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GEMS 
 
 . ; OF 
 
 Modern Belgian Art. 
 
 A SERIES OF CARBON-PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 FROM THE PICTURES OF EMINENT LIVING ARTISTS. 
 
 WITH REMARKS ON THE WORKS SELECTED, 
 
 AND AN 
 
 Essay on the Schools of Belgium and Holland. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM B. SCOTT, 
 
 Author of “The Life of Albert Durer,” “ Half-Hour Lectures on Art/’ &c\, &c. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, 
 
 THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE. 
 
 1872. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY J. OGDEN AND CO., 
 
 172, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C. 
 
uo the ittnnorp of 
 
 DAVID SCOTT, 
 
 % 
 
 OF EDINBURGH , 
 
 Painter of Many Pictures, 
 
 Whose Great Powers in History and in Poetic Inventions 
 Must, Sooner or Later, p,e 
 Acknowledged by Critics and Writers on Art, 
 
 THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED 
 
 By his Brother, 
 
 THE WRITER. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 To face page 
 
 PORTAELS .... La Glycine Front. 
 
 Ernest Slingeneyer A Christian Martyr 37 
 
 * 
 
 Wappers .... Louis XVLL. in the Temple 39 
 
 Willems .... “ L was there /” 44 
 
 Dyckmans .... The Blind Beggar 46 
 
 Gallait The Grief of fohanna of Castile 48 
 
 Alfred Stevens. . Ash- Wednesday Morning 54 
 
 Hamman .... The Women of Siena, 1553 56 
 
 Verlat The First Snow 58 
 
 Wauters .... Mary of Burgundy before the Sheriffs of Ghent . 62 
 
 Leys The Book Stall 64 
 
 Van Leri us . . . Paul and Virginia 74 
 
 Lagye The Antiquarians 78 
 
 Israels The Shipwreck 80 
 
 Alma-Tadema . . The Education of the Children of Clovis . . . 85 
 
 Gustave de Jonghe Bo-Peep 92 
 
PREFA CE. 
 
 The present volume is intended to present illustrations of a 
 school of artists becoming very important of late years both in 
 England and elsewhere. Partly from the number of superior painters 
 who have lately appeared in Belgium, and partly from the produc- 
 tiveness of the School, it will be found that the field is ample and 
 varied enough to give the Editor some difficulty in selection. Besides, 
 in treating Belgium, we found it necessary to embrace the neighbour- 
 ing country, so closely allied in tradition and in early art-history, as 
 well as in modern times, by education and practice. It was necessary, 
 not so much on account of the number of distinguished artists now 
 practising in Amsterdam and The Hague, as to include two men who 
 have made themselves favourites in this country, and who are closely 
 associated with the Belgian School — we allude to Josef Israels and 
 L. Alma-Tadema, whose pictures now indeed appear on the walls of 
 our Exhibition rooms, and are welcomed like the works of our own 
 favourite English artists. 
 
 It has been difficult to procure the best representative examples 
 of some of our selected artists : colour making the photographer’s suc- 
 cess very uncertain, and the publication of prints being less practised 
 
 vii 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 in Brussels than in Paris or London. Of some popular artists, Alfred 
 Stevens for instance, scarcely any engravings have appeared. Some 
 of the pictures in the International Exhibition had to be applied for 
 by the publishers, and we have to acknowledge the courtesy of the 
 artists in allowing their subjects to be reproduced, particularly Emile 
 Wauters and Charles Verlat, men we should have regretted much to 
 have been unable to include. The writer has also to acknowledge 
 some friendly aid, by letter, from some of the artists themselves. 
 
 Bellevue House, Chelsea. 
 
 viii 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OE PAINTING. 
 
 i. 
 
 Last year the subject of a volume to which this may be 
 called a successor, was the living school of France. This 
 year we have selected the Art of Belgium and Holland, so 
 intimately related for a period of years to that ol the larger 
 country, having only lately, indeed, asserted independence. 
 
 In ancient times the painters of Bruges, of Brussels, of 
 Antwerp, influenced all the rest of Europe, north of the 
 Alps, whilst France was, like England, dependent on foreign 
 aid, which is rarely of much benefit in forming a national 
 school. Gradually, however, the old passed away, the French 
 advanced to the front, and the overpowering influence of the 
 First Great Revolution, succeeded by conquest, made the 
 Low Countries succumb for a time in art as in everything 
 else. The last fifty years have again changed all this, and 
 now during these twelve months past what events have 
 occurred ! With exultation and oratory, with singing of the 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 “ Marseillaise,” and beating of kettle-drums, the prodigious 
 army of the supposed invincible nation moved to the Rhine 
 with the avowed object of reducing the increasing power of a 
 rival, and taking possession of the great German river ; in 
 one campaign broken to pieces, beaten on a hundred fields, 
 surrendering hopelessly in vast masses ; the astonishing 
 drama ends with a civil convulsion, more violent than that of 
 ’93 ; the monument commemorating the victories of the 
 Empire overthrown, and the collected works of the artists of 
 France, past and present, in the Louvre and in the 
 Luxembourg narrowly escaping the flames ! 
 
 What effect this revolution in the position of Germany and 
 France will have on continental art, it is difficult yet to say. 
 Had France been the victor, we might more easily have 
 ventured the prophecy, that a few years would have seen 
 Belgium absorbed, and French military pictures predominant, 
 not only in Paris, but wherever the language or the influence of 
 France extended. To effect this, what years of unscrupulous 
 arrogance and violence should we have seen ! This country, 
 among others, would have been necessarily involved in the 
 struggle, and the country that has shown itself so lamentably 
 unconscious of the degradation of mendacity, would have 
 been little scrupulous, if its boasted invention of the mitrail- 
 leuse had given it the upper hand. It is true the principle of 
 nationality has of late years been acknowledged ^ as the rule 
 in political divisions of territory, but the fact of the spoken 
 language having changed over a considerable part of Belgium, 
 French having spread over the country, and superseded the 
 old tongue in the towns, has done little in modifying the 
 decided difference in type between the Fleming and the Gaul. 
 The German cannon has, however, decided the question for 
 
 10 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 some time to come ; Paris stands no longer where it did ; 
 Brussels, that rejoiced to be called Paris the second, is now 
 looking with wonder, not unmixed with contempt, on the 
 “ capital of civilization ; ” and the world has discovered not 
 only that Paris is not France, but that they are opposed to 
 each other, and that the moral and political resurrection of 
 la graiide nation must be effected independently of the 
 luxurious capital so accustomed to dictate. 
 
 This is a serious beginning to our introductory essay, but it 
 is impossible in resuming the pen for another volume of pic- 
 tures, examples of a different but allied school of painting, to 
 avoid adverting to the history of the year, and the changes 
 that have taken place, although these changes have not affected 
 our new field of illustration so much as they might have done. 
 Even while we write in this month of June what strange and 
 interesting news relating to art and artists the morning papers 
 bring us ! M. Courbet’s proposal, first made after Sedan and 
 then answered by a laugh, has been carried out. The imita- 
 tion in bronze of the column of Trajan has fallen to the 
 ground, and that Bohemian among artists and men of genius, 
 raised for the day by the Commune into a kind of Minister 
 of the Fine Arts, has fallen to rise no more. Not only has 
 Victor Hugo gone back to his beloved country, he has been 
 carried out of sight by the whirlpool of events ; and half of 
 the leading painters of France have taken his place as exiles, 
 and established themselves in London for the year and the 
 day. An event, too, which has taken place at home deserves 
 to be mentioned. The first of an annual series of exhibitions 
 called International has been opened, which may be expected 
 to make us not only familiar with the continental art of the 
 day, but to make London still more important in art matters, 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 and also to place the English artist in the immediate presence 
 of his continental rivals and brothers in arms. In the long 
 gallery on the eastern side of the Exhibition we see the 
 pictures of all the countries of Europe, Belgium taking the 
 lead with examples of nearly all its foremost men, excepting 
 Gallait and Verbockhoven, who are indeed here as elsewhere 
 rather giving place to a more direct study and better interpre- 
 tation of nature. Except these men, and the greater Leys, 
 who has left the scene of his triumph at too early an age, and 
 Alma Tadema and Jacob Israels, whose works are to be seen 
 in the English gallery on the other side of the building, we 
 have thus had brought to us a collection of Belgian art such 
 as seldom takes place in its native country, where the exhibi- 
 tions are numerous, and pictures emigrate for Academic 
 Exhibitions from place to place, from Brussels to Antwerp, 
 Ghent, or Bruges. 
 
 II. 
 
 The names of all these interesting cities show us how 
 rich that level country is in ancient centres of commerce and 
 civilization. Brussels, which is now the capital, has been so 
 only of late years, nor is it so attractive to the visitor as the 
 other places mentioned, which are all within so short a railway 
 journey, the tourist passes them one after another too quickly 
 in his hurried way. But there is no similar area in the world 
 possessed of so much historic and artistic interest, not even in 
 Italy or in Franconia, where the cluster of cities, Nuremberg, 
 Ulm, and Augsburg, are so near together. The writer had 
 the good luck to visit Bruges during the festival of an inau- 
 
 I 2 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 guration of a statue to Simon Stevin, an illustrious Brugeois 
 of the middle of the sixteenth century, an arithmetician who 
 introduced decimal calculation, in some way or other. The 
 narrow streets with their high houses enriched all over with 
 carved stone and wood, gables, and dormers, were decorated 
 by innumerable fir-trees, planted for the day along the foot- 
 ways and festooned from one to another with green wreaths 
 and ribbons. All the public edifices were streaming with 
 bright colours, and in the Place was a military game, nothing 
 else than the ancient quintain, played by cuirassiers splendidly 
 mounted, a game disused in this country, and possibly in 
 every other part of the world centuries ago. A barrier was 
 erected keeping the crowd excluded to a narrow space all 
 round, and within the barrier were erected at intervals a series 
 of posts, each supporting a Saracen’s head splendidly coloured 
 and wigged. These were made of pasteboard, vulnerable by 
 the thrust of a cavalry sword, and the difficult feat was to 
 carry off on the point of the weapon one of these heads in 
 galloping rapidly past. Rider after rider tried it and failed, 
 but now and again one of them succeeded, and was greeted 
 with shouts of applause by the thousands of wildly excited 
 country people gathered round. The bells were ringing, 
 bands of brass instruments playing, and I remember the sea 
 of faces raging round the lists. The women peculiarly 
 dressed, and the men showing a majority of red or of lint- 
 coloured beards, was like the middle aees returning- in a 
 nightmare. The amount of excitement seemed altogether 
 disproportioned to the occasion, and there was a sudden 
 and wilful violence of action indulged in that struck me with 
 amazement. 
 
 Round the barriers, at the angles and central points, more- 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 over, were pedestals on which colossal figures, cut out of deal 
 and painted in brown, were temporarily placed ; all the great 
 Brugeois of the old time. The largest of these was a group 
 of the Van Eycks, Hubert, John, and Margaret, in which 
 the centre figure, the old Hubert, was represented looking 
 upwards, thanking Heaven for the invention of oil-painting, 
 and the younger brother and sister clung to him admiringly. 
 There were also Hans Memlinck, Peter Porbus, and others, 
 a line to be proud of, besides poets, jurisconsults, and war- 
 riors. The influence of old ideas seemed still to prevail when 
 the visitor went from this spectacle to the Academy, a great 
 old building in the pointed style, with a tower or belfry, it 
 then was, where the students’ works were open to the public, 
 and into the local Exposition of works of living artists in 
 the Hotel de Ville, a collection made for the occasion, of the 
 most miscellaneous description. That season there were 
 many imitations of the early men, whose traditions domi- 
 nated the school, and pictures of Christian mythology, as we 
 may be allowed to call those large canvases from the lives 
 of Saints. And again in the churches, as to the art 
 it changes year by year, and we are now speaking of 1846, 
 but the churches remain the same ; nothing less than a 
 revolution, such as the Commune in Paris has just failed in, 
 will change them, and the visitor in Belgium cannot fail 
 to be struck by the childish incentives to piety to be seen 
 there. The large wooden crucifixes, painted, the hair black, 
 the blood red; the wooden souls in purgatory, also painted 
 a flesh colour, with brown eyeballs, crying out of wooden 
 flames of a light vermilion, little madonnas with waxen faces 
 dressed in cloth-of-gold petticoats of gilt paper, with bunches 
 of small models in wax, votive offerings, of parts of the 
 
 14 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 body cured by praying to the particular image whose shrine 
 they adorn, haunt one with a humiliating thought that there 
 is no progress in the world, that science has done nothing, 
 and that the schoolmaster has yet to be born ! Then the 
 Triptic by Memlinck, in the Hospital of St. John, and his 
 chasse of St. Ursula, as also the fine work by Van Eyck in 
 the Academy, how curious they are in the piety of their 
 details ! In these we find an unconscious Shakspearean power 
 of a very deep and manly kind, although associated with a 
 childish particularity in small matters; the hair on the knees of 
 Memlinck’s St. John are as carefully elaborated as the expres- 
 sion of his face. It must have been a hard, but a good life 
 they lived within the sound of the carillon , painting saints and 
 angels incapable of a smile ; and after their work was done, 
 doubtless they'went to rest in peace with heaven and earth. I 
 remember passing through the hospital, which was seemingly 
 deserted, and finding myself in a chapel filled with the sound 
 of voices chanting the summer vespers, but wherein was no 
 living creature visible. The swelling and falling unison of 
 many voices was wonderfully touching in that place, lonely 
 as the grave ; the altar was there without any living minis- 
 trant, and on the tiled floor there was not even a chair for the 
 strayed visitor to rest himself. At last I solved the mystery, 
 the singing sisters were in a gallery screened by curtains, only 
 the tops of their hoods were here and there visible. The sun 
 was going down without, and in the Place the roar of the 
 crowd of people went on, but too far off to trouble these sis- 
 ters ; by this time the most of them no doubt are sleeping 
 very sound under the sward behind the chapel, so very green 
 and so flat. 
 
 Ghent is now a finer town and more important than 
 
 is 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 Bruges, and here is the very famous “ Adoration of the 
 Lamb,” worthy of all that has been said of it. All that re- 
 mains here now of this masterpiece of the Van Eycks in the 
 Cathedral is the great centre picture; when Albert Diirer saw 
 it, it had eight wings, six of which are now in Berlin, and the 
 other two, having painted on them Adam and Eve, much 
 admired by the Nuremberg master, have lately been placed 
 in the gallery at Brussels. In Ghent besides there is much to 
 be seen in painting by many other early men ; pains-taking 
 labours on small panels, elaborating authoritative religious 
 ideas, celebrating abnegation and the putting down of ambitious 
 and vain desires and passions. All the heads painted are heads 
 of iron, full of thought and endurance ; inflexible, stern, and 
 just, according to the law of the Church. Cold and blue is the 
 atmosphere of their heaven, exactly the same as that of this 
 world, for their heaven was neither an ideal, a symbolic, nor a 
 dream world. But when a little study has admitted us into 
 the thoughts of these painters, we cannot help loving them, 
 although the love is mixed with pity that makes us always 
 sad. Doubtless they were to be loved when nearly all other 
 men were to be feared ; and with them existed the purity and 
 singleness of aim that knows no doubt, and troubles itself not 
 with reason ; their art was not the adornment of life, but the 
 tangible and visible representation of the mystical life of the 
 soul, carrying forward this condition of things into the next. 
 Then as to the style through which these early works de- 
 veloped their sentiment. The novelty and difficulty of the 
 art too much absorbed and hampered the artist. For him 
 there seemed but one way, direct imitation, down to the 
 microscopic details of construction ; for was he not honest ? 
 And now to us in these days, after two centuries of descend- 
 
 16 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 ing Italian art and classic revivals, two centuries of descent 
 too from Rubens and Rembrandt, the unapproachable pre- 
 cision in elaborating the hems of glorified garments has a 
 new and profounder meaning : it almost persuades us of the 
 personality and reality of the ideal wearers : the faith of the 
 painter begets faith in the spectator. 
 
 Nothing, however, could be further than this from the in- 
 tention of the painters, nothing further from the understanding 
 of the age. /Esthetics did not then critically exist ; the sub- 
 tilties of the day were scholastic. To*suppose such a covert 
 motive as an endeavour to give solidity to ideal characters 
 requires an underlying condition of doubt, with a free and con- 
 scious treatment of all the parts, so as to evolve distinctions. 
 The nai'vetd of Van Eyck was the naivetd of a child, in which 
 unconsciousness is everything. We see in these pictures, as 
 in the architecture of the Belfroi and of St. Nicholas, an 
 inevitable character of the age and from the ages gone before; 
 serfdom and walled free-towns, sumptuary laws and dietary 
 laws : we breathe more freely now, we believe and obey less, 
 we suffer and enjoy more. Let us observe also that then, 
 as now, the ends of art were lost sight of in the means, and 
 the unimportant mistaken for the principal. 
 
 III. 
 
 Antwerp and Brussels, and the art characteristic of 
 them, are very different from these two older cities and their 
 belongings. After the close of the last campaign of Napoleon, 
 when the “ balance of power” was supposed to be readjusted, 
 East and West Flanders, Brabant, and the other provinces to 
 
 1 7 
 
 c 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF FAINTING. 
 
 the north of France, were presented to Holland, in order that 
 that kingdom might be strong, and so they remained for 
 some fifteen years, when the vexatious arrangement led to 
 their present independence. A reminiscence of this struggle 
 of separation, which indeed renewed the influence of France 
 in the Low Countries, suggests itself to my memory. A 
 number of years after, the bones of the men who fell at the 
 taking of the citadel of Antwerp, Dutchmen or Frenchmen, as 
 they might be, became an article of commerce, and a certain 
 shop near the British Museum, an emporium convenient for 
 the young surgeons of Gower Street, received sundry con- 
 signments of these utilized remains of heroes ! This may 
 have been a purely English speculation, not indicating much 
 respect for the fallen ; but from that time till now, French 
 influence has largely prevailed at Brussels, and the principal 
 artists have been much under the authority of Paris, the 
 Director Van Bree, Paelinc, and others, having been pupils 
 of David, till the independence and strong Flemish vitality 
 of Henri Leys created an altogether new school, in close 
 sympathy with the traditions of the early painting of 
 Flanders. 
 
 In Antwerp, Henri Leys’ native place, this early school is, 
 however, not much seen. On the contrary, everything is 
 Rubens. In the Academy, in the Cathedral, in the church of 
 the Augustins, his great works are to be seen ; his house and 
 his statue are important to the laquais de place, and what 
 is not his in the way of art belongs to his pupils, parti- 
 cularly to Van Dyck, who was very nearly as prolific as his 
 master. 
 
 It is not possible to find any two schemes of painting more 
 thoroughly different than are Van Eyck’s and Peter Paul 
 
 1 8 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 Rubens’, who seems to despise and protest against everything 
 but luxury, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life. We 
 might say that Rubens was not merely emancipated from 
 monkish belongings, but was a licentious and arrogant 
 cavalier, riding heedlessly over traditionary respectabilities ; 
 we can imagine him treating an apostle as he would a beggar, 
 twisting his moustache while contemplating the venerable 
 face, trying heavy garments, crimson or blue, upon him, till 
 he suited the composition of colour without consulting the 
 proprieties; he was one who would ’make his bow to the 
 Blessed Virgin, and compliment her by saying he was going 
 to represent her by Elizabeth Brandt or Helene Formann ; a 
 man without scruples as without affectations, steadied by all 
 sorts of popular talents and riches. Rubens is indeed a re- 
 presentative man, the true artist, full of energy and ability, 
 strong in body as in will, valuing life for its enjoyment, 
 ambition for its rewards, always successful and yet above 
 success, feeling, thinking, and acting an outward, merely 
 sensuous, and rapid life ; yet high-minded, honourable, and 
 generous, essentially and always manly. What though he 
 had no ideals ? His nature includes them, but ignores them 
 objectively. What though the purity of religion, the sense 
 of sanctity about anything, the notion of the true or the 
 absolute anywhere, either in philosophy or mystery, never 
 occurred to him ? They were not required in his day or 
 sphere. What has a painter to do with them ? “He was 
 perhaps the greatest master, the best workman with his tools, 
 that ever exercised a pencil,” says Reynolds ; “ his animals, 
 particularly his lions and horses, are so admirable that it may 
 be said they never were properly represented but by him. 
 His portraits rank with the best works of those painters who 
 
 19 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 have made that branch of art the sole business of their lives. 
 The same may be said of his landscapes.” Any art or 
 manual exercise practised with perfect mastery is a joy-giving 
 spectacle, and these great pictures at the Cathedral and at the 
 Augustins give the impression of a noble kind of play, as 
 if Rubens was more than man. And he was the same in 
 every walk of life ; accumulated immense wealth, had two 
 wives and seven sons, was twice knighted in one year, and 
 was the confidential agent between kings. 
 
 Just at this time, that is to say when Rubens was advanc- 
 ing in years at his great house in Antwerp, where he died 
 in 1640, a younger man, of a rougher sort but of magical 
 powers, was established at Amsterdam, and destined to have 
 even a larger influence on the world, Rembrandt, the son of 
 Hermann Van Ryn. Up to this time Holland had not 
 been greatly productive of good painters, but just then, 
 besides Rembrandt, came Terburg, Cuyp, Metsu, and others 
 together, having been born within a few years of each other, 
 and suddenly Amsterdam and Haarlem became celebrated 
 all over Europe, not only for tulips, rich merchants, and 
 mighty captains of ships of war, but for genre pictures such 
 as never had been seen in the world before, valuable as 
 gold, and as good on ’change as a banker’s bond. 
 
 I have often thought that Rembrandt owed the idea on 
 which he built his pictures, the cavernous chiaroscuro, show- 
 ing gleams of light in a wilderness of shadow, to a painter 
 comparatively little esteemed — to Adam Elsheimer, born at 
 Frankfort more than thirty years earlier, who died indeed 
 shortly after the date of Rembrandt’s birth, at Rome. The 
 engravings by his friend Count Goudt, from Elsheimer’s 
 pictures, particularly the “Flight into Egypt,” “Jupiter and 
 
 20 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 Hermes in the Peasant’s Cottage,” and “ Ceres Drinking,” 1 
 must have been well known in Holland, and there can be no 
 doubt whatever 'showed the basis of the school of intense 
 chiaroscuro that the genius of Rembrandt, with his full brush 
 and splendid colour, appropriated and identified with his own 
 name. Elsheimer was a painstaking, minutely finishing 
 painter, scrupulous to the last degree, all which is visible in 
 his pictures as well as in the engravings from them. Rem- 
 brandt had energy for twenty, and, besides painting hundreds 
 of pictures large and small, found time to finish highly those 
 charming etchings which attained even in his lifetime endless 
 praise and profit. Besides he had many disciples, who paid 
 him each a hundred florins by the year ; and we are told by 
 Sandrart, who ought to have known, that he gave their 
 works a few touches and sold them as his own, realizing an 
 income altogether of two thousand five hundred florins, a 
 fact to make him respected even in a community of mer- 
 chants. 
 
 All these particulars of Rembrandt’s history, however, that 
 formerly passed from one biographical writer to another, 
 have of late been carefully investigated, and altogether 
 changed, as the traditional histories of so many Italian paint- 
 ers have been of late years. As Rubens has his statue at 
 Antwerp, so at Amsterdam in 1852, Rembrandt was similarly 
 
 1 These engravings were very remarkable for their own excellences, and 
 were executed by Goudt, Count Palatine, from 1608 to 1613. Rembrandt 
 having been born in 1608, they would come before him when a boy. They 
 were entirely cut by the burin, not etched, but in some characteristics and 
 parts, the face of the witch in “Ceres Drinking,” for example, show character- 
 istics similar to those of Rembrandt’s etchings. 
 
 2 1 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 honoured, and at that time Dr. P. Scheltema, and afterwards 
 his French editor, Burger, made a thorough study of the life 
 of the hero, and discovered so many documents still remain- 
 ing, that henceforth we must discard all the imputations of 
 Bohemianism, avarice, and the rest of the accusations that 
 have furnished too many anecdotes. The reputed year of 
 his birth, as well as that of his death, was found to be wrong ; 
 nor was he born in the Mill near the Rhine, to the dark 
 chambers and uncertain light in which theoretical critics have 
 attributed his chiaroscuro ! He was born in the town of 
 Leyden, in the Weddesteeg near the Wittepoort (in the small 
 street of the Watering-place near the White Gate), and if the 
 reader would like to hear the maiden name or designation of 
 his mother, it can now be given : it was Neeltje Willersdochter 
 van Zuidbroek. It appears also that he married a lady of 
 distinction and wealth, Saskia Uilenburg, who died a few 
 years after ; and that he was an insolvent debtor in 1656, the 
 inventory of his effects made over to his creditors being still 
 in existence, showing that his home had two ateliers, with a 
 vestibule, a cabinet of curiosities, with an ante-chamber, a 
 cabinet of works of art, adorned with statues of Roman 
 Emperors, pictures without end, and an immense collection 
 of engravings. 
 
 The comparative privacy of the life of Rembrandt, after 
 these difficulties, was a perplexity to biographers and critical 
 inquirers, and gave cause for the accusations of intemperance 
 and vulgar society we have heard reported. But all this was idle 
 and reported in ignorance, like the asserted penuriousness of his 
 more prosperous time. The cause of this failure of his affairs 
 still remains a mystery, but most probably he had speculated, 
 as every one with command of money did in Holland, and it 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 is certain the trade of the country was just at that time utterly 
 ruined by the war that swept the sea of merchant ships and 
 exhausted the exchequer. As to the vulgar company — his 
 friends and associates were the Burgomaster Six, the professor 
 Nicolas Tulp, and the poet Decker, who wrote a sonnet in 
 his honour : all these seem to have sought his intercourse 
 and to have valued his friendship. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The infinite detail of minute parts, such as embroideries, 
 pearl ornaments, and jewelry, that we find in the “ Adoration 
 of the Lamb,” or in Memlinck’s “Wise Men’s Offering” some 
 of my readers may remember at the great Manchester Exhibi- 
 tion, was continued through succeeding generations ; and the 
 Dutch perfection of finish, when a more thorough science 
 and a completer mastery of the art of painting had supervened, 
 and a changed state of public feeling had transferred painting 
 from the Church to the mansion, and from the calendar of 
 saints to domestic life — this finish, equally with the breadth of 
 hand, size of field, and power of impasto we find in Rubens, 
 was rendered more practicable by the medium said to have 
 been discovered by the Van Eycks. It is true very fine and 
 delicate work was accomplished in tempera, but scarcely so 
 fine, and certainly not so strong in colour and effect as the oil 
 medium can accomplish, nor could the distinctive excellences 
 of the art of either Antwerp or Amsterdam have ever 
 possibly existed but for the change effected by the Van 
 Eycks. It is this that distinguishes the early Flemish paint- 
 
 23 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 ing in the history of the world, and if the reader has no 
 objection we will go back again to the dear old worm-eaten 
 half-timber houses of Bruges, the art-capital in these parts 
 during the later middle ages. 
 
 Whether the travellers and historians of these early times, 
 in love with the municipal spirit and its self-government, 
 commerce, and spread of refinements, exaggerated the im- 
 portance of the most advanced cities, it would require much 
 investigation to decide ; but the accounts we have of their im- 
 portance — the importance in size and wealth, for example, of 
 Ghent and Bruges — is very startling. There is no doubt that 
 towards the end of the fourteenth century— the time with 
 which we are concerned — the inhabitants of the limited 
 territory properly called Flanders and Brabant were the 
 richest in the world. It seems doubtful whether the most 
 favoured parts of Italy even could compare in material 
 advantages with these provinces, although an older civiliza- 
 tion and a classic tradition gave a higher endowment in 
 letters and arts. The incorporated trades had rights that 
 made their members, as a class, independent of outside 
 authority : the bellfrois that rose in each town in the thirteenth 
 century were the emblems of freedom ; at the ringing of 
 those bells the burghers assembled in the market-place, and 
 formed at once an army of defence such as no Count or King 
 could meet at so short a notice — frequently twenty-five 
 thousand armed men assembling in a few minutes. There 
 were in Bruges sixteen “ counters,” hotels or exchanges, 
 Castilian, Florentine, Genoese, and so on, and every one of 
 these vied with each other in the importance of their trade. 
 Among the Guilds there was the guild of St. Luke, the 
 painters’ guild, earliest at Ghent, later in the surrounding 
 
 24 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 towns, and these painters’ guilds were considered the most 
 respectable of all, and obtained superior rights even to the 
 architects in Brussels . 1 When the Hanse was established 
 Bruges became its chief place in Flanders, and for centuries 
 before it must have been a place of extraordinary splendour, 
 astonishing even to a queen of France, accustomed to the 
 luxury of Paris such as it then was. The state and belong- 
 ings of the ladies of the city so astonished the queen of 
 Philippe-le-Bel at the ceremony of his installation as Count, 
 that she is reported to have said, “ I had foolishly believed 
 that I would be the only queen in these parts, but there were 
 more than six hundred of us at Bruges!” Indeed, a traveller a 
 little later than Philippe-le-Bel, whose estimates of the places 
 he visited in those obscure times has been so often quoted by 
 writers of history, places it among the three fairest cities in 
 the world . 2 
 
 This speech of the worthy queen of France in a pet, and 
 this preposterous estimate of the Italian traveller, show us 
 what the theatre was like in which sprang up the early Flemish 
 art. No other could have been so favourable. It was a 
 time not so much of church building as of church decorating, 
 by gifts of rich things, and votive pictures, and of the building 
 
 1 I quote this statement from Crowe and Cavalcaselle. I should have 
 thought the goldsmiths were the most important body. Of course the 
 question is one for investigation, which I have not time for here, but such a 
 document as Diirer’s Journal in the Low Countries would go far to show the 
 gold and silversmiths to be of leading importance. In the boyhood of 
 Hubert the goldsmiths alone were so numerous in Bruges that they marched 
 to battle under their own banner. 
 
 2 Eneas Sylvius. We take this declaration of his on trust, from Alfred 
 Michaels’ “ Les Peintres Brugeois.” Bruxelles, 1846. 
 
 25 
 
 D 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 of precious jewels of houses, small indeed, but carved like 
 caskets, and filled with luxury — things from Damascus and 
 Alexandria, and through these places from the farther East. 
 Still the art of painting had as yet done little, and was, as 
 usual, a century behind those of architecture and sculpture, 
 when Hubert was born in 1366, and John followed after a 
 long interval of twenty years ; their sister Margaret having 
 come most probably between them, and another brother, also 
 a painter, who died young and left no name. This sister, 
 Margaret, who so pleasantly completes the family group, is 
 one of the few ladies who have left their mark in painting. 
 She is said to have been a nobly enthusiastic and loving 
 woman, who dedicated her virginal heart, not to the cloistered 
 routine of a sisterhood, as so many fine natures then did, but 
 to beauty, and to the art followed by her brothers. All the 
 three seem to have lived together tranquilly and faithfully ; 
 their home was a cloister to them, and they never left it 
 while Hubert lived, and before visitors from afar came to see 
 and to learn something of the new method, so splendid and 
 so safe. In the heads painted by John we recognize the 
 portrait of his elder brother Hubert, it is said, the parent and 
 guide who brought him up and taught him his art. 
 
 The appearance of their home, and the peaceful life they 
 led in it, has been very prettily imagined by Alfred Michiels 
 in his “ Histoire de la Peinture Flamande et Idollandaise.” 
 One may reasonably amuse oneself, he says, by trying to 
 re-create the interior of the apartments where they lived. In 
 seekinor to do this, to find out the form of the house and its 
 furniture, we must consider the interiors most frequently 
 painted by them, and this will almost infallibly tell us what 
 kind of objects habitually surrounded them. We always see 
 
 26 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 in the rooms and in the furniture so faithfully portrayed by 
 their brush, a propriety, a coquetry, a poetic elegance, that 
 reveal the cares of a woman, and are due to the household 
 presence of Margaret. We find the picturesque bedroom, 
 with its bed smoothly draped, standing on a pompous dais, 
 and hung with brilliant curtains, one of them at least looped 
 up into itself and suspended like a balloon, small varnished 
 beams crossing the ceiling like a fan, the floor parquetted in 
 squares, the windows composed of numerous little panes 
 fixed round by leads, and furnished* with shutters folding 
 together, shining with nails. A fauteuil of carved wood is 
 placed near the pillow, and a prie-Dieu in the same taste orna- 
 ments the end of the room. A little fountain of brass, 
 shining like gold, throws out its threads of water into a 
 basin ; and flowers blossom in a jardiniere, which is no other 
 than a Flemish pot. All breathes an atmosphere of ease, 
 good order, and well-to-do. 
 
 The master of Hubert is unknown. At that time Cologne 
 was the centre of art in these regions, and Wilhelm was 
 painting there in 1370-80, and his disciple Stephan in 1410 
 produced the “ Adoration of the Magi,” a picture of remark- 
 able accomplishment. Maes-Eyck, the native place of Hubert, 
 is not far distant from Cologne, and it may be presumed 
 Hubert came to Bruges from the atelier of Master William at 
 Cologne. The method of his early pictures is no doubt that 
 of Cologne, which, however, was the ordinary tempera 
 painting. The colours were ground in water, and mixed 
 with cherry-tree or pear-tree gum (were we writing of Italy 
 we should say white of egg or the juice of the vine), 
 requiring time and the sun to dry the finished surface, and 
 also necessitating delay in the repetition of the touch ; so that, 
 
 27 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 as a rule, glazing, repainting, or producing what is technically 
 called depth , by repeated applications, was scarcely thought of. 
 It was not to acquire this power, however, that John set 
 himself, with his supposed chemical knowledge, making 
 experiments with boiled oils and varnishes, though that 
 incalculably greater advantage followed ; it was simply to 
 emancipate himself from the irksomeness of the slow drying 
 vehicle, and immediately in consequence of a large panel 
 having cracked by the heat of the sun when exposed to 
 facilitate its drying. Thus it is that the pictures done after 
 the invention are little different from those done before it, 
 the main difference, and one appreciated at once at the time, 
 being the greater intensity of the colours owing to the 
 polished surface of a medium of oil, whether nut or linseed oil, 
 over one of water and gum. 
 
 o> 
 
 The great majority of old tempera pictures have some 
 time or other been covered with varnish, so that their surfaces 
 now shine exactly in the same way as those of oil pictures, and 
 they have the great advantage of not having darkened at all 
 after four centuries and a half. This varnish makes it difficult 
 to estimate the difference that was at once acknowledged as 
 to the superior intensity of oils. And as no contemporary 
 account of the invention was written, nor any notice of it put 
 on record for about a century, it has become a question after 
 all in what the change exactly consisted ! What Vasari says 
 is that John of Bruges effected what the world had tried to 
 find out ; and as it is certain that from that time grinding the 
 pigments in oil, and applying them by means of oils, tur- 
 pentine, and varnish, all or either of these, supplanted the 
 previous method of grinding the colours in water and apply- 
 ing them with vine-juice, white of egg, wine, or gum dissolved 
 
 28 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 by itself in water, or in connection with any of these, we 
 presume that what Van Eyck was the first to do was to 
 prepare the colours in oil. 
 
 What Faust and Guttenberg did was not to discover print- 
 ing, but to invent moveable types : what Van Eyck did was 
 not to begin oil-painting, as it is certain oil-paint was com- 
 monly used before, and that both oil and varnish were 
 applied to tempera surfaces, but to prepare the colours in oil. 
 This, it seems to me, is the right description of the invention 
 of the Van Eycks, which has never been shortly and distinctly 
 given before. 
 
 Nor is it by any means certain that John was the dis- 
 coverer of the new method, whatever it was. The date 
 assigned to the discovery is too early for the younger brother, 
 and most probably Hubert was the man, he who painted the 
 larger part of the great picture of the “ Adoration of the 
 Lamb,” John having been employed by Iodocus Vydts on the 
 death of Hubert to finish his brother’s work. Hubert was 
 buried with honour in the family chapel of the Vydts, in the 
 Cathedral church of St. Bavon, where the picture was to be 
 placed ; and the strange, anomalous fact of his right arm 
 having been severed from his body, and preserved until the 
 sixteenth century in a casket or reliquary in the Cathedral, 
 points to the fact of the belief in something wonderful having 
 been done by him with that good right hand ! The epitaph 
 of Hubert carved on a shield, supported by a marble 
 skeleton, shows also the great regard in which he was held. 
 A free translation of this old Flemish composition I have 
 made in the shape of an irregular Sonnet. It has been 
 published before, but, as few may have the volume of poems 
 in which it appeared, we may insert it here. 
 
 29 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 Whoe’er thou art who walkest overhead, 
 
 Behold thyself in stone : for I yestreen, 
 
 Was seemly and alert like thee : now dead, 
 
 Nailed up and earthed, and for the last time green ; 
 The first spring greenness and the last decay 
 Are hidden here for ever from the day. 
 
 I, Hubert Van Eyck, whom all Bruges’ folks hailed 
 Worthy of lauds, am now with worms engrailed. 
 
 My soul, with many pangs by God constrained, 
 
 Fled in September when the corn is wained, 
 
 Just fourteen hundred years and twenty-six 
 Since Lord Christ did invent the crucifix. 
 
 Lovers of Art, pray for me that I gain 
 
 God’s grace, nor find I’ve painted, lived, in vain. 
 
 At all events, whether Hubert or John effected the great 
 change in the method of painting, the quiet life of the family 
 under Hubert disappeared after his death, when the rumour 
 was followed by certainty, and all Europe knew that the far- 
 off atelier in the rich Flemish city had inaugurated a change 
 that was to revolutionize the art of the world. John became 
 Gentleman of the Chamber to Philip the Good, Duke of 
 Burgundy, and was sent to Lisbon by him. Repeatedly 
 indeed he had missions of importance, not always apparently 
 professional, confided to him, and when Philip solicited the 
 hand of the fair Isabel, John was sent to paint her portrait, 
 which he did “ Bien et Vif,” returning after three months 
 spent in Portugal in the suite of the lady. It is on record 
 that he received for this and for other confidential services, 
 “ certains voyaiges secrez,” the considerable sum of a hundred 
 and fifty livres. At last the studious household life was 
 entirely broken up. John married, probably a lady of Isabel’s 
 Court, for Duke Philip appears as sponsor for his child, a 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 daughter, and presents on the occasion no fewer than six 
 cups of silver. Nevertheless John, like Hubert, appears to 
 have lived a noble, genuine, unaffected life, and his pictures 
 still show on more than one the modest motto, “ As I can.” 
 Johannem de Eyk , Bruges, A Is Ikh Kan. 
 
 Of the successors of these first masters it is not necessary 
 to speak. We have indeed dwelt on the great epoch and 
 historic achievement of the Van Eycks, because it is, in fact, 
 the first indelible mark made by the Low Countries in the 
 Art-history of the world. This greatest event, the invention 
 of oil-colour-painting, was the work of the early years of the 
 fifteenth century, about 1420-40. The second great event 
 was the wonderfully profligate splendour of Rubens, and the 
 even more influential chiaroscuro of Rembrandt. After this 
 double apparition the Art of Painting could be no other than 
 an imitative art, an art whose peculiar business it is to fix the 
 aspects of things, however transient ; a realistic art, dealing 
 with the material universe ; and in effect, from that period, all 
 the modern varieties and classes of painting date : landscape 
 painting, and sea-pieces ; animal painting, and still life ; all 
 these became possible, and we can no more have theology, 
 mythology, or even poetry, on canvas, as in the ages past. 
 The third great event in the Low Countries, if there has 
 been a third development of sufficient importance to be 
 classed with these first historic moments, is only a revival, 
 that of Henri Leys. An event, rather asserting our nine- 
 teenth-century poverty, and, like the Pope proclaiming his 
 own infallibility, an assertion of the superiority of the middle 
 ages, to be possibly annulled by the genius of the future, than 
 an advance in art or an addition to the inheritance of the 
 world. 
 
 3i 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 V. 
 
 Such being the antecedents of painting in the Low Coun- 
 tries and in Holland, and so rich and varied the traditions 
 and past history of art in Flanders, we must expect to find 
 a school of painting at the present day, when the country 
 has been for many years full of commercial enterprise and 
 independent of foreign authority, with a capital and a govern- 
 ment of its own, of great vitality and importance, occupying a 
 large share of public attention. And so it is : there is no State 
 or geographical division of Europe in which so much artistic 
 activity exists. In all the great towns there are Academies, 
 with picture galleries full of genuine works of the early time 
 and of the epoch of Rubens, varied by those of Italian masters ; 
 and the collections at Antwerp and the Hague are among 
 the finest in the world. In all these Academies are schools, 
 with professors subsidized by the State, and a crowd of students. 
 The students, indeed, are more numerous (and consequently 
 of course the professional artists, the students of a few years 
 ago) than the limited community warrants, and so we find 
 that there is an export of pictures from Belgium of con- 
 siderable importance. To make this possible, a high average 
 of professional education and executive ability must exist, 
 and this is the great distinction of the school. In no other 
 country, taken as a whole, do we find the same careful, 
 able, and unaffected level excellence. At the same time this 
 equality of educational attainment, it must be admitted, has 
 
 32 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 little value for its own sake, nor does it allow the full ex- 
 pression of individual genius, or at least the characteristic 
 variety of expression that appears in our exhibitions, nor 
 the self-assertion and egotistic search for novelty we find 
 in the Salon of Paris. In Belgium, as in Holland, although 
 the one is the stronghold of a very antiquated party in the 
 Roman Church, and the other as decidedly evangelical as 
 Scotland itself, the clerical influence is absolutely nil ; and 
 here pictures from every-day life, or illustrating history or 
 books, with about the same proportion of landscapes as in 
 London, are annually produced, but few altar-pieces or works 
 done expressly for pietistic purposes. And as Vasari says 
 of the time of John Van Eyck, “certain merchants trading in 
 Flanders sent a picture painted in oil to the King of Naples, 
 Alfonso I., by whom the work was greatly admired, and 
 every painter hastened to see it,” from that time to this 
 pictures have been exported from the productive ateliers of 
 Belgium and Holland all over the world. 
 
 And not only pictures, but the painters themselves. 
 From the days of our Henry the Eighth, when Master 
 Gerhard Horebout, and his daughter Susanna, to whom 
 Albert Dtirer gave a florin for illuminating one of his small 
 prints when at Antwerp, came to London and were made 
 the court painters, our portraiture artists have been Flemings. 
 Nor only portrait painters, although those were the most 
 important, since Rubens himself and Vandyck found them- 
 selves in London, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Godfrey Kneller, 
 Verelst, and a hundred others made England useful, while 
 there were plenty of artists left in every town of their native 
 country, from Namur to Haarlem. 
 
 Of all these painters it is not necessary in this short 
 
 33 
 
 E 
 
BELGIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING. 
 
 sketch to speak, but even the most curt allusion to them 
 is enough to draw the reader’s attention to the essential 
 fact, that to us Englishmen the arts of Antwerp and Brussels, 
 of Amsterdam and Leyden, have been more important 
 than those of all other countries. Visitors from Italy we 
 have had very few, visitors from Spain or from France a 
 small number, but from our neighbours of the vast fertile 
 flats watered by the Meuse and the Rhine, we have had 
 not only a line of kings but a line of painters, having all 
 their own way till the beginning of the eighteenth century. 
 
 34 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

qA CHRISTIAN {MARTYR. 
 
 BY E. SLINGENEYER 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 On the same occasion we had an opportunity of seeing 
 his picture of “ The Physician Vesalius following the army 
 of Charles V.,” perhaps his most celebrated work, being now 
 public property and placed in the Musde Royal. Another 
 of his leading works that have been seen in this country 
 is “ Camoens Shipwrecked.” A life-size picture, representing 
 the poet pressing to his breast the MS. of his “ Luciad,” 
 saved from the waves when all else was lost. He leans 
 back against a rock, his face cast upwards, the foreground 
 by his feet being filled with the bodies of the drowned. 
 
 Ernest Slingeneyer was born some fifty years ago at 
 Loochristy, near Ghent, and at an early age entered the 
 Royal Academy of Antwerp, and afterwards the atelier of 
 Baron Wappers. His picture of “ The Avenger,” a work 
 of some tragic interest, brought him into the first rank in 
 1842, and ever since he has been accounted at home as one 
 of the men supporting the honours of the Belgian school. 
 It will be readily seen, however, that a certain resemblance 
 exists between him and Gallait, and between both and 
 their master, a fact that tells singularly for power of tuition, 
 a power we in England scarcely appreciate in the art of 
 painting, beginning as we mostly do with a love of nature, 
 leading to sketching at all times and seasons, or a prepon- 
 derating imaginative tendency, leading to the endeavour to 
 express our ideas with the pencil. Even where sons follow 
 their fathers as professional artists we do not see much 
 resemblance, except in the case of landscape painters. 
 
LOUIS XVII IN THE TEMPLE. 
 BY BARON G. WAPPERS. 
 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 II. 
 
 BARON G. WAPPERS. 
 
 LOUIS XVII. IN THE TEJV1PLE. 
 
 It will be remembered that Louis David retired as an exile 
 to Brussels on the fall of the first French Empire. The 
 Republican painter, who had become as violent an Imperialist 
 as he had previously been a democrat, spent the remainder of 
 his life in the Belgian capital, the nearest approach to Paris 
 he could command. The influence of everything French was 
 then perhaps stronger than it has ever been before or since in 
 Belgium, as the country had been incorporated with Hol- 
 land without any plebiscite or act of its own. For a time the 
 atelier of David continued the centre of art authoritatively, 
 but the day of classicism was gone in P" ranee before this ; and 
 although Van Bree, a pupil of David, was director of the 
 Academy at Brussels, and Paelinck and Navez, also his pupils, 
 were in good repute, it was not possible that style of painting 
 or exclusive education through the antique should continue. 
 The reaction had set in, and such being the case, no stupen- 
 dous genius was required to establish something else in the 
 way of painting history. 
 
 George Wappers was at that time a pupil of Matthew Van 
 Bree, and as in France Ingres receives a degree of credit for 
 inaugurating the art then considered opposed to David, and 
 
 39 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 to his representatives in Paris, Gros and Gerard ; so Wappers 
 has been, considered as the leader in the Belgian school out of 
 the David tradition back again to modern sentiment and the 
 illustration of national history. His large picture of the 
 “ Women of Leyden” made an immediate success, although, 
 as might be expected at that day, and just coming from the 
 pupilage of Van Bree, his manner of painting was vapid and 
 his picture wanting in the richness of detail since attained in 
 reproducing past periods of history. The incident, however, 
 was admirably chosen. The siege of Leyden in 1576, so im- 
 portant in the mighty struggle against the Spaniard and the 
 worst tyranny of the Roman Church, which forms the most 
 interesting page in the modern history of the world, except, 
 perhaps, that of the first French Revolution, was an event 
 which both Belgium and Holland might unite to celebrate. 
 The siege continued till starvation seemed inevitable ; succours 
 expected did not arrive; the country round was laid under 
 water, and the combatants fought sword to sword and neck to 
 neck among the waves. Then it was the wives and mothers 
 of the citizens thought the day was come for despair, and 
 Wappers’ picture showed the burgomaster, Van der Werf, 
 surrounded by the women, some with children, and others 
 aged and venerable, the heroism of the leader being the 
 central point of interest, unsheathing his sword, and willing 
 to surrender his life, but never the city. The conclusion of 
 the narrative, of course, is well known — the deliverance came, 
 and the foundation of the University of Leyden commemo- 
 rates the successful resistance of the town. 
 
 The Government of the day was not slow in recognizing the 
 new man and the influence of his art, and Wappers became a 
 favourite with all parties, honours and commissions beginning 
 
 40 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 to fall to his share at once, although at that time the con- 
 tention ultimately bringing about the separation of Holland 
 and Belgium occupied so much attention. One of the best 
 works of the painter was done for the Dutch Court, and may 
 now be seen in the palace of the King on the Kneuterdyk, 
 the subject being, “ Charles IX. on the Night of the Massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew.” The opening of the dreadful doings of 
 that night was the firing of an arquebus from the window of 
 the royal apartment, and in Wappers’ picture the King was 
 in the act of giving the required Signal, so incalculably 
 eventful to France, since education has throughout the 
 country been ever since in the hands of the priests, and we 
 are only at this day seeing the beginning of the end. 
 
 During the violence of the Revolution, the large work on 
 which Wappers was then engaged for the Hague had to be 
 covered up and conveyed away for fear of the popular feeling, 
 antagonistic to everything for the moment considered anti- 
 national ; but now his picture, ample in size, as Wappers’ 
 canvases always are, “ The Commencement of the Belgian 
 Trois Jours of 1830,” is to be seen in the Chamber of 
 Representatives in Brussels. This building, which was 
 erected by Maria Theresa for the meetings of the Council of 
 Brabant, is generally visited by tourists, more particularly as 
 ladies can gain admittance during debates. The picture, 
 however, and one or two other works of modern painters, as 
 “The Battle of Woringen,” by De Iveyser, are the only 
 attractions in the way of art. He also painted “ The 
 Blowing-up of the Dutch War-ship,” another incident in the 
 passing Revolution, an act of heroic determination more 
 authentic than the reputed similar fate of Le Vengeur. 
 
 All these pictures — and we confess we do not see a great 
 
 41 
 
 F 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 difference, such as to distinguish them from the work of his 
 master, Van Bree, as exhibited in his “ Death of Rubens ” in 
 the Academy at Antwerp — have a certain value of an 
 academic kind ; the drawing and composing of the figures, 
 especially those in repose, may be admired, but they have a 
 poverty of thought resembling our own West’s, and that flat, 
 solid, obviously painted surface which is so anti-pathetic and 
 destructive to the pleasure we derive from art of a perfect 
 kind. Their success, however, was great. Wappers suc- 
 ceeded as director at Brussels, and was made baron, a title 
 he still enjoys in advanced age, over threescore and ten. 
 Until lately he has resided in Paris, having left Brussels some 
 years. It is to be hoped the veteran has been spared the 
 evils of the siege and the sight of the mad destruction which 
 has surprised the civilized world. 
 
 In England we have not seen many of Wappers’ pictures ; 
 they are not pictures that travel, nor are to be found in private 
 collections. Neither in the 1862 Exhibition nor in Man- 
 chester nor Leeds did he appear, nor even in the Paris 1855 
 Exposition, when all the artist-world of an official or popular 
 kind was present. In the International of 1871, just closed, 
 however, he was visible, the picture representing him being a 
 replica of one done at an earlier time, “ Charles I. going to 
 the Scaffold.” This was sent ov.er from the Belgian Royal 
 Museum of Painting. Our Charles I., like Mary Queen of 
 Scots, has been highly favoured by painters abroad as much 
 as at home. On the walls of English exhibitions it is sur- 
 prising to find these two unfortunate royal personages always 
 represented as only a “ little lower than the angels ” by men 
 who have no particular admiration for them politically, histo- 
 rically, or, indeed, in any way, except as sentimental sufferers. 
 
 42 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 But it is still more surprising to find the same blind admira- 
 tion abroad, where the history of the last century has made 
 the adherents of kings so few and doubtful. In Wappers’ 
 picture the King descends a stair, accompanied by the clergy- 
 man and sympathizing attendants, and a girl pathetically 
 kneels and presents to him a flower. 
 
 The subject of our illustration is the so-called “ Louis 
 XVII. in the Temple,” and a good example of the peculiar 
 merits of the painter. The Dauphin, after the death of 
 Louis XVI. and his mother, Marie Antoinette, while con- 
 fined in the Temple during the short period of life left him, 
 was taught the trade of shoemaking, and appears to have 
 necessarily lived a wretched life of it ; the fact of shoemaking 
 being imposed upon him before the expiration of the years 
 devoted to education among boys in the middle classes 
 even, shows the intention of degrading and insulting him, 
 although the details and the fact of his death itself have 
 been disputed. He has crept down, but scantily clad, by 
 the corner of the bench on which lies a last and an awl, 
 with other signs of the craft of the cordonnier ; the master 
 craftsman has been reading the Moniteur , his bonnet rouge 
 lying by the paper, decorated with the cockade, the first 
 appearance of the tricolour, which has since become the 
 flag of France, and been imitated all over the world. The 
 attitude, expressing fear of the heavy hand of a brutal master, 
 which has not however effaced a certain nobility of nature, 
 is admirably given. 
 
 43 
 

 III. 
 
 FLORENT WILLEMS. 
 
 “ I WAS THERE ! ” 
 
 Willems may be accounted one of the most fortunate of 
 men ; his pictures are always successful, and he is troubled 
 by no aspirations after higher efforts than those he has 
 practised from the first. Like some of our painters at 
 home in this respect, only with an unexceptionable good 
 taste always present, as far as we know, in his works, and 
 an education in the traditions of the art of Holland. 
 
 This education has been very complete, and it is not 
 necessary in the case of Willems to enquire whose pupil 
 he was, as it is in so many continental artists’ histories. We 
 do not know, indeed, that he ever worked under a master, 
 having been only a student of the Academy of the Fine 
 Arts at Malines, which is not a great way from his native 
 place, Liege, after which Terburg, Metzu, Cuyp, and others 
 to be found in the public galleries, were his masters, and 
 taught him much, but only as much as he could assimilate 
 by his natural capacity. This is now a good while ago, as 
 he has been an exhibitor for thirty years. 
 
 The first appearance of any consequence made by Willems 
 (it appears as if we must always refer to exhibitions, as the 
 
 44 
 
BY FI.ORENT WILLIAMS. 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 stepping-stones in the lives of modern artists) was in Brus- 
 sels, in 1842, when his “Music Party” was immensely ad- 
 mired ; at the same time, if we mistake not, his “ Interior of 
 a Guard House of the Seventeenth Century” added largely to 
 the impression. Since then he has lived and exhibited much 
 in Paris, and has been successively decorated with a Third 
 Class Medal in 1844, a Second Class in 1846, made Cheva- 
 lier of the Legion of Honour, 1853, First Class Medal, 1855, 
 Officer of the Legion, 1864, First Class again, at the Uni- 
 versal Exhibition, 1867. His order* of subjects are of the 
 purest genre : “ Interior of a boutique de soieries in 1660,” 
 “ Coquetry,” “ The Introduction,” “ The Hour of the Duel,” 
 “ Choosing a Flower,” “ The Letter,” a girl writing the 
 eventful note in answer to her lover’s proposal, and a thou- 
 sand others of a similar character. In every one of these 
 has there been some delicate charm or some pretty fancy. 
 
 Of this the one we now give as an example of Willems 
 is a good instance, and is one of his middle age, painted 
 in 1857. The lady is showing the old captain a picture 
 of some great event, some grand day at La Haye or 
 Gravelines, the glorious return of Van Tromp, or a fete 
 in the history of the great war towards its close, and the 
 stout old Dutchman, able still to take his part in another 
 such triumph, says in his quiet solid way, “ J’y etais ! ” 
 
 45 
 
IV. 
 
 J. DYCKMANS. 
 
 THE BLIND BEGGAR. 
 
 Lierre, the birthplace of M. Josef Laurens Dyckmans, is 
 a little town on the railway between Antwerp and Malines, 
 at which some architectural tourists stop to see the wonderful 
 specimen of Flamboyant tracery in the rood-loft of the church 
 of St. Gommaire. He was born in 1811, and after showing 
 great quickness and ability in painting things about him, 
 scenes in the market-place and other similar subjects, entered, 
 later than pupils usually begin, the atelier of Wappers, 
 although he adopted a size that must be called miniature, 
 compared to that of the Baron. Indeed the extreme finish 
 which a small canvas only can properly exhibit was his 
 specialty, and of all his pictures, perhaps this “ Blind Beggar ” 
 shows this most vividly. 
 
 It was painted in 1853, and purchased by Miss Jane 
 Clarke, who used to indulge her friends with a magnifying 
 glass and a black tube, in order to convince them by means 
 of the first, that every hair in the patriarch’s beard was 
 distinctly painted, and by means of the second that it was 
 possible to believe his head rose off the background. This 
 good lady when she died left the picture, in her will, to 
 
 46 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 -THE BUND ‘BEGGAR. 
 
 BY DYCKMANS. 
 
 
 

 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 our National Gallery, where, from the day of its reception 
 to the present, the ladies and gentlemen who copy pictures 
 there have been busy repeating its details more or less suc- 
 cessfully. 
 
 An old man is seated by a church door in the sunshine ; 
 before him, holding out her hand, is a young girl, his 
 grandchild we may suppose, asking alms of the passers by ; 
 and coming out from the church is an old lady feeling for 
 a sou ; some other figures are seen in the porch, at their 
 devotions before a crucifix. It is painted on wood, and is 
 only nineteen inches by eighteen. 
 
 Dyckmans’ first picture of any remarkable consequence, 
 “The Declaration,” came before the public in 1834. Since 
 then he has annually produced many works, principally of 
 familiar subjects, such as the titles “ La Marquise,” “ La 
 Brodeuse,” indicate. He was decorated with the Order of 
 Leopold, and became Professor of Painting at the Royal 
 Academy at Antwerp in 1841, which office he filled till 1854. 
 
 Were we to look at some of Wappers’ large canvases 
 through an inverted telescope, making fine, soft, delicate, 
 and minute what he paints so large in size but so rounded 
 off and smoothly finished, we should find to our surprise that 
 we had transformed them apparently into the works of 
 Dyckmans ! So greatly does the pupil resemble the master, 
 although the one paints the size of life and the other on 
 a panel only a foot and a half in breadth. 
 
 47 
 
V. 
 
 LOUIS CxALLAIT. 
 
 THE GRIEF OF JOHANNA OF CASTILE. 
 
 The rival of Baron Leys, not rival of his own seeking, 
 but set up by those who hold with eclecticism and modern 
 feeling, against the art of the past and all who sympathize 
 with it, is Louis Gallait, a painter of a thoroughly accom- 
 plished and worthy order, much esteemed in this country. 
 
 Gallait is now in his sixty-second year, having been born 
 on the 10th of March, 1S10, at Doornik, Tournay, whence 
 he went to Antwerp, and became the pupil of Hennequin, 
 and afterwards removed to Paris, where he continued his 
 studies. It is curious to us in England, who have no ateliers 
 receiving pupils, and who are as artists exceedingly individual 
 and original, avoiding any evident imitation of our masters, 
 if indeed we have any, to find even in the second remove 
 the tradition of a school remaining. Yet it is the case : 
 Hennequin conveys the Louis David tradition to Gallait, 
 and the latter being much beholden to education, all that 
 he does having an academic air, and perfected according to 
 canons, shows it in works which are better than his master’s ! 
 This influence is, however, but slightly visible in Gallait’s 
 pictures, while that of later men, those in highest repute 
 
 48 
 
T HE GRIEF OF JOHANNA OF CAST ILF. 
 
 
 BY E. G ALLA IT 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 during his stay in Paris, is felt at once : Delaroche, in par- 
 ticular, has had the greatest command over his style, not 
 only in his execution, but in the planning out of his designs, 
 and even in the conception of historic moments. In a few 
 of his works other masters are recalled ; a small sketch of 
 “The Taking of Antioch,” in our 1862 Exhibition, having 
 a remarkable resemblance to Delacroix. This must always 
 be the case with eclectic men, they imbibe the peculiar 
 beauties or striking qualities of all they admire. The large 
 picture of “ The Taking of Antioch ” was painted for 
 Versailles, where may also be seen the still larger of “ Bald- 
 win crowned King of Constantinople.” Indeed he has lived 
 so much in Paris, and identified himself so much with the 
 French school, that at one time of his life he seemed to have 
 made it his adopted country. 
 
 H is first exhibited picture was shown at Brussels, however, 
 in 1833, “Christ Restoring Sight to the Blind,” which was 
 not a very successful first appearance in those days, and he 
 continued to exhibit there, gradually improving his position, 
 his picture of “ Tasso in his Cell visited by Montaigne,” 
 in 1836, being the first that made much sensation. This 
 was in our 1862 Great International Exhibition, and if any 
 of our readers remember it, they will perhaps admit that 
 there is nothing in the picture to distinguish it from so 
 many well drawn, well painted, and reasonably well imagined 
 subjects without much history or emotion. Some years later 
 came “ Abdication of the Emperor Charles V.,” a large pic- 
 ture, with many figures, which was purchased for the Cour 
 de Cassation at Brussels, where it is now shown to strangers. 
 
 In the Great London Exhibition of 1862 Gallait’s works 
 were perhaps the most attractive of all the thousand pictures 
 
 49 
 
 G 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 then collected at South Kensington. These were “ The 
 Last Honours paid to Counts Egmont and Horn,” “ The 
 Last Moments of Egmont;” “Jeanne la Folle;” which was 
 literally translated in the catalogue “ Crazy Jean ; ” the 
 “ Abdication ” picture already mentioned ; “ Delilah ; ” and 
 “ The Prisoner,” a young Roman peasant shaking hands 
 with an old man through the bars of his prison. The 
 “ Delilah ” was exceedingly effective ; she was in the first 
 horror of remorse, the wages of her treachery scattered on 
 the floor, and her face haggard and distorted by agony 
 of mind, while an attendant lifted the curtain, letting in the 
 cold early light of morning, and showing the Philistines 
 carrying away the hero she had betrayed. 
 
 It was, however, the two pictures illustrating the deaths 
 of Egmont and Horn, and “ Jeanne la Folle,” Johanna of 
 Castile, which we now give as our example of Gallait’s 
 art, that attracted the daily crowd always to be seen 
 assembled at that part of the room. We may describe 
 the first of these by an extract from some critical writing 
 at the time by Tom Taylor, wherein he says, “ The opinion 
 seems general that M. Gallait shows himself greatest in 
 dealing with national subjects. The crowd is always dense 
 before his picture of Egmont, on the early morning of that 
 memorable 4th of June, 1568, when his night of prayer and 
 confession with the Bishop of Ypres is brought to an end 
 by sounds that draw his sad steady gaze from the window 
 of the Broodhuis down to the great square of Brussels. 
 The sounds are those of saw and hammer, busy on the 
 scaffold where he is to suffer. The Bishop is in tears ; 
 his penitent is calm. His last letters (one to the king, 
 the other to his wife Sabina, Duchess of Bavaria, models 
 
 50 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 of dignified patriotism, still extant) lie on the table. The 
 red light of the unseen lamp, by which we see the tears 
 of the priest, struggles with the silver of the coming dawn, 
 which falls on the noble brow, and firm though somewhat 
 wasted hand of the prisoner. Stronger still is the ghastly 
 attractiveness of the next picture, where the bodies of 
 Egmont and Horn, covered by a black velvet pall, and 
 surmounted by their severed heads, with the death-sweat 
 still damp on the brow and rigid hair, lie in the Chapel 
 of the Recollets 1 for the chiefs of the guilds and civic militia 
 of Brussels to take a last look at those who should have 
 been their leaders. The fact is historical, strange as it may 
 seem. Either Philip hoped the sight would strike terror into 
 the turbulent Low Country burghers, or, confident in his Bra- 
 banters and Spaniards, wished to show his contempt of the 
 popular disaffection. In the figures of the guild-masters, 
 M. Gallait has typified the past in the elderly man, an asso- 
 ciate of the headless chiefs in plans and pleasures, who 
 turns away terror-stricken and trembling from the horrid 
 sight ; the present in the stalwart burgher, down whose 
 cheeks the tears are falling as he looks at the dead, the 
 hopes of his order, the protectors of the Protestants, the 
 free-handed and gracious Count of Lamoral, the stout captain 
 of Graveling and St. Ouintin ; the future in the young archer 
 who exchanges a quick, fierce look of defiance with the 
 
 1 It is not to be supposed Gallait would quite invent the incident, and the 
 writer we quote may be credited with having verified the historical accuracy 
 of the painter ; but at the same time we must say we have looked in vain in 
 Motley’s admirable and very full account of the death and burial of the 
 Counts for any record of the exposure of the bodies. 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 Spaniards who stand near the bodies ; the one a rough 
 haughty soldier, the hand of Spain, the other a civilian 
 with polished cruel face, and thin white hand that caresses 
 his dagger-hilt — the head that guides the hand.” 
 
 Although so fascinating, however, objection was taken by 
 many to the horror of the subject, as it was called. But 
 certainly without reason, as it is in the very nature of Gallait’s 
 art to take a middle course, avoiding whatever is too vivid or 
 tragic in treating even a subject chosen for its sensational 
 character ; and the two heads, which we still perfectly remem- 
 ber, were very simply and dignifiedly painted, with nothing 
 to indicate their violent severance from the bodies they 
 touched arain. The death of the two leaders was a crreat 
 
 o o 
 
 event in the history of that long and noble struggle that ter- 
 minated at last by loosening the hold of Spain on European 
 history, and in the astonishing prosperity of Holland and the 
 Netherlands. The unscrupulous cruelty of Spain (the country 
 so beloved by the priesthood of Rome) in America and in 
 Flanders has been, as it were, punished by Providence, and 
 every Fleming’s death in the days of Alva was a strengthen- 
 ing of the national spirit. 
 
 The subject we have given, “ The Grief of Johanna of 
 Castile,” was, like the others, life-size and very effective. 
 She was the beautiful daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
 and the mother of Charles V., married to King Philip of 
 Spain, an unloving and unworthy husband to cause such 
 endless grief as hers. Refusing to be separated from his 
 body, her mind gave way. She had the lifeless Philip em- 
 balmed and carried about wherever she went : when he was 
 alive they were not so inseparable. In this, as in the Counts 
 Egmont and Horn, Gallait has altogether avoided the 
 
 5 2 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 degrading elements of the history : her grief is tenderly 
 expressed, she seems yet to see him breathe, and cannot 
 believe she is left alone. His face is very beautiful also ; it is 
 an ideal face, and this indicates a peculiarity of Gallait’s art 
 that contrasts strongly with that of Leys, who would have 
 given him a portrait-head. The notion of any man of any 
 royal house of Europe known to us by portraiture having so 
 noble a head is truly fanciful, or rather it is done on the 
 eclectic principle of making the best of everything. All 
 through the long reign of her son, who became Emperor 
 Charles V. at little more than eighteen, his mother remained 
 titular Queen of Spain, but hopelessly mad, and died only a 
 few weeks before his abdication, and retirement to the 
 monastic privacy in which he died. 
 
 S3 
 
VI. 
 
 ALFRED STEVENS. 
 
 ASH-WEDNESDAY MORNING. 
 
 We must make this damsel in her gala dress represent Alfred 
 Stevens, as it seems he has not been much purchased in this 
 country or engraved anywhere, which is the more remarkable 
 as he is at the head of the agreeable painters of tableaux de 
 socidtt in his native country, and stands nearly as high out of 
 it. He is a native of Brussels, where he has studied and 
 resided, and where he received the first-class medal in 1851. 
 Afterwards, in 1853, he also was signalized by a distinction of 
 the same kind in Paris. His are essentially boudoir pictures. 
 They are in perfect taste, which is a great way towards 
 success in his class of art, and there is always some charm of 
 refinement or piquant incident appropriate to the scene 
 depicted, making the subject into an incident, although no 
 story is given. 
 
 The essential superiority in Stevens’ works, however, is in 
 the sweet and thorough painting. He is the most accom- 
 plished man we know in all the technical beauties and charms 
 of colour appropriate to the size and subject he adopts. He 
 has not certainly the perfection of Meissonier, who gives an 
 astonishingly deceptive largeness to the miniature, nor does he 
 
 54 
 
oASH WEDNESDAY 
 
 BY ALFRED STEVENS. 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 paint men with the same dramatic force. He is the painter 
 of ladies, and their finer belongings ; the pretty rooms of 
 luxurious modern life, the open window, with the trim garden 
 seen outside ; and the mild incidents of maiden society. In 
 our 1862 International his four small pictures, “ Absence,” 
 “ The Widow,” “ The Nosegay,” and “ At Home,” were as 
 great favourites with artists as with the public ; and some of 
 our painters managed to benefit by the intimate acquaintance 
 they formed with him at that time.. They were all single 
 female figures. “ Absence ” was a girl finding a note and 
 bouquet left for her on her return home, and drawing off her 
 gloves as she reads the address. “The Nosegay” was a 
 blonde in mourning-dress on a sofa, in thought, the bunch of 
 flowers on the table before her, “The Widow” examined 
 with a hopeful pleasure her own pretty face in the chimney- 
 glass, as she stooped forward with her foot on the fender. 
 “ At Home ” was a brunette in a striped black and green 
 dress, trying a piece of music as she stooped by the piano. 
 
 All these show how innocent and pleasing his sphere of 
 painting is ; but their charm was certainly in their unity of 
 conception, carried out by a corresponding simplicity of 
 execution, with bright, clear light, like mid-day, and perfect 
 manipulation. They illustrate the truth that a painter of the 
 second order needs but little besides his art. The meaninof 
 of the pretty damsel a /’ Ecossaise, called Ash- Wednesday, 
 “ Mercredi des Cendres,” seems to be that she has kept up 
 the carnival rather late, and does not get home till the 
 morning of the first day of Lent ! 
 
 55 
 
VII. 
 
 HAMMAN. 
 
 THE WOMEN OF SIENA, 1 5 53 . 
 
 Edward Hamman was born at Ostend, a rather dreary place, 
 known to some of us after the moving experiences of the 
 short sea voyage, on the 24th September, 1819. He entered 
 the studio of N. De Keyser, and from that time has followed 
 a moderately successful career as a painter of historical genre . 
 His manner is that of a well-educated and able designer, 
 painting with care and some power in an equal but rather 
 solid handling. 
 
 At home he has been a favourite, partly on account of his 
 choice of subjects, which he works out on a large size, and 
 with many figures. In Paris, where he has lived now and 
 then, he received the third-class distinction in 1853 for “genre 
 historique,” and in the following year painted “Adrian Willaert 
 directing the performance of a mass of his own composition 
 before the Doge of Venice,” which was purchased by the 
 Belgian Government of the Musee Royal, and Hamman was 
 made Chevalier of the Order of Leopold. This incident had 
 a national interest, as Adrian Willaert was a native of Bruges, 
 born in 1490, one of the few great masters in music of the 
 sixteenth century, and his mass is said to have been the first 
 
 56 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE WOMEN OF SIENA ,553. 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 written, and to have led to all that class of musical composition. 
 This picture was much admired in the great International 
 Exhibition in Paris, 1855, where he also had “ Christopher 
 Columbus on board of his caraval the Sancta Maria, catching 
 sight of the first American land, at the rising of the sun on 
 the 1 ith October, 1492.” This notable incident in the history 
 of the world was treated with great effect, Columbus being 
 seen against the light, and the mutinous crew, abashed by the 
 sight of the solid though distant line^of the island of Guana- 
 hani, which showed their terrors of an infinite waste of sea 
 were groundless. His “Adrian Willaert ” was in our 1852 
 International, but without making a great impression. 
 
 The example we give is full of movement and interest. 
 “ The Women of Siena, 1553,” maids and matrons, patricians 
 and workpeople, have thrown themselves into the labours of 
 defence, and struggle with the heavy loads to raise again the 
 shattered barriers and resist the forces of Charles V. The 
 subject was a fine one, and the picture, which was large, was 
 one of his most successful efforts. 
 
 57 
 
 H 
 
VIII. 
 
 CHARLES VERLAT. 
 
 THE FIRST SNOW. 
 
 Charles Vf.rlat, who is now professor at Weimar, elected 
 in 1 869, and one of the ablest as well as most versatile artists 
 of the Belgian School, was a student of the Royal Academy 
 at Antwerp, and a pupil of Nicaise de Keyser, whose atelier 
 was much frequented for a number of years. Indeed, in ver- 
 satility he is singular among Belgians, more especially as his 
 bias is towards animal painting, and it is seldom indeed that 
 animal painters can master any other branch of art, being in 
 this respect like landscapists, who are scarcely ever furnished 
 with any considerable knowledge or powers out of their 
 specialty. 
 
 As a painter of sheep and shepherds’ dogs, Verlat is 
 altogether without a superior, even in Belgium, where Ver- 
 boekhoven has enjoyed a great reputation for many years, 
 and trained several younger men to follow in his steps. And 
 yet his greatest successes have not been in this walk, but 
 rather in history, the Belgian Government having com- 
 missioned him to do an important work on his academic 
 success in gaining the first-class medal at Brussels, a kind of 
 honour we in England regard but little. His subject was the 
 
 S3 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 : « 
 
 w 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE FIRST SHOW. 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 “Storming of Jerusalem by Godfrey of Bouillon, on the 15th 
 July, 1099.” 
 
 In this picture, which was exhibited in the Great Paris 
 Exposition Universelle of 1855, the moving tower advanced 
 to the wall amidst an infernal rain of stones, darts, and Grego- 
 rian fire, and the powerful drawing and action in the numerous 
 figures made the picture one of the attractions in that vast 
 concourse of pictures. This is now honourably placed in the 
 Musee at Brussels. 
 
 * 
 
 Verlat’s animal subjects are distinguished by a peculiar 
 humour. In the same Paris Exhibition he had four pictures 
 in this genre, two of them being pendants to each other, 
 “ Renard in Hope,” the wily beast creeping cautiously up to 
 a covey of partridges, and “ Renard Deceived,” the partridges 
 having taken wing. The others were “ Buffaloes attacked by 
 a Tiger,” a very powerful work, and a “Dog and Cat.” In 
 our International just closed also, in which our picture of 
 “ The First Snow ” was exhibited, when M. Verlat kindly 
 allowed our publishers to photograph his picture as it hung 
 on the wall, he had two of a very amusing character, one 
 of them apropos to passing events. This was called the 
 “ Eastern Question,” in which the celebrated “ Sick Man” was 
 a sick monkey, feeble and pale, though still holding his chi- 
 bouque and pretending to smoke, while a big and hale con- 
 frere with a malicious grin feels his pulse, concealing at the 
 same time his case of instruments. The ottoman on which 
 the patient lies is surrounded by other monkeys, who show 
 the varied characters of John Bull, Jean Crapaud, and so on. 
 The other, called “ Might is Right,” was a great rascally 
 monkey, extracting a nut from the jaws of a little one. Curious 
 it was to find these light caricature kind of subjects splendidly 
 
 59 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 painted and highly elaborated, and to find, moreover, hanging 
 by them, a “ Virgin and Child, and St. John,” grave and beau- 
 tiful in the highest degree, painted in a rich and simple 
 manner. 
 
 More than this, in another part of the galleries, among the 
 contributions from Weimar, Verlat being now, as already said, 
 Professor of Painting in the Academy there, we found him 
 again in various characters. First, a moonlight, with a 
 couple of wolves fighting over the body of a poor little 
 fawn ; then as a portrait painter, with a large whole-length 
 of the Grand Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, in a broad and full 
 manner, and a bust portrait of a brother artist, Herr Frederic 
 Preller, the distinguished designer and painter. 
 
 But his versatility goes still further, Verlat having dis- 
 tinguished himself by admirable etchings, and by caricatures 
 of extraordinary verve and racy humour; indeed, he filled a 
 whole gallery at Brussels with rough oil-sketches, imitating 
 the mannerisms and parodying the peculiarities of subject of 
 all the most popular artists of Paris. From all this it will be 
 evident he is an artist of great certainty and celerity of touch, 
 working out his effect with an unerring hand, and constantly 
 feeling that his next work is to be a new thing, worth all that 
 has gone before. Nevertheless, there is no thinness in his 
 colour nor sketchiness; he is, indeed, as much as any of his 
 school, a sound executant. 
 
 “ The First Snow ” gives us the impression of a coming 
 storm; the sky is darkening thickly in, and the sheep as well 
 as the shepherd seem to know what is in the air ; they 
 descend from the brow of the hill against the wind. At 
 such a time the difficulty is to keep the sheep on the exposed 
 side of the hill, so that the accumulating of the snow will not 
 
 6o 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 cover them up, as it would were they left to the imperfect 
 instinct that leads them to seek shelter from the blast. The 
 sheep are admirably grouped and drawn. The picture was 
 large in size, and in its kind one of the leading attractions of 
 the Belgian portion of the Exhibition, as his other pictures 
 already mentioned were in the German division. Other well- 
 known pictures by Charles V erlat that have been seen in this 
 country are “ Au Loup,” “ Quarrelling about the Booty,” and 
 “ Bad Neighbours.” 
 
 
 6t 
 
IX. 
 
 EMILE WAUTERS. 
 
 MARY OF BURGUNDY BEFORE THE SHERIFFS OF GHENT. 
 
 We have not very much to say of Emile Wauters, who is 
 one of the younger artists of Brussels, destined to carry on 
 the high character of the school. He is a pupil of Portaels 
 with training at the Academy, but he has an independent 
 manner, more allied to the realism of Leys than resembling 
 his master. This picture, representing one of the acts of 
 municipal independence that could then happen nowhere 
 but in the Netherlands, or in some of the Italian cities which 
 were indeed States governed by a patrician caste, belongs to 
 the Belgian Government, and was sent over from the National 
 Gallery in Brussels to our great gathering at Kensington 
 Gore, where it was a leading attraction. Mary’s counsellors, 
 Hugonet and Humbercourt (as the name was given in the 
 catalogue, but I rather think mistakenly for Imbercourt), who 
 as envoys secretly betrayed their colleagues, fell into the power 
 of the citizens of Ghent, and were doomed by them to the fate 
 of traitors. Wauters has taken the incident that followed ; 
 Mary rushed to the town hall in mourning garments, her hair 
 dishevelled, to plead for her favourites ; and has given with 
 great singleness of aim the anxiety of the woman, and the 
 
 62 
 

 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
£\1ARY OF “BURGUNDY cAND THE SHERIFFS OF GHENT 
 

GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 attentive but determined consideration of the assembled 
 representatives of the guilds. These representatives are 
 burghers in their ordinary aspect, without the insignia of 
 office, the furred gowns and gold chains so much coveted in 
 the days of sumptuary laws, when classes were separated from 
 each other in daily aspect, from the cloth of gold to the coat 
 of frieze. Still we fancy the sheriffs of the trades of Ghent 
 would be privileged, and as the Queen of Philippe le Bel 
 complained that she found three hundred queens in Bruges, 
 the men before whom Mary of Burgundy went would have 
 the official, not the plebeian, externals of the time. Be this 
 as it may, the burghers were inexorable ; Mary rushed from 
 the town hall to the market place, where the heads of the two 
 men who had tried to betray the liberties of the city fell 
 under the axe of the executioner. 
 
 By the plainness of the costume of the sheriffs no doubt 
 the painter wished to give emphasis to the real historical 
 import of the scene, by characterizing them as men of trade, 
 and he has distinguished the heads with amazing ability. 
 Every man there is an individual character, in temperament 
 and training. In Leys’ crowds he introduced short men and 
 tall, stout men and meagre ones, in so liberal a manner that 
 critics at first took exception, till it was thoroughly proved 
 that in any living assembly or multitude the diversity of 
 figure is endless. The merit of having seen this and intro- 
 duced the fact on canvas is claimed by him, the tradition of a 
 standard size having prevailed up to that time. We see this 
 characteristic in Wauters ; the dramatic propriety and inven- 
 tion in every one of the figures distinguishes the picture as a 
 work of the highest order. By the liberal permission of M. 
 Wauters, our photograph was taken from the picture. 
 
 63 
 
X. 
 
 BARON HENRI LEYS. 
 
 THE BOOK STALL. 
 
 The name of Leys is the greatest name in modern Belgian 
 painting, and indeed is one of the greatest in modern Euro- 
 pean art. Therefore it is he appears in our book, although 
 he is now dead two years ago, leaving his last monumental 
 work unfinished, at the early age of fifty-four, and therefore 
 too, we should like here to give a sketch of his career, a little 
 longer than we can devote to every one. 
 
 Leys was born in Antwerp, and his parents, respectable 
 and pious, but poor, finding him a studious boy, thought to 
 make a priest of him. The old-fashioned ruelle where they 
 lived was one of the streets through which his funeral proces- 
 sion passed, and as he was buried with all the honours, mili- 
 tary, ecclesiastical, and civil, there was something noteworthy 
 in the circumstance. Before any step had been taken, how- 
 ever, in the decision of his fate, his sister’s marriage to F. de 
 Brackeleer, brought him in contact with art, and made it 
 apparent that he was to be a painter, and at fifteen he became 
 pupil to his brother-in-law, and in a few years began to be 
 known for a certain vigorous invention and solid painting, 
 without however any distinguishing qualities such as show at 
 once that an original and powerful nature is beginning its 
 career. 
 
 64 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE HOOK STALL. 
 
 BY BARON LEYS. 
 

GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 His first exhibited production was “A Combat between a 
 Grenadier and a Cossack,” which was followed by others of a 
 semi-historical order, in the style which the newer men, Wrap- 
 pers and others, had introduced, and this he continued for a 
 number of seasons, till nearly thirty years of age, when he 
 began to occupy a new field. This new field of genre he 
 followed successfully, and produced several pictures of remark- 
 able completeness. The “Flemish Wedding in the 17th 
 Century,” for example, painted in 184©. No doubt this change 
 was caused by some doubt as to the manner of rendering 
 history then current in Brussels and Antwerp ; and the more 
 familiar materials he had to deal with in painting social life of 
 his own day, qualified him for the change he eventually 
 effected in his own practice and in that of the school through 
 the several pupils or imitators following in his steps. Nor 
 did he leave the more strictly “ Historical ” class of subjects ; 
 his “ Preaching of Protestantism in the Cathedral of Ant- 
 werp,” now to be seen in the Musee at Brussels, was done at 
 this time ; his “ Massacre of Louvain,” also, painted in 1836. 
 But the works by which he acquired the greatest success were 
 somewhat lighter, and the most popular were — the “Wedding” 
 above mentioned ; the Studio of Rembrandt, in 1837 ; and the 
 “Fete given to Rubens by the City of Antwerp.” The 
 “ Studio of Rembrandt ” was necessarily painted much in the 
 rich brown manner of this master, and in it he introduced 
 the Burgomaster Six, so well known in the etchings. The 
 Rubens subject was later, a picture of many figures, and this 
 work, exhibited in the Brussels 1857 Exhibition, attracted 
 immense attention and placed him in the front of his con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 And now in his thirty-sixth year he went into Germany, 
 
 65 
 
 1 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 travelling from place to place, and a determination such as 
 only an artist already fixed in public estimation can follow 
 safely and with good effect, took possession of him. His 
 Rembrandt and Rubens were successful in a decree, and a 
 hundred others might be so too, but the eclectic suddenly 
 crumbled away from beneath him, and all modern refinements 
 and ways, that we are too near to see distinctly, and too much 
 enveloped in to understand, fell away from him, and he re- 
 turned to the early art of his own country, as a man who has 
 been in a dream talks to himself to make sure he is awake. 
 It would indeed appear that Leys had qualified himself by 
 varied practice for a healthy limitation, and that it was not 
 the study of Holbein, or of the earlier art of Van Eyck, 
 Memlinck, and Quentin Matsys, that drew him towards their 
 practice, but rather the dread of being lost in the sea of 
 modernism, or dying cIoavii in the thirst for prettiness which 
 rules the successes of the day. There is no doubt also that 
 his native character and tastes led him towards the reproduc- 
 tion of past ages — the life of the past, and to do so effectually 
 it seemed to him his art must also resemble that of the time 
 portrayed ; so it was that just at the time the so-called Pre- 
 Raphaelite movement began in London, Leys did a similar 
 thing in Antwerp. His revolution, however, was more 
 definite, and took a national character by his adoption of the 
 early Flemish manner employed on early Flemish or German 
 subjects. 
 
 Two of the earliest productions in this new manner are 
 the “ Cabinet of Erasmus,” and “ Faust and Wagner.” Both 
 of these were received with great delight by his compatriots, 
 and were followed by one of his best works, the “Trentaine 
 of Berthal de Haze,” and “ New Year’s Day.” These two, with 
 
 66 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 “The Promenade of Faust,” which had been purchased by the 
 Due de Brabant, were sent to the Great Exhibition in Paris 
 of 1855, where he had already nearly ten years ago received 
 a third-class medal, and was so enjoyed by the French artists 
 that one of the great medals of gold was awarded to the artist. 
 At home he had already been made officer of the Order of 
 Leopold, and this success in Paris so gratified his townsmen 
 that a wreath of golden laurel leaves was prepared, and placed 
 upon his head in a public jubilee. 
 
 From this time, or rather from 1852, the works of Leys 
 present a steady uniformity of all executive qualities ; a unity 
 of sentiment ; and a narrow but absolutely perfect command. 
 The archaeological matter and costumes, the mise en scene , and 
 habit of body of the actors, the look of every-day truth in the 
 most momentous transactions of history, are all without 
 blemish or failure. But we are bound to say, nevertheless, 
 they are reproductive ; they have all the peculiarities of the 
 art of the period represented. They are photographic in the 
 intense realism of nature, wherein big people and little ones, 
 ugly people and handsome, are all too much in earnest to think 
 how they look ; but in life and in sunlight there is much that 
 escapes photography, and that is the spirit ; the body is left, 
 and that, we fear, is what Leys too exclusively gives us. His 
 was not an emotional nature ; nor does he seem to enjoy ; his 
 imagination deals with facts, and the reproduction of these as 
 they passed before the eyes of men, without any alloy of 
 poetry, or gloss from later times, was his greatest triumph. 
 His pictures are phantasmagoria ; he had the power of turning 
 Time’s magic lantern on to the white sheet of his canvas, and 
 we spectators have the nightmare feeling of living an unreal 
 life among people who certainly died three hundred years 
 
 67 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 ago. Leys’ greatest faculty is dramatic invention, and, artisti- 
 cally, colour is his forte, frank, decided, singularly varied 
 colour. 
 
 The series of works now issuing from his atelier are the 
 
 o 
 
 works by which he will for ever keep the first place in the 
 modern art of his country. There are the “ Albert Diirer at 
 Antwerp,” painted in 1 86 1 ; “The Edict of Charles V. ; ” 
 “ The Institution of the Order of the Golden Fleece,” now 
 in the gallery of the King; “ Margaret of Austria receiving, 
 when a child, the Oaths of the Archers of Antwerp ; ” pur- 
 chased by the Empress of Russia. “ Luther, singing Christ- 
 mas Carols in the Snowy Streets of Eisenach,” also must be 
 mentioned, a small picture seen in London in 1862, as were 
 also others we have enumerated, and “ Prayers for a Sick 
 Child,” Roman Catholic women in a church with votive 
 tapers. The painting of great events in the history of the 
 city, in the Grande Salle of the town hall, was now confided 
 to him, and small copies in oil of these works (such of them 
 as were done) were sent to the Exposition Universelle at Paris, 
 in 1867; and again he was awarded the highest honour be- 
 stowed. Again his fellow-citizens commemorated his triumph 
 by a gold medal ; which, however, came too late, and was only 
 placed on his coffin. 
 
 All these subjects are exceedingly characteristic, but of 
 them all we should like to dwell a little on that of “ Albert 
 Diirer at Antwerp,” which represents the Nuremberg painter 
 looking on at the long procession of. the guilds. The childish 
 delight with which Diirer describes in his journal the things 
 represented and the people who enacted the characters is the 
 best commentary on the justness of the painter himself, in his 
 photographic honesty of treatment, in illustrating that period 
 
 68 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 of time. “ Sunday after Assumption,” he says, “ I have seen 
 the grand procession of Notre Dame; it was an enchanting 
 spectacle. All the corporate bodies and all the trades were 
 present, sumptuously apparelled. Each profession and guild 
 had its peculiar attribute ; many persons carried enormous 
 wax-candles, and long trumpets of massive silver. Then 
 there went a great number of players on the flute, and the 
 drum dressed in the German gear, who made a tremendous 
 
 noise with their instruments ; these were to be seen in 
 
 * 
 
 separate bands about the streets. This was the order in 
 which the trades went : goldsmiths , 1 painters, builders, silk- 
 embroiderers, sculptors, joiners, carpenters, sailors, fishermen, 
 masons, tanners, cloth workers, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, 
 and many others. There was also a multitude of merchants 
 and shopkeepers, with their clerks and assistants. After 
 these came the shooters, with their weapons, bows, guns, 
 and arbalasts ; then cavaliers and mummers, the guards of the 
 functionaries, and, at last, a mighty and beautiful throng of 
 different orders and nations, superbly costumed in special 
 fashions. I remarked in this procession a troop of widows 
 who lived by their labour ; and according to cloisteral rule 
 they were clad from head to the ground in long white cloth ; 
 it was most curious. Among these women were many very 
 distinguished figures. I remarked also the chapter of Notre 
 Dame, with a rush of priests, scholars, and bursars, bringing 
 up the rear. Twenty persons carried the images of the 
 
 1 See a previous page where, on the authority of Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 
 the painters are said to have had superior privileges to all other guilds or 
 societies. Here the goldsmiths take the precedence. 
 
 69 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 Virgin and the infant Jesus, splendidly ornamented. For 
 this procession had been constructed, at a great cost, many 
 remarkable objects : chariots and moving ships, on which they 
 represented scenes of all kinds ; among others, the following 
 allegories : — The Order of Prophets ; The Salutation of the 
 Angel; The Magi, on Camels and other rare animals, curiously 
 caparisoned; the Flight into Egypt, and many other subjects 
 I pass over for brevity. One I must mention, a great dragon 
 held in leash by St. Margaret and her virgins, who were 
 very pretty ; also St. George, a very handsome fellow, with 
 pages, and a crowd of youths and young women, repre- 
 senting the saints, male and female, by different fashions 
 of dress. This procession took two hours to pass before 
 our house, and presented many more particulars than I can 
 here relate.” 
 
 We now reach the latest and most important works of 
 Leys — those in the great room of the town hall, which occu- 
 pied the remaining eight years of his life, and were left 
 unfinished at his death. This is the monument of the 
 painter, and it has been said that there is no nobler example 
 of the national and patriotic in art than is seen in this apart- 
 ment, nor, indeed, is there a series of works tending to any one 
 historic object in the world so successful. If this is the case, 
 their distinguished success must result not only from the 
 dramatic power and singular vitality of his re-creations of 
 historic scenes, but also from the imitative similarity of 
 his works to the national art in its early and palmy time, 
 the time of its fresh juvenile power. This peculiarity may 
 make the Belgian glad, but its effect on the world at large 
 will be rather that of a singular problem, an anachronism, 
 which, once done where only it could be done with effect, 
 
 70 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 must be left unique. The great Nibelungen frescoes in 
 Munich are also right in their place, and Maclise’s two 
 noblest of military pictures are also right, the one romantic 
 and heroic, the other the triumph of our English art, painted 
 so near the time of the events commemorated that the art 
 and the history harmonize, much as the art Leys employs 
 harmonizes with his subjects. 
 
 The four great pictures are incidents in the history of civil 
 liberty in Antwerp. First, is the “ Joyous Entrance of Charles, 
 afterwards Charles V.,” the subject being treated so as to 
 show the condition under which the Sovereign was allowed 
 to enter, that of taking oath before the Burgomaster to 
 observe the laws and respect the privileges of the citizens. 
 Second, “The Defence of Antwerp against Martin Van 
 Rossum,” in which the Burgomaster Launcelot Van Ursel 
 harangues the guilds, and delivers the command to Chevalier 
 Van Spanghen. Third, “ The Admission to the Rights of 
 Bourgeoisie of Battista Pallavicini.” A small oil copy of this 
 has been seen in London. The spectators, the council, the 
 guards, all the Netherlanders are admirable, but we felt that 
 the Genoese and his wife should have had a different treat- 
 ment ; they should not have been like portraits by Memlinck, 
 but rather like Giovanni Bellini. Fourth, “ Margaret of Parma, 
 Governor of the Low Countries, returning the Keys to the 
 Burgomaster in time of trouble,” showing the executive inde- 
 pendence of the city. Two other pictures of smaller dimen- 
 sions were prepared, but not done at his death ; these were to 
 express the town encouraging Arts and Letters, and protecting 
 Commerce and Industry. This last, the opening of the Great 
 Fair of 1562, is very fine in design. Twelve full-length 
 figures completed the pictorial part of the work ; these were 
 
 7 1 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 from Godfrey of Bouillon to Philippe le Bel, only one place 
 being vacant. 
 
 At the same time he was employed on those national 
 works he did a series of pictures for his own dining-room in 
 the mansion he now inhabited in the Rue Leys. These 
 described a family party setting out, journeying through the 
 snow, arriving and being entertained at a New Year’s day 
 feast in the sixteenth century ; works fresh, large, genial, they 
 have been as popular as any the master did. 
 
 Approaching completion with these Antwerpen histories, 
 Brussels commissioned him for a similar work, when, at once, 
 and without warning, the master ceased to exist. He was 
 dining with his friend, Dr. Jacque, a violent thunder-storm 
 came on, the lightning struck down some trees and smashed the 
 windows of the room where the friends were seated, the alarm 
 overcame him, and he died from disease of the heart. This 
 was at the end of August, 1869. 
 
 The sorrow of his fellow citizens, of the whole country, 
 and of the government was expressed at once, and his funeral 
 honours were such as a painter may only receive in the 
 country of Van Eyck and Rubens. “ On arriving at Antwerp,” 
 it is reported by an able writer who went to the sad ceremony, 
 “the visitor perceived that some great national loss had been 
 sustained, the flags on the ships and public buildings were 
 lowered ‘ half-mast high,’ the bells of the stately cathedral 
 were tolling at intervals, the facade of the Hotel de Ville was 
 draped with black. In a room in his own house his body lay 
 in state, the pall being the same that had covered the remains 
 of the Empress Maria Theresa and the late Duke of Brabant ; 
 above the bier was hung the last work of the painter, and on 
 the day appointed, the 31st, he was borne through his dear 
 
 72 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 Antwerp, on a funeral car fifteen feet high, preceded by 
 guards of soldiers and civic dignitaries. 
 
 The subject we give is one characteristic of his middle 
 period, that is to say, after his adoption of the style of the 
 early Flemish school to a certain moderate extent, and the 
 application of his talents to subjects illustrating the life of 
 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The professor, accom- 
 panied by the verger or college porter, stands leisurely exami- 
 ning the text of a little book. The keeper of the shop, who 
 is a scholar himself, and his wife, who has the aspect of a well- 
 to-do housewife, stand behind the row of books ; the husband, 
 in a reserved dignified manner, leaving his frau to attend to 
 the professor, which she seems very willing to do. This 
 picture was called by Leys “Jacob van Liesvelt, Imprimeur 
 a Anvers au i6 me siecle.” But as the name of Liesvelt even, 
 who was the first printer of the Bible in Flemish, and who 
 suffered martyrdom for asserting that “ salvation came through 
 Christ alone,” is scarcely known in this country, nor does the 
 design very clearly illustrate his history, I have called it 
 simply what it appears to be, a Book Stall, a.d. 1500. 
 
 73 
 
 K 
 
XI. 
 
 J. VAN LERIUS. 
 
 PAUL AND VIRGINIA. 
 
 As the “ Vicar of Wakefield” is with us a story of boundless 
 popularity, and also in Germany, so in France and Belgium 
 is “ Paul and Virginia.” With the young in England it is 
 also in as great favour, but only in youth can the sentimental 
 tales of the French be enjoyed ; they lack realism, to use a 
 modern word, so much in request by critics in our day. And 
 yet how beautiful that story of the French emigrants is, emi- 
 grants with all the plaintive pathos of innocent exiles, and 
 how sad is its ending ! 
 
 We all remember the early loves of the two so well, and 
 yet we cannot help taking down the book from the shelves 
 and reading it again. “ If Paul complained, his mother 
 pointed to Virginia, and at that sight he smiled and was 
 appeased. If any accident befel Virginia, the cries of Paul 
 gave notice of the disaster; and then Virginia would suppress 
 her complaints when she found that Paul was unhappy. When 
 I came thither I usually found them quite naked, which is the 
 custom of this country ; tottering in their walk, and holding 
 each other by the hand, and under the arms, as we represent 
 the constellation of the twins. At night these infants often 
 
 74 
 

 
 
 
 
TAUL c *ND VIRGINIA 
 
 DY VAN LERI US. 
 
GEMS OF MODERN RELGIAN ART. 
 
 refused to be separated, and were found lying in the same 
 cradle, their cheeks, their bosoms pressed against each other, 
 their hands thrown round each other’s necks, and sleeping, 
 locked in one another’s arms. When they began to speak, 
 the first names they learned to give each other were those of 
 brother and sister. Then when they grew a little older, when 
 you met with one of these children you might be sure the 
 other was not far distant. One day, coming down that 
 mountain, I saw Virginia at the end' of the garden, running 
 towards the house, with her petticoat thrown over her head 
 to screen herself from a shower of rain. At a distance I 
 thought she was alone ; but as I hastened towards her in 
 order to help her on, I perceived that she held Paul by the 
 arm, who was almost entirely enveloped in the same canopy, 
 and both were laughing heartily at being sheltered together 
 under an umbrella of their own invention. Their two charm- 
 ing faces, placed within the petticoat, swelled by the wind, 
 recalled to my mind the children of Leda enclosed within the 
 same shell.” 
 
 This incident of the shower has often been a theme for 
 painters, and the other incident of a great palm leaf used by 
 Paul to screen the fair Virginia from the sun resembles it, but 
 is more beholden to the invention of Van Lerius. The sunny 
 figures and road, and the shaded faces with the light reflected 
 up from below, make a delightful group ; the expression on 
 that of Paul, however, is scarcely that of unconscious love, a 
 love that has grown up from infancy, but rather the passion 
 that absorbs all others for the time. 
 
 Van Lerius is a native of Antwerp, where he was a pupil 
 of Wappers, and in the Academy of which town he was 
 appointed Professor of Painting in 1856. To our London 
 
 75 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 International Exhibition, 1871, just closed, he was generous 
 enough to send two pictures, both of remarkable ability and 
 mastery in colour and soundness of solid painting. One was 
 called “ Vexation,” and the other “ Lady Godiva.” Vexation 
 was a damoizel, in evening dress of yellow satin and black 
 lace, leaning against a column, in the broad light of early day; 
 a Venetian canal was seen far below, and we must suppose 
 she has hidden herself there to see her lover’s gondola with 
 her rival in it pass; the incident being indicated at a distance. 
 The expression of the black-eyed beauty was remarkably 
 vivid, but the other was the more important work, being really 
 very able in the sound bright impasto of the white limbs, and 
 yet we must take exception to the character as we have done 
 to that of Paul. The part of the story represented is where 
 she descends the stairs, from Tennyson’s poem. 
 
 Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there 
 Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt, 
 
 The grim earl’s gift ; but ever at a breath 
 She lingered, looking like a summer moon 
 Half-dipt in clouds : anon she shook her head, 
 
 And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee ; 
 
 Unclad herself in haste ; adown the stair 
 Stole on ; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid 
 From pillar unto pillar, until she reached 
 The gateway : there she found her palfrey trapt 
 In purple blazon’d with armorial gold. 
 
 Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity ; 
 
 The deep air listened round her as she rode, 
 
 And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear. 
 
 The little white-mouthed heads upon the spout 
 Had cunning eyes to see ; the barking cur 
 Made her cheek flame ; her palfrey’s footfall shot 
 Light horrors through her pulses ; the blind walls 
 76 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 Were full of chinks and holes ; and overhead 
 Fantastic gables, crowding, stared ; but she 
 Not less thro’ all bore up, till, last, she saw 
 The white-flowered elder-thicket from the field 
 Gleam through the Gothic archways in the wall. 
 Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity. 
 
 In this description, although we must acknowledge that 
 the poet as well as the painter deals more with externals and 
 the scenery of the story than with the heroism and emotional 
 side of it, employing “word painting ,T a little too obviously, 
 yet we receive the impression of the noble heart of Godiva 
 and her self-sacrifice in the womanly trial, and indeed without 
 this the subject is not worth either painting or poetizing. 
 Without it we are, as it were, made into unintentional Peeping 
 Toms, and we cannot help thinking that Van Leri us has 
 something to answer for in this respect. Not that he is alone 
 in this ; the same may be said of Landseer’s, who had evidently 
 chosen the story for the white horse it suggested ! 
 
 We believe our painter is a much respected gentleman 
 among the students at Antwerp, and of his technical ability 
 there can be little doubt. Among his most noted pictures 
 are “The Golden Age," and “Joan of Arc at the Siege of 
 Paris, breaking the miraculous sword of Fierbois, in striking 
 the riotous soldiers." 
 
 77 
 
XII. 
 
 V. LAGYE. 
 
 THE ANTIQUARIANS. 
 
 In a former page we gave a description of the Van Eycks, in 
 the dear old sumptuous city of Bruges, in the fifteenth century, 
 partly from Alfred Michiels’ interesting volume, “ Les Peintres 
 Brugeois.” There old Hubert, and his brother John, twenty 
 years his junior, coming by a second marriage or late in the 
 parental mid-day of life, it is uncertain which, and their sister 
 Margaret, also an excellent artist, if we can believe the pictures 
 attributed to her to be indeed from her hand, were described 
 as living a quiet, studious life, surrounded with the peculiar 
 furniture, and lighted by the lattices to be seen in the pictures 
 of that early time. M. Victor Lagye has had this family and 
 this description before him, we may presume, in the working 
 out of this interesting interior, although the inmates of it are 
 simply called Antiquarians. It must be remembered that 
 painting pictures, which were then nearly exclusively votive 
 or commemorative portraits, was but a small part of their daily 
 work, which was rather illuminating, decorating with fine 
 miniatures the books, mostly of a pious character, then written. 
 It is interesting to think that the first books printed, and the 
 first woodcuts even, would be to the Van Eycks something 
 
 78 
 

 THE (ANTIQUARIANS. 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 like what photography has been to us. There is only this 
 difference, that the art of photography has only now begun to 
 be permanent, and its earlier stages will necessarily vanish 
 from the face of the earth, have nearly vanished already, and, 
 although so important to the fine arts, it is itself not an art 
 but a science. 
 
 The female figure seated reading at the delightful double 
 desk made for copying, the upper portion of the table being a 
 rest for the work to be copied, and fitted up at the end with a 
 strap for knife, scissors, and other things, and pigeon-holes for 
 gum-pots and colours, is very simple in action, and delightful 
 in sentiment, her hair in a white linen quoif like a nun’s. 
 This figure Lagye has reproduced as a separate picture, 
 enlarging the background. The two men appear to us to be 
 scarcely so good, the younger being rather short and long- 
 armed, and as to the name it is undoubtedly an anachronism. 
 Were we in our day to collect the fine old g res, and such 
 furniture as the richly carved cabinet they stand upon, we 
 might be called amateurs in antiquarianism, but certainly not 
 at the time when they were the only fittings and furnishings 
 to be had. 
 
 Lagye is a pupil of Leys, and employs himself on the 
 subjects characteristic of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 
 Another picture by him, done for the town of Ghent, repre- 
 senting the family life of that period, with the mother about 
 to lay the child in its cradle, is full of beautiful sentiment. 
 
 
 79 
 
XIII. 
 
 / 
 
 JOSEF ISRAELS. 
 
 THE SHIPWRECK. 
 
 In some respects the habits of the Dutch more closely resemble 
 our own than those of any other European nation. In the 
 social application of the art of painting, for example, there is 
 a close approximation, the subjects mainly illustrated being 
 those of every-day living interest in humble life, landscape, 
 and portraiture, as with us, and for centuries this has been the 
 case ; cabinet-sized pictures, appealing to popular sympathies, 
 and purchased by private people enriched by trade, have 
 employed and supported their artists. It is thus in art as in 
 the affairs of manufacture and trade, private enterprise without 
 Government aid has carried the wares of Holland in heavy 
 galleons, and the goods of Lancashire in swift steamers, over 
 every sea in the world. 
 
 As it was with Rembrandt, so it continued with Back- 
 huizen, Lingelbach, and Ruysdael ; as in landscape so in 
 figure pictures, or in animal or still-life painting, Paul Potter 
 and Berchem, Van Huysum, and Rachel Ruysch. No great 
 historical school of painting on a large scale, exerting itself to 
 glorify the national history, has existed at Amsterdam or the 
 Hague, although the history of the country has been the most 
 
 80 
 

 7 HE SHIPWRECK. 
 

GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 heroic and splendid, and their freedom and civilization the 
 most continuous, of any nation in Europe. As is very well 
 said in the Handbook of 1862 we have quoted elsewhere, in 
 all its forms the art of Holland has one special characteristic. 
 “ It is not an exotic, grown from Italian seeds or cuttings in 
 academic forcing-houses, at royal cost and under gardeners in 
 court livery, but it is a real, if kitchen-garden, growth of the soil. 
 There may be little aspiration, but there is admirable fidelity 
 to the nature familiar to the painter and his public. The 
 range may be narrow, or the aim humble, but the one is 
 skilfully travelled over, and the other satisfactorily attained.” 
 
 Not that historical painting is left out by any means. At 
 the time when Israels was beginning to distinguish himself, 
 W. J. Pieneman, J. H. Koekkoek, H. F. C. Ten Kate, and 
 others, painted history occasionally ; illustrations, however, of 
 the still higher field of sacred art, either from the Old Testa- 
 ment or from the Gospels, are very rare in the modern Dutch 
 practice. They are so evangelical, and they have so com- 
 pletely left behind the condition of religious feeling to which 
 pictures appeal, that there is even less of that kind of art in 
 Holland than in England. To make up for this absence, the 
 pathetic as a motif has of late years been much prized, and 
 Josef Israels is a master in pathos. 
 
 Born in 1827, in Groningen, a small town, the moat of 
 which has been converted into a canal, with plenty of streams 
 besides about, as it stands on the junction of two rivers, 
 and has another large canal called Schuitendiep, which can 
 bring large vessels close to the town, he has always been 
 fond of sailors and their perils, some of his noblest works, that 
 we give for example, being derived from the accidents of the 
 
 sea. 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 Israels first entered the studio of the Dutch painter 
 Kruseman, and afterwards that of Picot, of Paris. He has 
 had very considerable successes and deserved them, and has 
 been decorated with the order of Leopold in Belgium, and 
 the Legion d’Honneur of France. 
 
 Although the moving accidents of the sailor’s life have 
 been the subjects of Israels’ most successful pictures, he began 
 by various works, and among them a picture of some import- 
 ance, of “ William, Prince of Orange, opposing for the first 
 time the decree of the King of Spain.” This was an excel- 
 lent subject, showing the noble figure of William the Silent, in 
 one of those moments we cannot afterwards fully estimate. 
 This picture was in Paris in 1855, anc f if we are not mistaken, 
 was distinguished by the bestowal of the badge of the Legion 
 of Honour. 
 
 In our International of 1862 were four pictures by Israels: 
 two of them of little importance ; the third, a truly Dutch 
 incident, “Washing the Cradle,” a big girl scrubbing a wicker- 
 work cradle in the sea, while a little sister looks on ; and the 
 fourth, one of the noblest and most impressive pictures in the 
 whole exhibition, “ The Shipwrecked,” a photograph of which 
 we now give, a large picture, which was bought by Mr. 
 Arthur Lewis, as indeed was also “ The Cradle,” and may be 
 now seen at his house in Kensington. 
 
 This picture was perhaps the most impressive work in a 
 certain way in that immense gathering, and looking at it 
 again the other day, we thought more of it than we did even 
 at first. It is the day after the storm. The morning has 
 broken troubled and dark, the sleepless and wretched relatives 
 of the fishermen who have been out in the gale, and the 
 neighbours who always sympathize so deeply in fishing 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 communities, have gone out along the scourged and barren 
 sands, looking for any tidings or remains of the boat that 
 has never returned, and they have found the good man 
 himself, the master of the small household, washed ashore. 
 Here they come, the melancholy procession from the 
 treacherous sea, and it is impossible to realize anything 
 more truly in harmony with the sadly tragic incident than 
 the heavy mass of dark grey cloud, and the long ragged 
 ghastly glare of watery light along the horizon, or the wash 
 of cruel surf beginning again to break playfully on the 
 shingle. 
 
 First comes the wife, the house-mother, with her orphans 
 in either hand. She is alone in her grief, alone for the rest of 
 life. Behind are fishermen bearing tenderly and reverently 
 the body of the drowned husband and father. The one who 
 supports the head gazes in the face with wistful sadness. 
 Others follow, a long line of people, all now certain that the 
 worst is known. In this work the absence of colour, the 
 intelligent rough touch of the master, and the unswerving 
 strong hand in conveying the full impression, all unite to 
 form one of the great works of the age. 
 
 From that time Israels has been a name honoured in this 
 country, for we too have the ocean all round us, and have our 
 perils by sea much more than by land. In the last Royal 
 Academy Exhibition, one of the completest works exhibited 
 was by Israels, of a similar character. It was called “ How 
 Bereft ! ” and represented the widowed mother and her 
 children in humble life, a sailor’s widow, while the funeral 
 with difficulty turned out of the narrow door. 
 
 A pair of pictures by Israels were also to be seen at the 
 International. These are among his most important works 
 
 83 " 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 in thorough accomplishment ; the “ Sick Mother,” a cottage 
 interior admirably given, and “ The Mother in Health.” The 
 one all darkened sadness, the other animation, although in 
 the same deep chiaroscuro. These are in the possession of 
 Mr. J. S. Forbes, of Westwickham Hall, in Kent. 
 
 84 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE CHILDREN OF CLOVIS. 
 
L. ALMA-TADEMA. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF THE CHILDREN OF CLOVIS. 
 
 Alma-Tadema, who has taken so high a place in Belgium 
 and in Paris, but more particularly in London, at an age that 
 may lead us to look forward with hope and curiosity to his 
 coming pictures, was born at Dronryk, in the Dutch province 
 of Friesland. He is a pupil of Baron Leys, and in the studio 
 of that painter, already confirmed in his severe and perfect 
 practice after the ancient Flemish manner, he assisted in 
 drawing out the designs and carefully planning the details and 
 accessories of the compositions. This training, so rigid and 
 intimate, would have overcome all originality in a less imagi- 
 native and vigorous intellect, and indeed we find Tadema 
 to be nearly the only one of the pupils of the master who 
 has carried away the fruits of the invaluable discipline of 
 Leys’ atelier, without loss of individuality. 
 
 It must be remembered, however, he was not a Belgian, 
 but a Dutchman, and inherited the indelible character, 
 nationally distinct from all the rest of the world in art, the 
 bias to absolute truth in the representation of common things, 
 the picture of a brass pan being as charming and important 
 to them as that of the noblest tragic emotion ; so that before 
 
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GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 entering the atelier he naturally followed the method ol 
 thought and practice Leys had in fact only adopted. One 
 result he carried away, an altogether inestimable one, though 
 in a sense a negative one — he was prevented thenceforward 
 deviating from the straight line of his own aspirations, the 
 narrow school of his birth was widened, not altered, by the 
 school of his master, and he applied himself to reproduce the 
 romantic life of the early middle ages, and the semi-classic 
 life of Rome under the Caesars, as Metzu did the interiors of 
 his own day, and as Leys was doing the men and women ol 
 the fifteenth century. He entirely escaped that vague eleva 
 tion of key that makes all painters who have hitherto touched 
 Greek and Roman times do so in a quasi-poetic manner, as if 
 they were mythological, sculpturesque, or somehow different 
 in kind from all other periods of time or states of civilization. 
 We approach antique life through the poets, and the poetic 
 art is essentially different from the pictorial ; every art has 
 its central propriety ; Tadema accepted painting as dealing 
 with facts, externals ; not reanimating the ideas of the poets, 
 for poets then, as now, found beauty far from home. 
 
 H is success, we think, has been nearly perfect, and the 
 writer confesses Tadema’s pictures have given him a great 
 pleasure, as a comparatively new and true thing in a world of 
 old things, old and trite ; however some of them may tran- 
 scend the motive that guides Tadema or the powers he has 
 displayed, or indeed may be hoped to display. For let us 
 consider, the men and women, in the day of Homer, or in the 
 day of Odin, or on the streets of Jerusalem in the day of our 
 Lord and his followers, were wholly and exactly as we are; 
 all the rest is a mental residuum, arising from Homer himself, 
 from the Saga- writers, from the Gospels. If we paint these 
 
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GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 we paint siibjcctive entities (pardon me, kind reader, for using 
 such a phrase) ; we may fancy ourselves original and poetical, 
 but we are only imitating sculpture, or the art of the early 
 masters. I make no silly assertion as to what we should or 
 should not do ; we all do what we can in fact, and so do right; 
 but the literal and material view of Roman life we find in 
 Tadema’s works is at least an achievement. 
 
 A few of the principal works produced by this artist in 
 ten successive years are these: “The Education of the 
 Children of Clovis,” the picture we now give as a representa- 
 tion of his powers, 1861. “How the Egyptians amused 
 themselves three thousand years ago,” 1863. “ Eredegonde 
 
 and Praetextatus,” 1864. “ The Mummy,” 1866. “ Tarqui- 
 
 nius Superbus,” 1867. “The Siesta,” 1868. “ Phidias and 
 
 the Elgin Marbles,” 1868. “The Pyrrhic Dance,” 1869; 
 and in the last two years many pictures, but particularly the 
 two great works many of our readers will remember, “ A 
 Roman Emperor, a.d. 41,” the future Emperor Claudius 
 found by the Praetorians hidden behind a curtain ; and “ The 
 Vintage,” the thanksgiving festival after the wine-season in 
 the temple of Bacchus, his largest work, and most superb 
 embodiment of Roman luxury and beauty. 
 
 The two subjects from the Merovingean period of French 
 history show a singularly original choice of subject ; that 
 transitional aspect of things, the ferocity of the barbarian, 
 and the effete civilization of ancient Rome, the shapeless 
 paganism of ancient Gaul, and the misshapen Christianity 
 that conjured up miracles on the field of battle, which was 
 gradually supplanted by the more distinct forms of settled 
 life of the middle ages, — in the Fredegonde and the dying 
 Bishop, which was engraved by the Art Union in Holland, 
 
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GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 Tadema illustrated the life of one of the kind of women we 
 find only in late Roman or in French history; women of 
 limitless wickedness, indulging their passions by the cruellest 
 means. The Bishop Praetextatus, whom she had prevailed 
 on her husband to banish, returned on the King’s death, and 
 the old enemies met by accident face to face in the street, 
 she a widow, but with the sovereign power within a certain 
 limit; he in his diocese, and robed for his office. She, as the 
 manner of women is, spoke softly, but he upbraided her with 
 her many sins. It was at Easter, and on the day of the 
 Resurrection Praetextatus went to celebrate the offices in 
 the church. He sang the anthems ; between two psalms he 
 raised his arms and leaned against the high back of his chair, 
 when the slave of Fredegonde slid behind him and sent his 
 knife deep under the arm-pit of the bishop. He was carried 
 home dying and laid swooning on his bed, and when he woke 
 up the first apparition that met his dying eyes was the she- 
 wolf, seated in the middle of the room. “ We did not wish,” 
 she then said, “ such a thing to take place when you were 
 in your sacred office; but to please God, holy bishop ! if you 
 will show us how to find him, we will punish the assassin.” 
 
 “ Who has it been,” cried Praetextatus, feebly, “ if it was 
 not you, you who have caused the deaths of kings, and done- 
 every atrocity in this kingdom ! ” 
 
 “Nay, nay!” answered Fredegonde, quietly. “ But we 
 have living with us two skilful leeches, shall I send for 
 them ? ” 
 
 “ No ! ” said the bishop, lifting himself up, but dying, “God 
 calls me from the world, but you shall live to be cursed by 
 men, and God will avenge my blood on your head ! ” 
 
 This most tragic interview was painted by Tadema with 
 
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GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 such precision, that the spectator understood the relative 
 position of the two actors before knowing the history ; and in 
 “ The Education of the Children of Clovis,” the character of 
 every figure in the picture conduces to the expression of the 
 story : we recognize in the hatchet-throwing boys the future 
 avengers in blood. 
 
 The story itself, as we find it in the “ Rois Francs,” by 
 Emile de Laveleye, is exceedingly strange and romantic ; that 
 is to say, the story of Clotilde, the wife and widow of Clovis, 
 because Tadema has built his picture on a very slender 
 foundation, the precise incident represented being rather 
 implied than recorded. The facts are these. The king of 
 Burgundy left four sons, one of whom, Gondebald, slew his 
 brother Chilperic, and drowned the wife of the murdered 
 man. The children, two daughters, he banished to a certain 
 walled place or ville, as every house nearly was then called, 
 where the eldest became a nun, and the second was reported 
 so beautiful that Clovis in his distant city of Paris determined 
 to marry her. For this purpose he sent his Latin councillor 
 Aurelien, disguised as a beggar, carrying a wallet on his back 
 and a great staff in his hand. At the gate of the ville he sat 
 down, and the nun, with her sister Clotilde herself, came to 
 wash his feet, and give him Christian welcome. This contrast 
 of murderous ferocity and humility in the different sexes is 
 one of the characteristics of the Merovingian times, the 
 women, however, revenging themselves in the most frightful 
 way, as indeed Clotilde was already scheming to do. 
 
 While the damsel washed the traveller’s feet, he stooped 
 close to her ear, and said very low, “ Mistress, I have great 
 news for thee ; get me to a place where I can speak to thee 
 in secret.” “ Speak now,” answered Clotilde, in the same 
 
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GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 way, and Aurelien told her how Clovis (Khlovigh), king of 
 the Francs, had sent him, wishing, if such was the will of God, 
 to have her in marriage, “ and lo ! ” said he, at the end, “ here 
 is his ring.” She took the ring with great joy, seeing before 
 her a throne surrounded with warriors, ready to revenge her 
 parents’ deaths. 
 
 She gave Aurelien “ a hundred sous in gold,” and direc- 
 tions how Clovis was to apply to her hated uncle Gondebald, 
 who did not dare refuse, and so at last she left for the North 
 with a French escort, and immediately she was fairly out of 
 sight began to destroy everything she passed with fire ! 
 Gondebald on his part as quickly felt his mistake ; a semi- 
 Roman of the name of Aridius indeed pointing out to him 
 his folly : but it was too late. 
 
 Of all the wars that follow this love-making passage in 
 the history of the Franks and Burgundians, we cannot speak ; 
 especially as they are complicated in the most puzzling way 
 by Arianism, as a king at that time who held by the equality 
 of the Trinity was almost a saint, in spite of any peccadilloes 
 of a moral kind, while the heterodox heroes are represented as 
 demons ; the result was, however, to bring Gondebald on his 
 knees, and at last both he and Clovis die out of the page, and 
 the three boys, sons of Clotilde, advance upon the scene, and 
 in the south Gondomar and Sigismund, the successors of the 
 hated uncle. 
 
 Clotilde came from her retreat in a monastery, to bring up 
 her children in unity of determination to continue the feud. 
 And the education she gave them is the subject of our 
 picture. 
 
 The youngest boy is yet a child — he remains with the 
 women ; but the elder are under tuition, and the preceptor, 
 
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GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 the old warrior with the great shield, sitting on the Roman 
 chair, criticises the action of Chlother, the eldest boy, as he 
 prepares to throw the axe. Already he has hit the circle, 
 if that circle were only the head of a Burgundian ! The 
 character of the children, prematurely men, and of the mother 
 with her diadem placed on her hair so early white, are 
 equally good. All the surroundings, too, show the genius for 
 re-creating these early times, partly no doubt founded on 
 reading, but clearly a gift. We observe the resemblance 
 between this interior and that of an impluvium in a Roman 
 home, and on looking a little closer, we find the irregular 
 debased Corinthian capitals of the columns, showing that they 
 have been brought together from earlier Roman buildings. 
 
 Alma-Tadema has taken up his abode with us in London, 
 and we expect now to see all his principal productions in 
 future years on the walls of our various exhibitions. 
 
XV. 
 
 GUSTAVE DE JONGHE. 
 
 BO-PEEP. 
 
 This artist, perhaps more than any other in the sixteen we 
 have selected for this volume, shows the direct French in- 
 fluence, in spirit and subject. The heroines of Alfred Stevens 
 even, who is so thoroughly Parisian in sentiment, are not 
 so French in character as the mamma in our example of De 
 Jonghe. With us here in England, humble life, the life of 
 out-door labour of a rustic sort, peasant children, cottage 
 interiors, and the incidents of agricultural occupations in their 
 seasons, employ many artists, but very few devote them- 
 selves to the illustration of our every-day life in town society, 
 adorned with fashionable or luxurious surroundings. Genteel 
 comedy does not gain much attention from art in this country. 
 It does, however, in France, in a mild way ; the comic 
 element indeed being kept very subordinate to the elegancies 
 of the boudoir, and the pretty trivialities therein enacted. In 
 these pictures a very perfect miniature elaboration is a great 
 part of the charm, and so thoroughly has this been attained, 
 we are not at all surprised to find that section of the French 
 School to have spread into Belgium and Holland. The 
 traditions of the palmy days of Flemish painting, indeed, 
 
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 V 
 
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GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 we may say, gives the native painters a prescriptive right 
 to this class of genre , but the artists who exhibit in the Salon 
 in Paris have carried it to such modern perfection as to make 
 it their own ; and those who have a vocation in this line must 
 repair thither to see its highest development. 
 
 Gustave de Jonghe is the son of J. B. de Jonghe, the 
 landscape painter, whose picture, “ View near Tournai,” is 
 in the Musee Royal, and who might have come in for illus- 
 tration in our book, had we embraced landscape in our 
 scheme. The elder de Jonghe was, we believe, a Dutch- 
 man, but Gustave is Belgian, by having been born at 
 Courtrai ; he studied at Brussels, went to Paris, and found 
 employers in the publishing house of Goupil and Co. He 
 received the gold medal at Amsterdam, along with Alma- 
 Tadema, in 1862, and the French third class in the follow- 
 ing year, and a similar honour at Brussels in 1864. ' 
 
 The example we give has considerable charm, although 
 the lady is not strictly speaking beautiful. The innocent 
 trick of the black veil concealing her face turned round, 
 is very nice ; and the little girl peeping, without much 
 attempt at hiding, and calling Cou-cou ! is very naive. 
 
 93 
 
XVI. 
 
 JAN PORTAELS. 
 
 LA GLYCINE. (Frontispiece.) 
 
 Jan Frank Portaels may be called one of the elder school 
 of Brussels, having begun painting under Navez, attending at 
 the same time the Academy in that city ; having left his 
 native place, Vilvorde, in Southern Brabant, to follow out his 
 education in art. He afterwards went to Paris, where he 
 entered the atelier of Paul Delaroche, whose influence is clearly 
 visible in the works of Portaels. As a thoroughly well- 
 educated artist, one to whom all the executive difficulties have 
 succumbed, and who is able to give full effect to his percep- 
 tions and intentions, there is no doubt Portaels is to be 
 considered equal to Delaroche himself ; but then he has not 
 shown the same faculty to stamp an incident from history or 
 from Bible story on the mind of the public, and although he 
 has painted many able works, none of them have made a 
 lasting impression. 
 
 The number of eminent painters we have mentioned as 
 descended from the school, of David during his long residence 
 in Brussels shows how influential he was there. But since the 
 independence of Belgium, first won from France and latterly 
 from Holland, its art has assumed a' much more independent 
 
 94 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 character, and at the present clay it has all the vitality of a 
 distinct school, almost as much as Holland, although the 
 French critics, in their arrogant way, deny the fact. It seems 
 necessary to say this in pointing out the resemblance between 
 Portaels and Gallait, and the favourite master of a large 
 section of French critics, Delaroche. 
 
 Portaels has travelled to the East, like so many French 
 artists also, and has painted their subjects, in some measure. 
 The one that made most impression was a picture with many 
 figures, “ A Caravan in Syria surprised by a Simoom.” For 
 this he was decorated with the Order of Leopold, in 1851, and 
 it was exhibited both in the Great International in Paris, in 
 1855, and in that of London, 1862. The lurid yellow gleam 
 along the horizon, and the whirlwind of sand rolled up like a 
 mighty snake, half hidden in the dark above, were very 
 impressive, and had the peculiarity of real phenomena. The 
 terror and mad confusion, too, of the travellers and their 
 animals was admirably conceived. Other analogous subjects 
 he painted were, “ A Story-teller in the Streets of Cairo,” “ A 
 Funeral Convoy on the Desert at Suez,” “A Woman of 
 Trieste.” Other important pictures, or at least pictures 
 that have made an impression on the memory, or that 
 have been seen in this country, are, “ Rebecca trying on 
 her Jewels,” “ A Hungarian Gipsy,” and “ A Box at the 
 Theatre, Pesth.” These last two reminiscences of his 
 travels are admirably painted, the “Box at the Theatre” 
 being now in the Belgian National Gallery, whence it was 
 kindly sent to our International, just closed. Besides these, 
 may be mentioned the “ Suicide of Judas,” a work of very 
 considerable tragic interest, although a little sensational. 
 
 The review of the productions of such a painter as 
 
 95 
 
GEMS OF MODERN BELGIAN ART. 
 
 Portaels, able executant, and in a way fully prepared to take 
 the highest place, yet not doing so, and without specialty of 
 mind or bias of study, is a difficult matter. We are bound to 
 think of him as a chief, and yet he has failed to be one ; nor 
 has he any ruling motif or passion ; neither in religion, 
 patriotism, poetry, nor passing life. The first of these great 
 motives we do not look for in our day, and if we do find it, it 
 is sadly diluted into dilettantism ; the second Portaels may be 
 superior to, or he found the history of the Low Countries 
 already in other hands ; the third is an endowment he has 
 several times tried to cultivate. The example we give, 
 “ La Glycine,” “the Westeria ” we suppose we may translate 
 the name, is one of those. The head has a certain noble 
 beauty about it, and a sweet wearying as of hope deferred, 
 which recommends the picture to our memory. It has been 
 engraved in an admirable manner by a Belgian engraver, 
 J. Franck, the plate being quite a lovely example of that nearly 
 forgotten art of line engraving we were once so strong in. The 
 picture belongs to Count A. de Liebe Kerke-Beaufort. 
 
 We have made “ La Glycine,” our example of Portaels, 
 the Frontispiece to our volume, that the fair face and gentle 
 character may bespeak the reader’s favourable reception of the 
 volume. This first impression, we believe, will be confirmed 
 when he has made acquaintance with the whole series of 
 prints, so varied in their character, and all possessed of 
 an elevated sentiment, or a pleasant and healthy view of life 
 or of history. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 J. OGDEN AND CO., PRINTERS, I72, ST. JOHN STREET, E.C. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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