; Klinkenberg, who paints Dutch streets and canals and the old buildings upon them in full sunshine; Jansen, who paints the Amsterdam docks and quays; Alma-Tadema, painter of classical scenes; Bisschop, the great colorist; David Bles, "the witty portrayer of morals and manners of years ago"; Henrietta Ronner-Knip, the famous painter of cats and dogs; Henkes, who depicts in grayish tones old-fashioned scenes and characters; Bakker Korff, who paints similar scenes, but in miniature; the brothers Oyens; Elchanon Verveer, painter of jolly old fishermen; SadÉe; Mejuffrouw van de Sande |
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