Part 16

“That he, witness, went to see and examine the aforesaid picture in the house of van Rijn, who told him at the time that the picture was owned by said Dirck van Cattenburch. The aforesaid Cornelius van Everdingen further declares that he went up to Rembrandt’s studio several times, where, on each occasion, he saw and examined the said picture, which was discussed by them, Rembrandt declaring that the picture was owned by Dirck van Cattenburch. Also that Rembrandt had several polished plates owned by Dirck van Cattenburch in order to engrave the _Passion_.

Signed Allart van Everdingen Signed Cornelius van Everdingen.”

“It is interesting to note that Allart van Everdingen was a well-known painter of the time of Rembrandt and that he was born in 1612. He excelled in painting rocky landscapes. He also executed sea-pieces and storms with such surprising effect and spirit that his work entitled him to the appellation, the ‘Salvator Rosa of the North.’ Allart van Everdingen was also an etcher of repute and in this work there must have existed a bond of sympathy between Rembrandt and himself. He died in 1675, six years after the death of the master. His works are represented in all the great museums. Cornelius van Everdingen, his son, was also an artist, but not so universally known as his more brilliant father.”

Now then we turn to another Dutch authority to continue the story:

“Dr. Bredius, by the remarkable discovery of the ancient deed, had established the fact that a certain picture of _Simeon_ (always identified in Art with _The Presentation in the Temple_) was in Rembrandt’s studio a few months before his death. But what had become of the picture there was nothing to show, none of the great biographers of the artist has ever classified a work of this subject dating from his last period.

“And now commence the most interesting events connected with the picture under consideration. Many inquiries were instituted. Dr. Bredius, from his rich stock of material bearing upon the master, searched exhaustively for some indication where the picture might be found. The known and unknown private and public collections of Europe and even America were examined through and through, until at last his efforts were rewarded and nine years after the discovery of the deed and his subsequent article, the picture was recognized and acclaimed as the lost _Simeon_.

“The painting was found in the collection of a nobleman in England, and although it had lain neglected for centuries there could be no possible doubt that it was the picture of _Simeon_ referred to in the deed.

“This discovery occurred in the year 1916, at a time when the world was in the midst of the Great War; but such was the importance of the find that the masterpiece was sent at once to Holland, there to be admired by all of the great Rembrandt authorities.”

Critics have called attention to the fact that the _first_ important picture painted by Rembrandt was _Simeon in the Temple_ which is now in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, and which is also called _Presentation in the Temple_. It is a little strange that the _last_ picture should have been on the same subject. Yet any one can see they are by the same hand. In the Hague picture it is beneath the high roof of a temple that the Virgin and St. Joseph make the offering and present the Holy Child to the Lord. Simeon, in a robe glittering with gold, holds the Holy Child and the High Priest stands in front of the group, his hands lifted in ecstasy. The latter’s robe of violet makes a beautiful note of color which is carried through the lights and shadows and which contrasts and harmonizes, too, with the Virgin’s dress of light blue. In the vaporous distance persons are seen ascending and descending the steps. All the light is concentrated on the central group and the cold, mysterious depths of the vast fane are expressed with marvellous skill.

_Homer Reciting his Poems_, also in the Hague Gallery, representing an old man in a yellow robe, has the face of the _Strawberry Hill Simeon_ and _Homer_ was painted in 1663. It could be possible that the same model was used for _Homer_ and the _Strawberry Hill Simeon_.

How did Horace Walpole get this Rembrandt?

The information that we gain from the Catalogue of the _Strawberry Hill_ Collection issued when Earl Waldegrave sold the contents of _Strawberry Hill_ at Covent Garden in 1842 is rather tantalizing than otherwise.

The items read as follows.

On Page XVII of prefatory remarks:

“A Fine Rembrandt (No. 100) and a Nicholas Poussin adorn this end of the chamber. Page 204. The great North Bed Chamber: No. 100. _The Presentation in the Temple_, displaying all the power of light and shade so peculiar to this great master, Rembrandt.

“The above two pictures No. 99 and 100 were bought from a very old gentlewoman for whose grandfather they had been painted, and till then had never been taken out of their old black frames and are still in their pure and genuine state.”

Was the “very old gentlewoman” the grand-daughter of Dirck van Cattenburch?

PORTRAIT OF AN OFFICER.

_Frans Hals (1580?–1666)._

_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman._

The subject, which we might almost call a Dutch Falstaff, is seated in a chair on the arm of which he rests his right elbow, while he seems to be grasping a stick with his hand. The left hand is hidden. Beneath his large grey felt hat with its wide turned-up brim a few locks of straggly grey hair are visible. His doublet is of grey silk with a dotted pattern (long anticipating the “Polka Dot” of the early Nineteenth Century), a surcoat of buff leather, and a broad, flat collar, trimmed with handsome and heavy lace, worn over a metal breast-plate. The Officer looks directly at us with a half-humorous, half-suspicious glance,--one of those characteristic Frans Hals’s expressions.

The picture, oils on canvas (32½ × 25¾) bears the monogram F. H. and the words “Ætat 55. A. 1637.” It was sold from the Collection of Mr. J. H. Töpfer in Amsterdam in 1841 and then it was in the Collection of Sir Edgar Vincent (Lord d’Abercorn) at Esher.

[Illustration:

_Collection of Mr. Henry Goldman_

PORTRAIT OF AN OFFICER

--_Frans Hals_]

Frans Hals (1580?–1666), one of the greatest masters of painting, was born in Antwerp, where his parents (natives of Haarlem, and of good lineage), are supposed to have gone because of political disturbances of the time. It seems that Hals was settled in Haarlem before 1591, busily painting, and he lived there all the rest of his life. In 1637 he came under Rembrandt’s influence in Amsterdam. Hals’s life was rather disgraceful and went from bad to worse until poverty and comparative oblivion compelled him to accept charity. He died in Haarlem in 1666, leaving a great many followers. The real life of the man is to be found in such works as _The Laughing Cavalier_ in the Wallace Collection and those vagabonds, lute-players, topers, and other rascals that belong to the same class as Autolycus, Launcelot Gobbo, Touchstone, Dogberry, Sir Toby Belch, Falstaff and our other much-prized, although disreputable, Shakespearian low-comedy characters.

Hals always accomplished his work by the greatest economy of means. A few broad, rapid, and unhesitating strokes, or _swipes_, of the brush, a dot here and there of light,--and that is all!

Everything that Hals painted shows his dazzling genius, his astounding instinct for striking effects, and his marvellous ability for catching a likeness. Hals never worked out his ideas: he left no sketches, nor studies. His extraordinary power of quick analysis with the eye and the gift his hand had for expressing what his eye had seen, combined with a rapid, sure, and skilled technique rank Hals as a master among masters.

Moreover, he had a keen and gay humor. No painter has ever been able like Hals to render the face in action and to fix forever, a rapid and fleeting expression on canvas. He loved to catch and make permanent a wink, a smile, a leer, or even hearty laughter.

Frans Hals was a genius at portraiture. Those who have seen the large number of Hals’s _Doelen_ pictures in the Town Hall of Haarlem, each canvas containing from fourteen to twenty life-size portraits, stand aghast at the power represented in just this one phase of his art.

When we look upon these pictures we feel as if we were entering a hall full of convivial officers, laughing, jesting and making merry over their fine wines and choice food. They are richly dressed. Many of them wear lace cuffs and ruffs and bright scarves. Flags flutter, spears glitter, spurs and swords clink and rattle and flash in the sunlight; and plumes on the large hats nod in the breeze, or with the motions of these men’s bodies. Loud talk and bursts of laughter seem to issue from the frames. These convivial men have fought against the hated Spaniard and are ready “to trail a pike” again at any moment. A gallant and a jovial crowd,--these Arquebusiers of St. George and St. Andrew!

The artist was commanded to paint each man accurately and according to his rank in the Company; and Hals did more than fill his order,--he made each and every man _live_.

THE LAUGHING MANDOLIN PLAYER.

_Frans Hals (1580–1666)._

_Collection of Mr. John R. Thompson._

Here is a half-figure of a young man seated, turning his head towards the spectator, and laughing merrily as he holds up a glass of wine in his right hand. His mandolin is lying on the table beside him and his left fingers close around its neck. He wears a dark cloak lined with blue and a large black cap thrown carelessly at the side of his head and his hair is unkempt and straggly. But what cares he? He has sung his song and played his tune and has been rewarded well,--well enough, indeed, to have a glass of good wine. So no wonder he laughs! Life is a joke anyway--“So here’s to the company and thank you, gentlemen!”

[Illustration:

_Collection of Mr. John R. Thompson_

THE LAUGHING MANDOLIN PLAYER

--_Frans Hals_]

The picture is an oil painting on panel (36 × 30 inches), and is signed with the monogram F. H.

The _Laughing Mandolin Player_ belonged to the Capello Collection, Amsterdam, from which it was sold in 1767, and then it passed to Count Bonde, Stockholm; to Jules Porges, Paris; to the late Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, Waddeston Manor, England; and to M. A. Veil-Picard, Paris.

A MUSIC PARTY.

_Pieter de Hoogh (1629–1677?)._

_Collection of Mrs. John N. Willys._

Here are six figures in the reception bedroom of a prosperous merchant or citizen. The dominant note of the apartment is red. The floor is paved with square blocks of marble. The primary interest of the picture is in the group on the left, consisting of two fashionably dressed gentlemen and an elegantly attired lady at a table over which is spread an Oriental “table-carpet.” The lady, dressed in a scarlet skirt, an old-gold overskirt and bodice and a deep white lace collar, is looking at the spectator and singing from a piece of music which she is holding in her left hand, her right being raised as if to beat time. Standing near her and smilingly accompanying her in her song is a young gentleman with long hair and wearing a white jacket and a broad-brimmed hat. With his right hand he is holding a long funnel-shaped glass

## partly filled with wine. Seated opposite and looking intently at the

lady is a middle-aged gentleman with long hair and yellow jacket, holding a flageolet with both hands, and apparently waiting for the note at which he may join in the accompaniment. On the table are the flageolet player’s high-crowned hat with red feathers, an open book of music and a glass. In the background are standing figures of a lady and gentleman in conversation, and near-by is an attendant in brown dress holding a wine-jar in his left hand and abstractedly looking out of the window. In the background is a bed enclosed with curtains. Two windows to left and right open on to a garden, a portion of which, adorned with statues, is seen through an open doorway on the extreme right.

[Illustration:

_Collection of Mrs. John N. Willys_

A MUSIC PARTY

--_Pieter de Hoogh_]

The picture, oil on a panel (24 × 28 inches), was formerly in the Collections of Edmund Higginson of Saltmarshe Castle, England, 1846; George H. Morland, Esq., London, a well-known amateur, a descendant of George Morland, the artist, 1863; and Albert Levy, London, 1874.

Pieter de Hoogh (or Hooch) is thought to have been born in Rotterdam. Little is known of his life. He seems to have been a servant in his early years employed by Justus de la Grange and to have lived in Delft, in Leiden and in The Hague. In some way he learned to paint; some authorities say he studied under Rembrandt’s pupil Carel Fabritius, Houbraken says he was a fellow-student with Jacob Ochtevelt under Nicholaes Berchem. In 1653 Pieter de Hoogh became a member of the Guild of Painters in Delft and he married in that city and lived there Until 1664. Next he is living in The Hague and after that in Amsterdam. Pieter de Hoogh is ranked as one of the best of the “Little Dutch Masters.” His pictures show a particularly fine mastery in the

## action of light. He almost invariably opens a door in the background

leading into a garden or into an adjoining room. He groups his figures interestingly and tells his simple story in paint graphically and convincingly. His architecture is always remarkably fine and his drawing is second to none.

Pieter de Hoogh was neglected for many years, but to-day he is deeply appreciated. Burger says he never saw any picture by de Hoogh that was not of the first rank: “Sometimes he paints interiors--people are playing cards, or having a family concert, or reading, or drinking, or conversing. Sometimes he paints exteriors; and then the painter introduces us to domestic occupations and the innocent recreations of private life, as, for instance, a servant washing linen in a backyard, or cleaning fish, or plucking fowl, or perhaps there are ladies and their cavaliers playing at bowls in a garden with trim gravelled walks.

“When he paints interiors this artist rarely neglects to show, on the right or left, doors opening on a staircase or revealing a leafy alley, or the trees along a quay, so that his pictures always seem to be the antechamber of another picture. In this characteristic style of de Hoogh when the interior of the apartment is moderately lighted the sun shines outside. Pieter de Hoogh seems to have been in Rembrandt’s secrets.”

THE LACE-MAKER.

_Jan Vermeer (1632–1675)._

_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon._

This delightful picture on panel (17¾ × 15½ inches) was only discovered in 1926. On its exhibition at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in 1926–1927 in Berlin, Dr. Wilhelm Bode wrote: “I consider it a genuine, perfect, and very characteristic work of Jan Vermeer of Delft. Not only has it the true Vermeer charm as to the lighting and coloring, but at the same time there is an extraordinary fascination in the expression of the face, still half that of a child.” Dr. Max J. Friedländer also pronounced it “a genuine and highly characteristic work by Vermeer of Delft.”

The young girl is seen at half-length with her head turned towards the observer and her eyes looking straight out of the picture. She is busy making lace on a pillow, or cushion, which is supported on a frame with two upright posts. In her left hand she is holding a bobbin. Her costume is a yellow jacket, or bodice, with broad white collar and broad white cuffs. Her brown hair, arranged very simply, is adorned with a tiny knot of blue ribbon. The handsome pear-shaped pearls in her ears proclaim that she is in more than affluent circumstances and that she is a young Dutch lady of some position, making lace for her pleasure and not to earn a living. At her left elbow is a blue cushion and a large pewter dish.

_The Lace-Maker_ is in every way a picture of charm and one of the most thoroughly attractive that Vermeer ever produced.

[Illustration:

_Collection of the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon_

THE LACE-MAKER

--_Jan Vermeer_]

When it came to light in 1926 it was cordially welcomed. Seymour de Ricci published a long article under the title of _Le Quarante-et-Unième Vermeer_ in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ (December, 1927), which says in part:

“Seated, with her work on her knees and her bobbins in her hand, she stops in her occupation for a moment to look at the spectator. On the right, upon the corner of a table, covered with an Oriental rug, a flat dish of pewter and a blue cushion ornamented with three rows of gold braid and two gold tassels--that is the entire subject of the picture!

“It needed the consummate art of a Vermeer to produce with this slender material such a veritable _chef-d’œuvre_. Many painters would doubtless have tried to place this fresh figure in a striking setting. A Gerard Dou would have framed her in a window; a Metsu would have surrounded her with furniture; and a Pieter de Hoogh would have felt compelled to let us see through an open door into the next room, or into a bright flower garden. The bolder and much greater painter, Vermeer, places his model before a white wall, the plaster of which in the course of two centuries has combined ivory reflections with the pearly gray of clouds in springtime. Upon the clearness of this wall this youthful figure stands out with striking clarity: the faint rosy tints of the complexion, the whiteness of the broad flat collar and cuffs and the bright yellow of the bodice form a scale of colors that are juxtaposed with singular frankness and boldness. It is only in the flesh tints that the painter allows himself to bring the model into relief: in everything else he shows an affection for flat surfaces and flat tints. His touch is so light that in places--noticeably in the whites--each stroke of the brush has left its trace. The artist has proceeded by circular blots juxtaposed, announcing therefore a technique which certain French artists pretend to have discovered at the end of the Nineteenth Century.

“In everything here Vermeer the colorist takes precedence of Vermeer the draughtsman. There is not a line in the entire picture,--nothing but the juxtaposition of color-tones. A magnifying glass is impotent to make us discover the bridge of the nose, the profile of the cheek or the fingers. The eyebrows are barely indicated, the brown hair is treated in large luminous masses, and even the bobbins which to the naked eye seem to be drawn with such punctilious exactitude are merely indicated, but with such correctness and such prodigious skillfulness of touch that the illusion of the detail is most complete, even for the instructed spectator.

“In this charming composition, the greatest of Dutch colorists has taken pleasure in playing the entire scale of his favorite colors. In the brown masses of the hair he has placed a tiny blue ribbon, echoing the large blue surface of the cushion. On the other hand, on this same cushion three rows of dark yellow braid echo the bright ochre of the bodice. In the very centre of the picture the cherry red of the little smiling mouth throws a note more brilliant than the artist dared to place on the rose cheeks of his model white with the reflections from the large starched collar. All the lower part of the picture is in deep half-light which is brightened by the red and blue tones of the table-carpet and the luminous reflections of the pewter dish. The curious observer will notice that the painter was not afraid to change the centre of his composition towards the right, indifferent to the traditions of its accepted place, just as he was to the methods of his fore-runners with regard to the use of color.

“It has been attempted more than once to elucidate the mystery of the technical methods to which is due the incredible luminosity of Vermeer’s pictures. It has even been thought that he painted on a groundwork of some very bright color; but it has been correctly remarked that such a groundwork--if he had employed it--would at the end of two centuries have become visible under the painting and would have necessarily assimilated the colors. Others have suggested a preliminary preparation of water colors or gum. But, in truth, we are perfectly ignorant of how this amazing and incontestable result has been attained. This newly discovered picture reveals nothing to us relative to Vermeer’s technique, and although the painting is so lightly done and of so thin a coating, it has taken on its surface something of the hardness and brilliance of porcelain; and fine crackles have broken all through this suggesting the paste of porcelain.

_The Lace-Maker_ was in the Collection of Harold R. Wright, Esq., of London, before it passed to the Hon. Andrew W. Mellon.

Jan Vermeer of Delft (1632–1675) was a pupil of Carel Fabritius, who was a pupil of Rembrandt--consequently Vermeer had the best training. Lemke’s eulogy is worth reading:

“Vermeer was a painter of the light and sun school; and this was his chief study--to catch and hold fast the moment. What Frans Hals did for the physiognomy, grasping the flying moment in an incomparable manner with winks, smiles, leers, gesticulation, etc., and fixing it in paint, Vermeer as a landscape painter, delighted to do for the sunshine. He shows its rays streaming into a room, or the play of light and shadow when the light with the moving air falls through heavy foliage against a bright house and paints it with rays of light and shade. Unlike the moment of Rembrandt and Ruisdael, which is fixed for all eternity, with Vermeer the moment vibrates in the light. The shadows lose their sharp outlines and the fine brush-work suggests the living change and play of the light. Rembrandt paints light in darkness and lets it glow in the dark or streaming into it, or in a broad flood of brilliance; but Vermeer prefers to set darkness or twilight against the light.”

GERMAN PAINTING

_GERMAN PAINTING_

Painting reached its greatest development in Germany from the middle of the Fifteenth to the middle of the Sixteenth Century during the Renaissance and the Reformation. The dominating personalities were Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein the Younger.

The early German painters devoted their talents almost exclusively to altar-pieces. The chief centres of activity were Cologne, Colmar, Ulm, Nuremberg, and Augsburg. Cologne was the most important and had much influence upon the neighboring Flemings. As early as the Thirteenth Century Wolfram van Eschenbach, describing his handsome Knight in _Parsifal_, declares that

“From Koln nor from Maestricht No limner could excel him.”

The first important Cologne painter is Meister Wilhelm, first half of the Fourteenth Century, followed by Meister Stephan Lochner (active 1430–1451), possibly his pupil, painter of the great altar-piece in the Cologne Cathedral, the “_Dom-bild_”, which every painter tried to see. Albrecht Dürer, for instance, wrote in his _Journal_: “Item. I have paid two silver pennies to have the picture opened, which Meister Stephan painted at Cologne.”