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Cornugaya Directory 06
Page 05
Here we meet with Wouverman (1619-1668), a
painter of horses, cavalry, battles, and riding parties placed in
landscape. His landscape is bright and his horses are spirited in
action. There is some mannerism apparent in his reiterated
concentration of light on a white horse, and some repetition in his
canvases, of which there are many; but on the whole he was an
interesting, if smooth and neat painter. Paul Potter (1625-1654)
hardly merited his great repute. He was a harsh, exact recorder of
facts, often tin-like or woodeny in his cattle, and not in any way
remarkable in his landscapes, least of all in their composition. The
Young Bull at the Hague is an ambitious piece of drawing, but is not
successful in color, light, or _ensemble_. It is a brittle work all
through, and not nearly so good as some smaller things in the National
Gallery London, and in the Louvre. Adrien van de Velde (1635?-1672)
was short-lived, like Potter, but managed to do a prodigious amount
of work, showing cattle and figures in landscape with much technical
ability and good feeling. He was particularly good in composition and
the subtle gradation of neutral tints. A little of the Italian
influence appeared in his work, and with the men who came with him and
after him the Italian imitation became very pronounced. Aelbert Cuyp
(1620-1691) was a many-sided painter, adopting at various times
different styles, but was enough of a genius to be himself always. He
is best known to us, perhaps, by his yellow sunlight effects along
rivers, with cattle in the foreground, though he painted still-life,
and even portraits and marines. In composing a group he was knowing,
recording natural effects with power; in light and atmosphere he was
one of the best of his time, and in texture and color refined, and
frequently brilliant. Both (1610-1650?), Berchem (1620-1683), Du
Jardin (1622?-1678), followed the Italian tradition of Claude Lorrain,
producing semi-classic landscapes, never very convincing in their
originality. Van der Heyden (1637-1712), should be mentioned as an
excellent, if minute, painter of architecture with remarkable
atmospheric effects.
Van Goyen (1596-1656) was one of the earliest of the
seventeenth-century landscapists. In subject he was fond of the Dutch
bays, harbors, rivers, and canals with shipping, windmills, and
houses. His sky line was generally given low, his water silvery, and
his sky misty and luminous with bursts of white light. In color he
was subdued, and in perspective quite cunning at times. Salomon van
Ruisdael (1600?-1670) was his follower, if not his pupil. He had the
same sobriety of color as his master, and was a mannered and prosaic
painter in details, such as leaves and tree-branches. In composition
he was good, but his art had only a slight basis upon reality, though
it looks to be realistic at first sight. He had a formula for doing
landscape which he varied only in a slight way, and this
conventionality ran through all his work. Molyn (1600?-1661) was a
painter who showed limited truth to nature in flat and hilly
landscapes, transparent skies, and warm coloring. His extant works are
few in number. Wynants (1615?-1679?) was more of a realist in natural
appearance than any of the others, a man who evidently studied
directly from nature in details of vegetation, plants, trees, roads,
grasses, and the like. Most of the figures and animals in his
landscapes were painted by other hands. He himself was a pure
landscape-painter, excelling in light and aerial perspective, but not
remarkable in color. Van der Neer (1603-1677) and Everdingen
(1621?-1675) were two other contemporary painters of merit.
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