DUTCH ART—ITS RISING AND ITS SETTING SUN

“How fair a lot to fill Is left to each man still.”

Van Dyck’s contemporary in Holland was Frans Hals of Haarlem, born about 1581, died 1666. With this painter begins the century of great art in Holland, a century that closed suddenly and completely with the death of Rembrandt. It was the Renaissance of Holland, the time immediately following her liberation from the shackles of Spain. She feared no more the terrors of the Inquisition, she shook herself free from Catholicism, and in her new-found liberty she opened wide her doors and became an asylum for the boldest thinkers. She founded a national school of painting. All the great painters of the Dutch school flourished between 1584 and 1683, the year of the birth of Van Huysen. Frans Hals, whose portraits have the look of arrested life, began the school. Rembrandt, the magician, whose wand was light, closed it.

Frans Hals was the merriest, the most clearsighted of all the Dutch portrait painters. The stroke of his brush was swift and sure, his colour was brilliant; he moulded his faces in light. He is very poorly represented in our National Gallery; there are but two heads by him—the “Portrait of a Woman” (1021), which is not at all characteristic of his free, jovial, and vigorous method, and “Portrait of a Man” (1251). I want you to look at this portrait. The original is a man of about forty years of age. He wears a simple satin doublet and an ample ruffle round his neck; his face is kindly, scrutinising, slightly amused. It is a strong, thoughtful countenance, full of good sense and of life. In all Hals’ portraits you will see the same animation, the same splendid spontaneity. None of his people seem to be posing for a likeness.

Frans Hals was the rising sun, Rembrandt the setting of the new era. Many are the painters grouped about these two supreme artists. I shall first speak to you of Rembrandt van Rhyn, thus called because he was born on the banks of the Rhine, the poet painter of light and shade.

Born at Leyden in 1606, he was the son of a miller. He was never book-learned: he possessed a Bible, Josephus (the great historian of the Jews), and Albert Dürer’s book on proportion. In later life eight more volumes were added to his collection. You see he did not read much, but he studied life at first hand; he observed everything, and, most of all, he observed the play of light and shade in the dusky corners of his father’s mill. He was a pupil of Lastman, a man of importance, but in truth he learned of no man; he taught himself everything. He simply worked patiently and passionately from morning to night. He had his models at hand—his father, his mother above all, whom he was always painting or drawing at work, at rest; every wrinkle of her face, every expression of her wise and patient eyes grew familiar to him. There was his sister Lizbeth; above all there was himself. Rembrandt’s self portraits are extraordinarily numerous. We see him in youth when his face was still unlined, in his triumphant manhood when he surmounted every obstacle, in his weary old age after he had experienced disappointment and sorrow. These self portraits are the record of his life. He studied humanity first by studying himself.

In our National Gallery we possess Rembrandt (672) in the flower of his life, aged thirty-two, a calm and purposeful man. He is dressed in rich velvet and heavy fur. We have Rembrandt aged sixty-three (221). Years and suffering have lined his face, tears have furrowed his cheeks and dimmed his troubled eyes. A whole lifetime lies between these two portraits—between Rembrandt in the prime of his years and Rembrandt old and sorrowful. The tragedy of grief and disappointment, of desperate straits was enacted. Rembrandt was undone by his love of collecting. He loved beautiful things not wisely but too well—gems, armour, rich brocades, pictures, etchings, carved furniture; he was always buying them. So long as his wife, his beloved Saskia lived, he would purchase jewels and rare stuffs with which to deck her. She died, and, in his wretchedness and loneliness, he devoted himself more than ever to his art, and bought these things the loveliness of which entranced him, and the collecting of which was ultimately to prove his ruin. He has been called miserly; far from that he was extravagant. He had the artist’s passion for beauty and he could not control his bent.

It is by his treatment of light and shade that Rembrandt gained immortality. It was a peculiar and personal treatment. He sought after effects that are beyond the range of colour to give, and which he strove to express by his management of light. In the British Museum you will find many marvellous etchings signed by him, and you must look at them all, seeking for that strong and subtle power of working in light and its attendant shade. There is one of “The Last Supper at Emmaus.” Christ has broken the bread and given the wine to His two disciples, who still do not recognise Him, and as they look He vanishes; a great light alone tells where He has been.

In “The Adoration of the Shepherds” (47) you will see what I mean by Rembrandt’s personal treatment. The scene is a dark stable, and all the illumination comes from the light emanating from the Child. That glorious light quenches all others; a lantern held by one of the shepherds sends but a feeble ray, the kneeling figure in the foreground is in deep shadow. In Rembrandt’s portraits he makes light and shade play a transfigurating part. There are several portraits in the National Gallery besides those I have mentioned (51, 166, 190, 237, 243, 775, 850, 1674, and 1675). His portraits of old ladies are peculiarly touching. He had a great sympathy for age for his mother’s sake, all its wrinkles are dear to him, pathetic eyes tell him a tale of wise prudence and tenderness. He died in poverty and loneliness in 1669.