The Standard Galleries - Holland Part 9

=A Picture by Frans Snijders.=--Anthonie van Dijck is said to have painted the huntsman in the picture of still life and game by which Frans Snijders is represented here. Fuller knowledge of Snijders, however, is to be gained in the Rijks.

=A Picture by Several Artists.=--One of the most curious and interesting pictures in the entire gallery is The Interior of a Picture Gallery, painted by a number of Antwerp artists, but which is catalogued under the name of Gonzales Coques (1618-84). This artist and his family are represented in the centre of a picture gallery, and are by the hand of Coques himself. The pictures on the walls were painted by pupils of Rubens, Van Dijck, Rembrandt, and others, and represent still life, landscapes, mythological and allegorical scenes. Many of them possess great charm. On the left are: the Meeting of Christ and a Centurion, by Pieter Yykens (1648-95); The Earth, an allegory, by Erasmus Quellinus (1607-78); an Italian Landscape, by Antoni Goubau (1616-98); The Metamorphosis of Ascalaphus, by Carel Emanuel Biset (1633-after 1691); A Boar Hunt, by Peter Boel (1622-89); a Moonlight and Landscape, signed J.

v. K.; a Landscape, by Pieter van Bredael (1629-1719), signed P. v. B.; a Marine (unknown); The Nymphs Spied On, by Jan de Duyts (1629-76); and a Marine, by Jan Peeters (1624-77). Above the door in the centre are two pictures: The Judgment of Paris, by Theodoor Boeyermans (1620-78), and Leda, by the same artist. On the left: The Triumph of Silenus, by Jan Cossiers (1600-71); Water, an allegory, by Theodoor Boeyermans; the Four Seasons, by the same artist; a Landscape (unknown); Still Life (unknown); The Descent from the Cross and View of a City, both by Johan van den Hecke (1620-84); Landscape (unknown); a Village Festival, by Peter Spierinckx (1635-1711); a Landscape, by Johan van den Hecke (1620-84), and Bathers, by the same artist; Still Life, by Peter Gysels (1621-90); and a Venus and Adonis, by Casper Jacob van Opstal (1654-1717). The architecture of the room was painted in 1674 by Willem van Ehrenberg (1637-about 76). The picture is 5-3/4 feet high by 7 feet broad, and was offered in 1683 by the Brotherhood of Painters in Antwerp to Jan van Bavegom, Procureur of the Court of Brussels, as a reward for the services he had rendered to the Brotherhood in the lawsuit against the armies of the Six Guilds. It finally became the property of William V.

="The Little Van Dijck."=--Gonzales Coques was a pupil of Pieter Brueghel III. and David Ryckaert, whose daughter he married. He was fond of painting portraits of his family walking in a park or engaged in various occupations and pleasures indoors; and very frequently he was a.s.sisted by other artists, as in the case of the picture just described.

Coques was a man of letters, and presided over the Chamber of Rhetoric in his native city, Antwerp. His elegance, taste, and delicacy have procured for him the name of "The Little Van Dijck." In his own day he enjoyed great renown, and was honored with orders for pictures and presents from many sovereigns, including Charles I. of England, the Prince of Orange, and the Archdukes of Austria.

=Francken, Painter of Allegories and Festive Scenes.=--A historical picture of interest is that of A Ball at the Court of Albert and Isabella in 1611, by Frans Francken the Younger (1581-1642). He was famous for his scenes from the Bible, allegories, landscapes, mythological pictures, and particularly for his b.a.l.l.s, masquerades, and other scenes of festivity in which he introduced figures of small size.

Frequently, too, he painted figures in the pictures of the elder Neeffs, the younger De Momper, and Bartelmees van Ba.s.sen.

=Description of the Picture of a Historical Ball.=--This ball scene, which belonged to William V. at Het Loo, was painted between 1611 and 1616. The couple who are dancing in the centre are Philip William of Na.s.sau, Prince of Orange, and his wife, Eleonore de Bourbon, Princess of Conde. Albert and his wife, Isabelle Claire Eugenie, and five other portraits are by the hand of Frans Pourbus the Younger.

=Pictures by Vinck Boons and Droochsloot.=--Pictures of peasants enjoying the _kermesse_, by David Vinck Boons (1578-1629), (1622), a landscape and genre painter, whose figures are often of repulsive ugliness, and by J. C. Droochsloot (1586-1666), also represented by a Dutch Village (1652), bring us to a more brilliant painter of such scenes.

=David Teniers the Younger a Conspicuous Painter of Still Life.=--David Teniers the Younger (1610-90) is one of those Flemish painters who were known and sought after in Holland during their lifetime. This may have arisen from the fact that he was closely allied with the Dutch school and with Brouwer, who lived and worked for a long time in Holland and was very highly prized there. Teniers painted in particular little cabinet pictures, soldier scenes, alchemists and cooks, and in them often showed a conspicuous love of still life, so greatly liked in Holland. Another circ.u.mstance which must be taken into consideration is that his brothers Hendrik and Julius, both painters, lived for some time in Holland and occupied themselves--the former in Middelburg and the latter in Amsterdam--with the sale of the pictures of their famous brother.

=The Resemblance of his Pictures to those of his Master.=--The younger Teniers developed himself princ.i.p.ally in the school of Adriaen Brouwer.

Some of his early pictures, painted between 1630 and 1640, stand so closely sometimes beside those of Brouwer that they have been attributed to the latter. In his first period, Teniers, quite trickily copied Brouwer's real types, and many of his mannerisms, such as the famous red cap which he so often put on his figures. The spirited painting, the clear bright light with the finely expressed chiaroscuro, and the beautiful harmony of tone he followed in the happiest way. He became Brouwer's successor; and he is greatest when he is still under the inspiration of his great prototype. Splendid pictures of this style are possessed by the Museums of Madrid, the Louvre, Berlin, Dresden, St.

Petersburg, and many of the great private collections.

=A Gradual Change in the Tone of Teniers's Pictures.=--About 1650 the warm golden tone of the master falls more and more into a cooler silver tone. Bright and clear in the highest degree are the treasured works of this period. At the end of his life, however, he grades more and more into a brown, dull tone far removed from the vigor and transparency of his youth. Still in his old age he maintained a careful drawing, a great completeness in the painting, only the very last pictures show that the hand of the old man at length had begun to tremble.

=Description of The Good Kitchen.=--The Hague possesses two fine examples of this artist. In The Good Kitchen, a splendid work of his middle period, painted in 1644, he delights us especially with masterly representation of a.s.sembled details. Magnificently painted are the fish and fowl, pots and kitchen stuff; only, perhaps, is the background keyed up a little too high. The figures, as unfortunately so frequently happens with Teniers, are somewhat uninteresting; only the little boy who is holding the dish for his mother (evidently the portrait of a child) looks out at us in a lifelike and endearing manner.

A famous kitchen it is, in fact; and it is evident that a feast of some consequence is in preparation. Fowl, game, fish, vegetables, fruits, all are there on the tables and the floor. In the background, before a big fire, a cook is roasting joints, and a man and woman are very busy close beside him. In front, in the middle, and in the bright light, is seated the young mistress of the house, also aiding in the preparations. For the moment she is peeling a lemon, and the little boy is standing beside her holding a plate. She wears a blood-colored skirt, and on her sky-blue bodice expands a broad collar of a whiteness that Metsu would envy. The whole is very ably and broadly painted with that just and free touch and those spirited accents which characterize the technique of Teniers. It is painted at the beginning of his best period when his silvery period begins: he was then thirty-four years old.

Burger cleverly says: "Like certain of those fishes that he has painted so well, Teniers is excellent between the head and tail." The Good Kitchen is painted on copper and is only two feet and a half broad. A small picture on wood shows an alchemist with a gray beard seated beside a table holding a book. His a.s.sistant is kneeling beside a furnace.

Sir Joshua Reynolds said:

"The works of David Teniers, Jun., are worthy the closest attention of a painter who desires to excel in the mechanical knowledge of his art.

His manner of touching, or what we call handling, has perhaps never been equalled: there is in his pictures that exact mixture of softness and sharpness which is difficult to execute."

=Tilborgh's Picture of A Dinner.=--We must not neglect now to look at the one picture by Tilborgh, A Dinner, particularly interesting on account of the personages represented.

Tilborgh (1625-78), supposed to have been a pupil of Teniers, certainly follows him in choice of subject--interiors of taverns, peasants merry-making, _kermesses_, village feasts, etc. He was popular in his day,--even more so, it is said, than Teniers himself. The dinner is taking place in the home of Adriaen van Ostade, who is seated in the middle, with his wife on his right, beyond whom are a man and a woman.

On the left is Paul Potter, with long hair and a large hat, dressed in a pearl-gray doublet and red stockings. His general appearance is very gay, and quite a contrast to the melancholy portrait by B. van der Helst, which also hangs in this gallery. Near Potter stands his silly little wife, dressed in light blue,--a not specially graceful figure.

Two other painters are standing on the left, talking together. Burger thinks they may be Tilborgh himself and Isaak van Ostade.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This picture, representing Dr. Johan Deyman's lecture in anatomy, was partly burned in the eighteenth century, and the fragment now hangs in the Rijks with the other collection of anatomical pictures from the Surgeons' Guild of Amsterdam.

[2] The figures in this landscape were painted by Lingelbach.

[3] Blanc.

[4] Crowe.

[5] Bredius.

[6] Crowe.

[7] Crowe.

[8] Crowe.

[9] Blanc.

[10] Crowe.

[11] Crowe.

[12] Reynolds.

[13] Dr. Bredius.

[14] Crowe.

[15] Blanc.

[16] In the Louvre.

[17] Hymans.

[18] Blanc.

[19] Greef (Grif, Grifir, or Gryef), Anton, Flemish painter of landscapes with dogs and dead game, born at Antwerp in 1670; died in Brussels in 1715. He is supposed to have been a pupil of Frans Synders.

There seem to have been two painters of the same name.

[20] Victor, Jakob or Giacomo, Dutch painter of the seventeenth century.

Pictures by him are in Dresden, Copenhagen, and Munich; in the latter, his Barnyard bears the forged signature of Hondecoeter.

[21] Blanc.

[22] Crowe.

THE RIJKS MUSEUM

THE WAY TO THE RIJKS

On taking the tramway at the Dam, the traveller will find the short trip to the Rijks Museum a very pleasant one. The car glides rapidly through a busy part of Amsterdam, crossing ca.n.a.l after ca.n.a.l,--the Singel, Heeren, Keizers, and Prinsen grachts,--bordered with leafy trees and houses that present a picturesque appearance. Alighting at Willems Park, on the ca.n.a.l long known as the Buiten Singel, or outer girdle, separating the old from the new town, we walk a short distance along the Stadhouders-Kade to the imposing red brick building with granite bands, arches, tympans, entablatures, etc., in the transition style between the Gothic and the Dutch Renaissance, which covers nearly three acres of ground. The princ.i.p.al _facade_, turned toward the Buiten Singel, presents a somewhat majestic appearance, with its two fine towers and central gable surmounted by a statue of Victory, by Vermeylen.

=History of this Collection.=--Before entering, we may note that this splendid Museum was opened in the name of the King of Holland in 1885.