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Cornugaya Directory 06
Page 07
The real inaugurators of Dutch
portraiture were Mierevelt, Hals, Ravesteyn, and De Keyser. Mierevelt
(1567-1641) was one of the earliest, a prolific painter, fond of the
aristocratic sitter, and indulging in a great deal of elegance in his
accessories of dress and the like. He had a slight, smooth brush, much
detail, and a profusion of color. Quite the reverse of him was Franz
Hals (1584?-1666), one of the most remarkable painters of portraits
with which history acquaints us. In giving the sense of life and
personal physical presence, he was unexcelled by any one. What he saw
he could portray with the most telling reality. In drawing and
modelling he was usually good; in coloring he was excellent, though in
his late work sombre; in brush-handling he was one of the great
masters. Strong, virile, yet easy and facile, he seemed to produce
without effort. His brush was very broad in its sweep, very sure, very
true. Occasionally in his late painting facility ran to the
ineffectual, but usually he was certainty itself. His best work was in
portraiture, and the most important of this is to be seen at Haarlem,
where he died after a rather careless life. As a painter, pure and
simple, he is almost to be ranked beside Velasquez; as a poet, a
thinker, a man of lofty imagination, his work gives us little
enlightenment except in so far as it shows a fine feeling for masses
of color and problems of light. Though excellent portrait-painters,
Ravesteyn (1572?-1657) and De Keyser (1596?-1679) do not provoke
enthusiasm. They were quiet, conservative, dignified, painting civic
guards and societies with a knowing brush and lively color, giving the
truth of physiognomy, but not with that verve of the artist so
conspicuous in Hals, nor with that unity of the group so essential in
the making of a picture.
At first Dutch art was influenced, even confounded, with that of
Flanders. The Van Eycks led the way, and painters like Bouts and
others, though Dutch by birth, became Flemish by adoption in their art
at least. When the Flemish painters fell to copying Italy some of the
Dutch followed them, but with no great enthusiasm. Suddenly, at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, when Holland had gained
political independence, Dutch art struck off by itself, became
original, became famous. It pictured native life with verve, skill,
keenness of insight, and fine pictorial view. Limited it was; it never
soared like Italian art, never became universal or world-embracing. It
was distinct, individual, national, something that spoke for Holland,
but little beyond it.
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