Part 18

The Italianising influence was already beginning to make itself felt, to the lasting detriment of Dutch painting, and the typical example of this downward movement is Nicolaes Berchem (1620-1683), who was founded on his father, Pieter Claesz, and on Pieter de Grebber, and Jan Wils at Haarlem, while he also was impressed by Claes Moyaert and J. B. Weenix at Amsterdam, where he removed in 1677. There is scarcely a well-furnished gallery in Europe that does not seek to pride itself on possessing one of Berchem’s renderings of _Crossing the Ford_, or a _Woman upon an Ass in conversation with another Person_. The Louvre is no exception to this rule, and exhibits his _Cattle crossing a Ford_ (No. 2315) and nine other canvases and panels, nearly all of which bear his much-vaunted signature. His art is to-day deservedly out of fashion with discerning collectors.

Berchem’s pupil, Karel du Jardin (1622-1678), who is invariably at much pain to sign his pictures, is seen to some advantage in his very Italian and in every way characteristic _Italian Charlatans_ (No. 2427), the typical _Ford in Italy_ (No. 2428), and eight other works. His attempts to depict a _Calvary_ (No. 2426) have not been crowned with success, as the composition is overcrowded and undramatic; nor do we experience any emotion on regarding his _Portrait of Himself_ (No. 2434), a small production on copper.

Breenberg (1599-1659?), who was born at Deventer, the home of Terborch, has depicted a _View of the Campo Vaccino at Rome_ (No. 2334), and a _Ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars_ (No. 2335) in the Italian manner beloved by Berchem and Pieter van Laer. The latter, who is also named Bamboccio, is represented by two small oval panels. Lingelbach (1622-1674), who frequently collaborated with other Dutch artists, may be judged by his _Vegetable Market at Rome_ (No. 2447) and three other canvases, and Frédéric de Moucheron (1633?-1686) by a _Leaving for the Hunt_ (No. 2482). It will be convenient to mention here Reynier Nooms, whose _View of the Old Louvre from the Seine_ (No. 2491) has some historical interest.

ARCHITECTURAL PAINTERS

A limited number of painters busied themselves in making faithful transcripts of the streets and the exterior appearance of the buildings. Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712) was perhaps the most successful in this direction, and his _View of the Town Hall of Amsterdam_ in 1688 is an excellent example of his methods, while the Louvre also possesses three small panels by him. Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraten (1622-1666), the son of a cooper at Amsterdam, travelled to Italy and the Mediterranean, proof of which is afforded by his _Old Town Gate at Genoa_ (No. 2310). The typical architectural painter is, however, Gerrit Berckheyde (1638-1698). Although he never went to Italy, his _View of Trajan’s Column_ (No. 2324) is a welcome relief from the many versions he painted, with conspicuous success, of _The Market-Place of Haarlem_.

Hendrik van Steenwyck (1580-1648) almost invariably contented himself with reproducing the _Interiors of Churches_ (Nos. 2582, 2583); but his _Christ in the House of Martha and Mary_ (No. 2581) is an unusual subject with him, and must be his masterpiece. The _Vestibule of a Palace_ (No. 2490), by Isaac van Nickelle (fl. 1660), is very good of its kind; but the _Interior of a Guard-Room_ (No. 2453), by Aart van Maes, is a poor attempt at dramatic action.

MARINE PAINTERS

The fact that the Dutch had fought with swamp and water and possessed a large maritime commerce, is reflected in the _Seascapes_ of Simon de Vlieger (1600-1660), and in the art of Ludolf Backhuysen (1631-1708), who is represented by a _Stormy Sea_ (No. 2309) and five other canvases; but one of the best works of this class in the Louvre is the _Marine-piece_ (No. 2600) by Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633-1707), who crossed over to England, and after a long career died at Greenwich. These men sought to carry on the earlier tradition of Jan van Goyen and the two Ruisdaels, but they showed less originality and power.

STILL-LIFE PAINTERS

Much appreciation and some extravagant praise has been lavished on the still-life painters who, at the time when the higher aims of artistic endeavour began to die out in Holland, displayed remarkable ability. The cultivation of horticulture at Haarlem, the centre of the tulipomania fever in the middle of the seventeenth century, may have had an influence on the artistic presentation of inanimate nature; this feeling was no doubt stimulated by the display made by the goldsmiths in an age of great prosperity. Willem Claesz Heda, who was born 1594, is among the earliest of the Dutch still-life painters, and his picture (No. 2390) is dated 1637; he, however, did not die until more than forty years later. Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-1684), the painter of _Fruit and a Vase on a Table_ (No. 2391) and of another and much larger picture (No. 2392), was the pupil of his father, David de Heem; as he spent many years at Antwerp, he is sometimes regarded as a Flemish painter. That Abraham van Beyeren (1620-1675?), who painted several sea-pieces, was specially fond of copying the appearance of fish, is seen from his _Still-life: Fish_ (No. 2326A), at the Louvre, which has in recent years also acquired another work (No. 2312A) by him. Willem Kalf (1621?-1693) may have studied under H. G. Pot, the Haarlem genre-painter. He was evidently impressed with the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt, and often placed the drinking-cups, wine-glasses, and fruit on a richly-coloured tablecloth. He is here represented by four examples, of which the _Dutch Interior_ (No. 2436) is the best. Eight pictures by Jan Huysum (1682-1749), two by Jan van Os (1744-1808), and one by C. van Spaendonck (1756-1839) belong to the latest phase of art in Holland, and mark the decadence in full operation. It will be noticed that the Louvre has a much larger selection of still-life pictures than the National Gallery, which seems to regard achievements of this kind with disdain.

Melchior Hondecoeter (1636-1695), the painter of the farmyard, gives unmistakable proof of his power in his large signed _Eagle swooping down on a Farmyard_ (No. 2405), and two rather smaller pictures (Nos. 2406-7).

Jan Weenix (1640-1719), who usually concerns himself with dead game and birds, is working on the usual lines in three (Nos. 2610, 2611, and 2612A) of his four pictures in the great French museum; the other represents _A Seaport_ (No. 2612). He was the fellow-pupil of Hondecoeter in the studio of his father, Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-1660), who studied for a time under the early Dutch master, Abraham Blomaert, and worked in Italy for four years. For that reason the latter has adopted an Italian mode of signing his only picture (No. 2609) in the Louvre.

THE DECLINE

Although Gerard Honthorst (“Gerard of the Night”) was born as early as 1590, and was a pupil of Blomaert, he may he relegated to the period of decline. Almost invariably he resorted to the trick of lighting the figures in his pictures, whether he was painting religious subjects, portraits, or conversation-pieces, with a candlelight effect. This habit he had acquired in Italy by studying the style of Caravaggio. Of his five pictures here, the best is perhaps the _Portrait of Charles Louis, Duke of Bavaria_ (No. 2410), of 1640. His _Concert_ (No. 2409), painted sixteen years earlier, is an ill-balanced and overloaded composition.

Such artists as Abraham Hondius, who paints a _Man Selling Pigeons_ (No. 2407A); Karel de Moor, who was a pupil of G. Dou, and gives us an insignificant _Dutch Family_ (No. 2477); Eglon van der Neer, whose name is signed on a small panel, _A Man Selling Pigeons_ (No. 2485); Egbert van Heemskerck, whose _Interior_ (No. 2393) is in the La Caze collection; Jan Verkolie, whose _Interior_ (No. 2602) has been engraved; H. van Limborch, whose _Pleasures of the Golden Age_ (No. 2446) was in the collection of Louis XVI.; Louis de Moni, the painter of a _Family Scene_ (No. 2476); and Willem van Mieris, a replica of whose _Soap Bubbles_ (No. 2473) is at The Hague,—all these mediocre painters are the despair of the critic, and afford merely momentary entertainment for the curious.

It is apparent that by this period the art of Holland was marked by mechanical inventions, the surface of these eighteenth-century paintings being highly fused and metallic in appearance. The four panels of Adriaen van der Werff (1659-1722), which include an unpleasant _Magdalene in the Desert_ (No. 2617) and a repulsive _Dancing Nymph_ (No. 2619), are characteristic examples of his monotonous art. The _Disembarkation of Cleopatra_ (No. 2441) and the _Hercules between Vice and Virtue_ (No. 2443) of Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711), have the enamel-like smoothness and meaningless expression of academic art, although they have their usefulness as museum pieces.

It is a remarkable fact that the Louvre does not contain a single example of the revival of art in Holland in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

THE EARLY FRENCH SCHOOL

The early phases of the French school of painting—perhaps it would be more correct to say of painting in France—present one of the most interesting problems to the student of art history. It was not really until the great Exhibition of French Primitives held in Paris in 1904 that any serious attempts were made to construct a history of Early French painting; but the learned arguments that have been brought to bear upon the tangled question have so far failed to establish the existence of an important autochthonous school in the fifteenth century. It is true that contemporary records mention the names of a few painters who seem to have enjoyed great repute at the Courts at which they were employed, but it has been impossible to connect any notable extant pictures with their names; whilst those other “French” painters who have left tangible proofs of their activity are almost without exception of Flemish birth and training. Indeed, most of these early pictures show no characteristics that may be described as French, save the types of the faces, which would naturally be taken from the country where the artists worked.

The difficulty of dealing with the Early French pictures at the Louvre is considerably increased by the uncertainty of their authorship, the attributions being in most cases tentative and much disputed. Throughout we feel the lack of a definite basis for comparative criticism—the absence of properly authenticated works by the very masters whose names have been recorded in contemporary documents. One of the earliest of these masters is Jean Malouel, a Fleming, whose real name was Malwaele, and who worked in the service of the Dukes of Burgundy at Dijon, where he died in 1415. To him has been attributed, without sufficient proof, the tondo of _The Dead Christ supported by the Eternal Father_ (No. 996) and mourned by the Virgin, St. John and Angels.

Equally uncertain is the attribution of the _Last Communion and Martyrdom of St. Denis, First Bishop of Paris_ (No. 995), on which are seen, against a gold background, in the centre, the Crucified Saviour and the Eternal Father surrounded by cherubs; on the left, Christ giving the Communion to the imprisoned bishop, with a praying angel in the foreground; and on the right, the Decollation of St. Denis and his two companions, St. Rusticus and St. Eleutherius. An attempt has been made to identify this interesting picture with one ordered by Jean-sans-Peur, Duke of Burgundy, from Jean Malouel, and finished after that master’s death by Henri Bellechose, another Flemish painter, born in Brabant, who worked at Dijon between 1415 and 1431.

_The Entombment_ (No. 997) is the work of an unknown and presumably Flemish painter, who shows a certain affinity with the painter of the famous _Parement d’autel de Narbonne_ (No. 1342 _bis_) of about 1374. This altar-front is supposed to be by Girard d’Orléans and his son Jean, under whose name both the _Parement_ and the _Entombment_ were shown at the Exhibition of French Primitives in 1904. But all these attributions are largely conjectural.

THE MAÎTRE DE MOULINS

Chauvinistic French critics have made much capital out of the important national school that is supposed to have flourished towards the end of the fifteenth century at Moulins, and especially of the mysterious “Maître de Moulins,” so called from a famous triptych at Moulins which cannot be proved to be the work of a French painter, and shows very marked Italian characteristics, although the types of the faces are distinctly French. Italian painters had been working in France ever since Simone Martini (1285?-1344) was employed to decorate the Pope’s Palace at Avignon; and in the absence of definite documentary evidence it will always remain a difficult matter to decide whether certain pictures, Italian in style and French as regards the types, are the work of Italian masters painting in France, or of Frenchmen trained by Italians.

To the Maître de Moulins have been loosely ascribed certain pictures in the Louvre collection, especially since attempts have been made, in the face of great improbability, to identify him with Jehan Perréal, or Jehan de Paris, one of the few painters of that period whose French nationality has been satisfactorily established. Perréal was born at Lyons, and became Court painter in Paris to Charles VIII. and Louis XII. In this capacity he was sent to England at the time of the marriage of Louis XII. with Princess Mary Tudor, to design the bride’s toilettes. If Perréal be the painter of _The Virgin between Two Donors_ (No. 998D, formerly No. 1048, and now labelled No. —48), which bears upon the pilasters of a balustrade the letters “I P,” he is certainly not identical with the Maître de Moulins to whom have been attributed the portraits of _Pierre II., Sire de Beaujeu, Son-in-Law of Louis XI._ (No. 1004), and his wife, _Anne of France, Duchess of Bourbon, Daughter of Louis XI._ (No. 1005), which are apparently the wings of a triptych of which the centre panel has disappeared. They are utterly lacking in charm of colour and are anything but masterly in treatment. Both the personages are portrayed kneeling, the husband being presented by his Patron Saint and the wife by St. John the Evangelist. The _Portrait of Pierre_ was bought in 1842 by Louis Philippe for £20. The companion panel was presented to the Louvre in 1888 by M. Maciet. M. L. Dimier has rightly pointed out that there is no evidence whatever to prove these two pictures to have been painted by a French master. _The Virgin between Two Donors_ (No. 998D) has lately been tentatively attributed to the “Master of the Ursula Legend.”

THE DE SOMZÉE “MAGDALEN”

To the Maître de Moulins has also been attributed the somewhat overrated _Magdalen with a Female Donor_ (No. 1005A), which was formerly in the de Somzée collection at Brussels, and was, some time after the Exhibition of French Primitives in 1904, bought from Messrs. T. Agnew & Son for £5000. The supposed similarities that have been noticed between this picture and the Moulins triptych on the one hand, and Jehan Perréal’s authenticated design for the tomb of the Duke of Brittany at Rennes on the other hand, are not sufficiently convincing either to arrive at a definite conclusion as regards the authorship of this _Magdalen_, or to establish the identity of the Maître de Moulins with Jehan Perréal.

Of an even more problematic nature are the _Pietà_ (No. 998C, formerly No. 998) and the _Calvary_ (No. 998A), of which it is only safe to affirm that both were painted in France, the background showing in the case of the former the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Seine, the Louvre, and the Butte Montmartre; and in the latter an equally distinguishable view of the Seine, the Louvre, and other buildings. Both pictures appear to be the work of Flemish painters who were not entirely uninfluenced by Italian art. This _Calvary_ is labelled “_Retable du Parliament de Paris_,” and was formerly in the Palais de Justice in Paris.

We need not dwell at any length upon the school of Douai, which should be considered as a branch of the Flemish rather than a national French school. Jean Bellegambe (_c._ 1470-1535) is its chief representative, and presumably the author of the small wing of a triptych depicting the figure of _St. Adrian_ (No. 13A) which was formerly catalogued as being of the German school (No. 2739).

JEAN FOUQUET

Of far greater importance is the school which flourished at Tours, for here at last we meet with clearly marked personalities whose names are definitely connected with extant works, even if the character of their art remains essentially Flemish. The best known artist of this group is Jean Fouquet (_c._ 1425-1480?), who was Painter to Charles VII. and Louis XI. and wrought the wonderful miniatures in the famous Book of Hours at Chantilly. He was distinctly more successful as an illuminator than as a painter, although his masterpiece, the Chevalier diptych (of which one wing is at the Antwerp and the other at the Berlin Museum), is a work of considerable merit. The Louvre owns an interesting painting from his brush—the portrait of the corpulent Chancellor of France, _Guillaume Juvénal des Ursins, Baron de Trainel_ (No. 288). He is depicted in three-quarter profile to the right, dressed in a fur-edged red robe, with hands folded in prayer, before an open book on a cushion. The pilasters in the rich architectural setting terminate in two bears supporting the Chancellor’s coat of arms. This important picture was bought in 1835 for the sum of £36. It was then attributed to Michael Wohlgemuth!

Fouquet is known to have painted Charles VII. in 1444; but the _Portrait of Charles VII., King of France_ (No. 289), with the inscription along the top, “LE TRÈS GLORIEUX ROY DE FRANCE,” and below, “CHARLES SEPTIESME DE CE NOM,” cannot certainly be identified with the picture referred to in contemporary records. The Louvre picture was acquired in 1838 for £18.

The name of Jean Fouquet has for a long time been connected with the admirable little portrait known as _The Man with the Wineglass_ (No. 1000, formerly No. 1000A). It was shown as a work of Fouquet at the Exhibition of French Primitives; and the attribution is still maintained by many French critics, although in the official Catalogue the picture is given to an Unknown French painter of the fifteenth century known as “The Master of 1456” from a dated picture in the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna. The whole style of the painting would, however, point to German origin, the only thing French about the picture being the type of the personage represented. It is interesting to note that this portrait, which was bought from a Paris dealer in 1906 for £7600, was formerly in the collection of Count Wilczek in Vienna, and was bought by its former owner at Ulm. It is probably the work of a painter of the Swabian school.

NICOLAS FROMENT

Nicolas Froment, the painter of the diptych _King René and his Second Wife, Jeanne de Laval_ (No. 304A), is frequently mentioned by those who have constituted themselves champions of a supposed important Early French national school. The few pictures with which he may be credited include the _St. Siffrein_, now in the Seminary at Avignon, the _Raising of Lazarus_, now in the Kaufmann collection at Berlin, and the _Burning Bush_, which includes the Portraits of King René and Jeanne de Laval, as the Donors who ordered the picture for the Cathedral at Aix, where it still is. But the Louvre diptych is an inferior work. Nothing is known about the dates of his birth and death. He flourished between 1460 and 1480, and was employed by good King René, who was himself a painter of some distinction, if contemporary chroniclers are to be believed. Froment died at Avignon, where he appears to have worked some considerable time, allowing his art to absorb those distinctly Italian tendencies which distinguished the productions of the Avignon school ever since Simone Martini had early in the fourteenth century worked in the Provençal city of the Popes.

A very typical instance of this Avignon school, with its blending of Northern realism and the noble sense of style of the early Italians, is the _Pietà_ (No. 1001B). The group of the Virgin with the rigid body of Christ across her knees, St. John on the left and the Magdalen on the right, has a sculpturesque dignity and grandeur not to be found in the Northern art of that period. The Donor on the extreme left rather destroys the balance of the composition. The mourners and the landscape are silhouetted against a gold background. The picture was formerly in the Chartreuse of Villeneuve near Avignon, and was bought by the Société des Amis du Louvre for the great French national collection at the price of £4000. A well-known Spanish critic has claimed that this is one of the very rare works by the Spanish artist Bartolomé Bermejo.

Of the same school, but vastly inferior in conception and execution, is the much restored _Christ rising from the Tomb, with a Donor and St. Agricola_ (No. 1001C). There are in Gallery X. (Salle Jean Fouquet) a few more anonymous fifteenth-century paintings, which need not here be discussed as they are of no real significance.

THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH SCHOOL

The mere fact that many of the drawings and paintings which are now with good reason believed to be the work of Jean or Jehan Clouet (called Jehannet) passed, at a time when art criticism followed methods less scientific than those which prevail at present, under the name of Holbein, should suffice to indicate that Clouet’s art belongs essentially to the Renaissance, and that the Primitive or Gothic period had come to a close when he arrived in France from the Netherlands, where he was born about 1475. He apparently worked first at Tours, where his presence in 1516 is testified by documentary evidence; and he went to Paris before 1529. Although he was never naturalised, he became Groom of the Chamber to François I., and enjoyed an enormous reputation for his skill in portraiture. He died in 1540 or 1541.

JEAN CLOUET’S DRAWINGS

Not a single drawing or painting that has come down to us from this period, which was remarkable for its enormous production in Court portraiture, bears the signature of Jehan Clouet; but as a number of the best portrait drawings in the famous Chantilly collection—notably that of the _Preux de Marignan_—are obviously from the same hand, and extend, as can be proved from the age of the personages portrayed, from 1514 to 1540,—the very years when Jean Clouet is known to have worked in France,—it is quite reasonable to assume that artist to be the author of this group of drawings. Their superiority over all the other drawings of the period would account for the fame enjoyed by the elder Clouet among his contemporaries.