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P. A. CONTENTS The Van de Veldes 1 The Etchings of Jacob Ruysdael .... 36 The Road to Rome 58 Zeeman and Backhuysen 86 Antoni Waterloo Ill ILLUSTRATIONS EsAIAS VAN DE VELDE A Farm 7 Winter Landscape 9 Skaters 11 Jan van de Velde Summer. From "The Four Seasons" Earth. From "The Four Elements" Air. From "The Four Elements" . Noon. From "Times of the Day" . Night. From "Times of the Day" . Noon. From "Times of the Day" . Evening. From "Times of the Day" 13 15 17 19 2123 25 WlLLEM VAN DE VeLDE Man-of-War 27 Shipping Scene 29 ADRIAEN' VAN DE VeLDE Ox and Sheep 33 Jacob Ruysdael The Wheatfield 40 The Little Bridge 42 The Three Oaks 46 Two Peasants and Their Dog 48 Drawing for "The Travellers" 51 The Travellers 52 Landscape with Thatched Cottage and Pig-Pen . . 54 ILLUSTRATIONS Hercules Seghers Rocky Landscape with a River and a Carriage Road 62 Tobias and the Angel 63 Rembrandt Flight into Egypt 64 Hendrik Goudt (after Adam Elsheimer) Tobias and the Angel 66 Adam Elsheimer Nymph with a Tambourine 68 Jan van de Velde (after Moses van Uytenbroeck) Tobias and the Angel 70 Cornelis Poelenberg View of the Temple of Vesta and Grotto of Neptune, atTivoli 72 Claude Gellee Le Bouvier 74 Dance by the Waterside 76 The Herd in the Storm 78 Jan Both Landscape with an Ox-Cart 80 The Boat-Journey 82 Stone Bridge (Ponte Molle, near Rome) ... 84 Reynier Zeeman Skating Scene 87 Entrance to the Faubourg St. Marceau, Paris . . 89 LUDOLF BACKHUYSEN Marine, with a City in the Background ... 91 xii ILLUSTRATIONS Rbynier Zeeman Marine Piece 93 De Stadts-Herbergh 95 Old Gate of St. Bernard, Paris 97 Heyligewechs Poort 100 A Sea-Port 102 Plaice Boats or Pinkies 105 The Blockhouses 107 LUDOLF BACKHUYSEN Marine Piece 109 Antoni Waterloo View of a City in Holland . . . . . .115 Steeple of a Village by the Sea 117 The Little Hamlet 119 Two Hunters Resting 121 The Great Mill 123 Large Linden in Front of the Inn 125 M INTRODUCTION "^\ ^f Y aim in the present volume is to trace the development of Dutch landscape etching in the seventeenth century, at a period when the art first attained full and characteristic expression. No other book, in Eng lish, covers quite the same ground; for Mr. Binyon, in his excellent monograph, l devotes relatively little space to the consideration of landscape, in which the Dutch, despite the earlier etchings of Diirer, Altdorfer, Hirsch- vogel and Lautensack, in Germany, were real pioneers, and displayed their abilities to greatest advantage. One important omission will be noted — that of Rembrandt, the greatest of all landscape etchers; but Mr. Binyon, having already contributed an apprecia tion of Rembrandt's landscape etchings to The Print- Collector's Quarterly (for which these articles of mine were written), it seemed unnecessary to include him in the series. After all, it is not Rembrandt, but certain other artists of whom I have written in the following pages, and particularly the Van de Veldes, concerning whom there has been a dearth of information and ap preciation in English, and it is they, in any case, who would give to the volume whatever interest and value it may be found to possess. As the footnotes will indicate, I am indebted to many 1 Dutch Etchers of the 17th Century. By Laurence Binyon. The Portfolio, No. 21, September, 1895. London. previous writers, principally French, on individual artists. I am, likewise, greatly indebted to the officers of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for the courtesy which enabled me to work there continuously for many months, and to avail myself freely of its rich resources, both in prints and in books. To my friend, Mr. FitzRoy Carrington, Curator of the Print Department, and Edi tor of the The Print-Collector's Quarterly, I am, as al ways, under deep obligation both for general sugges tion and for detailed criticism. He has ever been, to his contributors, collaborator rather than editor, and now that the Quarterly — the one publication in the world devoted exclusively to the study of prints — has been suspended "for the period of the war," I cannot forbear to point out how much all who are interested in etchings and engravings owe to his active and dis interested efforts on behalf of these arts. W. A. B. Washington, D.C. 5th May, 1918. THE VAN DE VELDES IHE cruelties practised by the Spaniards upon the inhabitants of Flanders in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and especially upon members of the various Protestant sects, had the effect of driving thousands to seek refuge in the cities to the north, then engaged in waging their des perate war for freedom from foreign oppression. Hol land's gain from this great movement of immigration is incalculable. In return for the shelter she afforded the refugees, she gained thousands of excellent, frugal, thrifty, hard-working citizens, who were to contribute most effectively throughout the following century to the development of the wealth of their adopted coun try. And not material wealth alone. These Flemings, heritors of an ancient civilization, brought with them a cultural strain of the highest value and importance. Numberless artists destined to take high — in some cases the very highest — rank in the annals of Dutch art, sprang directly from this superior stock, and not the least among these must be regarded the van de Veldes — that remarkable family which, in two gen erations, numbered no fewer than five members whose achievements cannot be overlooked in even the most 1 summary survey of the history of Dutch painting and etching. The van de Veldes were natives of Antwerp, from which city they had fled, with so many of their fellow- citizens after the memorable siege and sack of 1576 — " The Spanish Fury," as it is called in history. The head of the family, a simple nail-maker, settled at Rotterdam with his son, Jan the Elder, who found employment there as a schoolmaster and as a calligrapher. Through his skill in the latter capacity, he soon made a place for himself in the community; for the elegancies of hand writing were highly esteemed at that time in Holland, where, as in China and Japan, calligraphy was regarded as an art and served in some sort as an apprenticeship to painting. Expositions and contests were often or ganized among its most distinguished representatives; and at one of these, instituted in Rotterdam, in 1590, patents conferring the degree of maltres de la plume couronnes, were awarded the winners. M. Emile Michel, author of the excellent monograph1 on the van de Veldes, suggests that possibly Jan van de Velde may thus have distinguished himself on this occasion, for his proficiency was remarkable, calligraphy in his case some times reaching the dignity of design, since, in his capi tal letters, this "virtuoso of the pen" often incorporated various ornaments, such as people, animals, a swan with wings outspread, or a ship with swelling sails. In any event, his reputation was sufficient to justify his publish ing, in 1604, a collection of handwriting models under the Latin title: "Delicise variarum insigniumque Scriptu- rarum, autore Veldio, Scriptore celeberrimo." This edi- 1 Les Van de Velde. Emile Michel. Illustrated. Paris; L.Allison et O. 1892. (Les Artistes Celebres.) 2 tion, which appeared simultaneously in Haarlem and Amsterdam, must have been very successful, since in 1605 it was followed by another edition, published in Haarlem, in Dutch. In it appears the author's portrait engraved by Jacob Matham who, as we shall see later, was to be the master of Jan's second son, Jan II, him self an engraver and etcher. The following year, 1606, still another edition appeared, — this time in Rotter dam, — with German text and under the name of "Hans von dem Felde." Jan must have made money as well as fame in the pursuit of his dual profession. In 1605 he bought a house in Rotterdam. This, however, he sold again in 1620 and went to live in Haarlem, where he also opened a school, largely patronized, no doubt, by the sons and daughters of his former fellow-citizens of Antwerp, who were found there in even greater numbers than in Rotterdam. It was in Haarlem that he died three years later, — in 1623, — his funeral expenses amounting to eighteen florins — a considerable sum for that period; and it was, too, in that city, then so filled with artists, that, in the words of his biographer, "the sons of the calligrapher felt the call to a vocation higher than their father's." Although complete evidence is lacking, it appears highly probable that, according to the information fur nished by Houbraken, Esaias, Jan II, and Willem I were the sons of Jan I, and not only were all three des tined to be artists, but one — Willem I — was to give the Dutch school, in his sons, Willem II and Adriaen, two of its most distinguished masters. Esaias, Jan van de Velde's eldest son, was born in Amsterdam about 1590, which would make it appear that the calligrapher must have resided for some time in that city, where he had a brother, Anthonie van de Velde, a painter. However this may be, by 1610 Esaias was already established in Haarlem, where he had be come a member of the Reformed Church and where, a year later, in 1611, he married a young woman, Cate- lina Maertens, whose family, refugees like his own, hailed from Ghent. It is probable also that Esaias van de Velde served his artistic apprenticeship in Haarlem, where opportunities for instruction were at that time not lacking. It was at Haarlem, for example, that, in conjunction with van Mander, two artists, younger than he, but already famous, — Goltzius and Cornelissen, — had opened a studio in which they made their pupils draw from the best models and copy rare casts of antique statues. "But it was not in this direction that Esaias felt him self drawn. Instead of following the academic doctrines and devoting himself to the pompous compositions that delighted the Italianisants, he inclined towards those simpler subjects that nature, with its inexhaustible wealth, offered him at every step. Besides, there began to be felt, as it were, a breath of new life; and, after hav ing played a decisive role in the history of the freeing of the nation, Haarlem was thus called upon to assure its artistic emancipation. . . . Hals, scarcely ten years older than van de Velde, was then just arriving at the summit of his fame; and his love of nature, the freedom and the precocious certainty of his execution, were all the more 4 striking because of the contrast they presented with the academic traditions that had hitherto prevailed. By his side, while drawing inspiration from his swift and ani mated method of execution, Esaias conserved his en tire originality; and, in a more modest sphere, by his con sistent determination to treat only subjects taken from the familiar life and natural aspect of his country, he played an important part in forming the Dutch school, and fixing its character." 1 From 1612 Esaias belonged to the Guild of Saint Luke, and in 1617 he was admitted to the Chamber of Rhet oric of the Wyngaardranken, of which Frans Hals and his brother Dirck were the same year elected honorary mem bers. He moved almost immediately to The Hague, how ever; for the following year, 1618, his name is found on the rolls of the Guild of that city. Perhaps, it is sug gested, he may have been attracted there by the pres ence of the art-loving warrior, Prince Maurice, of whom he gradually became the favorite painter. On the death of Maurice he continued to enjoy the favor of his suc cessor, Prince Frederick Henry, who displayed a still more marked taste for the fine arts, and he painted many pictures representing military incidents and scenes of court life for this patron. Of these the most important, perhaps, is the Surrender of Bois-le-Duc (1629), which, painted in a mood of patriotic fervor, shows the Spanish garrison evacuating the town, in great haste and disarray. A year after painting this picture, Esaias van de Velde, scarcely forty years old, and in the full ma turity of his talent, died at The Hague, where he was buried on the 18th of November, 1630. With him dis- 1 Les Van de Velde. Emile Michel. P. 10. 5 appeared one of the most memorable artists of the initial period of the Dutch school, belonging as has been said, to that group of precursors who, with Mierevelt, Moreelse, Ravesteyn, Keyser and Molyn, found in the contemporary life and the natural aspect of their country, subjects for study to which they attached themselves exclusively, and which, through sheer force of sincerity and talent, they were able to render interesting. As a painter he covered a wide range. Historic scenes, "conversations," landscapes — every vital interest of that time, every aspect of nature, found a place in his work. Nor was he a painter only. During his prentice days he acquired the craft of the etcher and engraver, and while yet at Haarlem published several plates, either after the works of his contemporary, Willem Buytewech, whose drawings resemble his, or after his own compositions. Here, as in his paintings, he found inspiration exclusively in the life about him. "Cos tumes, diversions, memorable events, or slight incidents of daily life. Buytewech and van de Velde both alike record all that interested them, and their work forms for us to-day a sort of illustrated journal, equally precious from the point of view of art and of history." Thus one plate — among the first — shows a whale stranded on the beach at Nordwyck and surrounded by a crowd of curious spectators who have come from every part of the surrounding country to enjoy the spectacle. This cannot, however, have been so very unusual, since Matham had already recorded (1591) a similar incident near Katwyck, and a later engraving (1617), by Buy tewech, shows a third dead whale somewhere between the latter place and Scheveningen. It was after a drawing by Buytewech that Esaias van 6 Esaias van de Velde. A Farm Size of the original etching, 4% X 6% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston de Velde etched the plate, very rare to-day, which pre serves for us the memory of an assassination that made a great stir at the time, owing to the prominence both of the victim and of his murderers. The former was a rich Amsterdam goldsmith named Jan van Weely, who was also a painter and one of the most distinguished connois seurs and collectors of the period. One day, when van Weely had come to The Hague to bring some jewels in tended for the Court, a certain Jan van Parys, valet de chambre, and his accomplice, Jan de la Vigne, cadet of Prince Maurice's guards, threw themselves upon the un happy merchant and cut his throat, in order to secure the jewels. Esaias' plate, divided into several compart ments, reproduces diverse scenes connected with this brutal outrage : the death of Jan van Weely and the dis covery of his body in a side street; the portraits of the two assassins, with their names; and finally their exe cution at The Hague, in the presence of a great crowd. Later Esaias etched a plate showing the breaking of the dyke at Leek, in the outskirts of Utrecht, on the 10th of January, 1624, which inundated a great extent of country, and whose effects were felt even in the streets of Amsterdam. "In these various works," writes M. Michel, "Esaias appears as a scrupulous observer of reality. However, his preoccupation with scrupulous exactitude is little favorable to the artistic expression of the episodes he has treated and the very clear but somewhat dry notation to which he has recourse would give but a very insuffi cient idea of his talent." Still, there is much that is delightful, even from the strictly artistic standpoint, in many of Esaias' plates, and especially in the earliest of them all, the series of little Esaias van de Velde. Winter Landscape Size of the original drawing, 5% X 7% inches In the Royal Print Room, Amsterdam landscapes the motives of which are said to be derived from the country about the artist's home in the neigh borhood of Haarlem. " Somewhat elementary " these mo tives are, it is true. The tree forms, in particular, are rudi mentary in the extreme, and the artist makes hardly any attempt to represent foliage. But there is a style, a dis tinction, in the simple outline indications of this true ob server, that is often lacking in the far more accomplished work of many of his successors. Moreover, the mere ab sence of leaves does not really matter so very much after all, since this merely means the choice of one season instead of another, and Esaias van de Velde's plates always seem charged with the crisp, clear, wholesome, vigorous, and invigorating spirit of winter. In one he makes bare tree-tops toss and sway violently in a fierce wind that sweeps across the flat, unbroken Dutch fields, and in another he gives us one of those characteristic skating scenes that extend over the entire period of Dutch etching, and make us, through their suggestive line, almost feel the cold, brittle texture of the ice, as well as hear the merry ring of the skates as all — small boys and sturdy burghers alike — skim lightly over the smooth surface of the canals and frozen water-meadows. Surely Esaias van de Velde, while far from being one of the great etchers of Dutch landscape, is a worthy pioneer of the movement, and has in all his work truth, honesty 6f purpose, excellent feeling for design, and a certain quaint, homely charm, to commend him. II The second son of Jan van de Velde, the calligrapher, was also called Jan. He was probably born in Rotter- 10 Esaias van de Velde. Skaters Size of the original etching, 4% X 6% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston dam between 1595 and 1597, but his father sent him to Haarlem to study with the famous engraver and pen- draughtsman, Jacob Matham, stepson of the still more celebrated handler of the burin, Goltzius. Three letters addressed by Jan the Elder, to his son during the latter's apprenticeship have been preserved — one from 1613, the other two from 1617 — and they are of the highest value and interest, not only because of the information they afford concerning the family of the van de Veldes, but also because of the light they shed on the manners and customs of the period. From Rot terdam, where he was still living, the old schoolmaster sends his son good advice, and exhoits him to practise the severest economy. He does not want to cut down the term of Jan's apprenticeship, but this entails heavy sac rifices, and there are times when the school brings in little money. He is anxious, therefore, that Jan, when not actually engaged in his studies or in helping his master, according to the terms of their agreement, should find leisure for some lucrative employment; but he dares not speak openly of this for fear it might be misinterpreted by Matham. Meanwhile he himself seeks to make a little money in Haarlem by sending to a friend there, — a schoolmaster like himself, named Gillam, — through his son, an album of handwriting speci mens containing about one hundred sheets, for which he hopes to get one hundred florins. For he thinks a florin a sheet a very modest price to put upon his wares. With the news and remembrances of the family, he sends also from time to time to Matham's boarder a little money, new shoes to be called for at the boatman's, or a pair of sleeves made for him by his mother. She, to soften as far as she can the fife of the exile, sends him 12 Jan van de Velde. Summer. From "The Four Seasons" Size of the original etching, 11% X 17 inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston "four florins and one sou," while awaiting his visit. Jan's prentice work is placed by his father, for trifling sums, it is true, "but something has to be sacrificed in order to become known, and later he will earn more. . . . Let him do his best to perfect himself in the meantime, seeking rather to progress in his art than to make money immediately, without, however, neglecting the slight op portunities that come to him." Then, after renewing his counsels on the score of economy, for "he has many ex penses and business is bad," the good father insists upon the necessity of advancing in his studies, so as to be able to engrave his own compositions; " since it is better to invent than to copy others." He ends with a recom mendation to his son to "fear the Lord and remain vir tuous; in this way he will be happy and will be regarded with favor by God and all good people." These sage counsels were faithfully followed, and Jan II no doubt all his life adhered to the orderly and laborious habits thus contracted in his early years, or he could never have produced the vast amount of work executed by him. This appears to have been entirely, or almost entirely, as etcher, engraver and pen-draughtsman. For, while there are many drawings and numberless engrav ings signed with his name, there are in existence to-day no paintings known certainly to be from his hand. It is above all as an etcher and engraver that he is remembered, and the catalogue1 of his work compiled by Franken and van der Kellen contains no fewer than five hundred pieces. All kinds of subjects are here represented : portraits, landscapes, allegories, scenes from contemporary life, illustrations for descriptive works, 1 L'(Euvre de Jan Van de Velde. D. Franken et J. Ph. van der Kellen. Amsterdam ; Frederik Muller et Cie. Paris; Rapilly. 1883. 14 TJ-ra. jmi oHmtat o/u/M mantra. nmr~> v ~ l^rryt'am multn Jjutrtum ¦traJmlrrcmdA \UUxmiict ¦ n-/ija.-m/nmni 'uhuhu -l/J-t^ ¦£ \* f,-. / ¦„. W1 .;,,¦ L^' I i_y (, t ' "' 3, Jan van de Velde (Aetee Moses van Uytenbboeck). Tobias and the Angel Size of the original etching, 6% X 8% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts. Boston designs for contemporary etchers, and even made some plates himself. It is hard to explain the motives of such a theft. M. Scheikevitch, writing in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, argues very plausibly, that a well-known name like Buy tewech would be much more effective in selling the prints than that of an artist like Elsheimer, who, however honored by the artists themselves, had not as yet ac quired a reputation among the print-buyers of the Low Countries. He offers also the interesting suggestion that van de Velde's plate, The Sorceress, in the same style, was similarly "lifted" from Elsheimer, and identifies it tentatively with a plate called Maga, which, from con temporary accounts, Elsheimer is known to have exe cuted, but of which no impression is now known to exist. Moses van Uijtenbroeck, another artist who made designs for Jan van de Velde to execute, was also strongly influenced by Elsheimer. One whole series of plates drawn by him, and etched by van de Velde, is devoted to scenes from the life of Tobias — a favorite subject for all Elsheimer's friends and followers, and constituting, as it were, a sign manual of the school he established. Elsheimer's original picture, which started the whole movement, was, moreover, engraved by that picturesque artist and amateur, Hendrik Goudt, of Utrecht, Count Palatine, the artist's principal friend, patron, and protector at Rome. II In spite of the powerful stimulus which he gave both to landscape painting and landscape etching in the Low Countries, Elsheimer himself was scarcely a land- 71 ~I to COHNELIS POELENBERG. ViEW OF THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AND GROTTO OF NEPTUNE, AT TlVOLI Size of the original drawing, Q% X 10% inches In the Uffizi, Florence scape artist in the stricter sense. In his work, as in that of most of his immediate followers, the landscape in terest, great as this is, remains subordinate to that of the figures. It is the story, the incident, the episode, that counts. But, at the same time, the landscape setting is given an importance, a prominence, that it had not had before. As has been said, this landscape, instead of being invented by the artist, was drawn directly from actual observation, and so had a fresh and seductive air of truth and reality. At the same time, his predilection for Italian scenes, which he peopled with the stock figures of classical mythology, and bathed with the tender tones of that twilight illumination of which he had discovered the secret, created a special taste for the sentimental and picturesque among his contemporaries, and was the chief factor in the development of that Italianized school of Dutch landscape which grew up in the seven teenth century, alongside the native school, and which even claimed, in part at least, many men who had never been in Italy — like, as we have seen, Adriaen van de Velde. This "Arcadian school," as Dr. Wilhelm Bode calls it, had its immediate beginnings in the work of Cornells Poelenberg, a painter of Utrecht, who was a pupil of Bloemaert, before he became a follower of Elsheimer, and who, although he etched little himself, is connected with the etching school of the period through the reproduc tion of some of his pictures by his friend, Jan Gerritz Bronchorst. Poelenberg was enjoying great popularity in Rome when Claude arrived there in 1627, and no doubt had his share in forming the style of that artist, in whom the school achieved its fullest and finest ex pression. 73 Claude Gellee. Le Bouvieb Size of the original etching, V/a X 7% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Most landscape art, as we know it to-day, has nature as its subject. For Claude, however, its subject, para doxical as the statement may seem, its subject was man. This does not mean that the first place is held in his pic tures by the human figures they contain. On the con trary, such figures are of far less relative importance than they are in the pictures of his master, Elsheimer — be come, indeed, mere staffage designed to fill the land scape, and complete it. Nor does it mean that he was any less attentive to the phenomena of the external world than another artist, such as Ruysdael or Rem brandt, even; for Claude carried very much farther Els heimer's budding interest in the real world about him, and we know from the Liber Veritatis how closely and systematically he studied and sought to capture the least variations of light on the broad, flat spread of the Roman Campagna. But these studies were, for Claude, after all, but a means to an end, this end being the representa tion of nature, not exactly as he saw it, with his eyes, but as he loved to recreate and contemplate it in an ideal world of his imagining. Poets at all times have dreamed of a Golden Age, and have sought to realize it in their art by means of tangible signs and symbols. For Claude, who was such a poet, as painter and etcher, this Golden Age of man was the clas sical age of the past, of which some material evidences still remained to aid the dreamer in his work of recon struction — ¦ far more, indeed, than at the present day. Then there was classical literature also — the "Ec logues " of Virgil and the "Idyls " of Theocritus — which itself breathed a spirit of serenity, of tranquillity, of elevation, of remoteness from the mere vulgar concerns of common fife. Claude's noble and uplifted art is as 75 02 Claude Gellee. Dance by the Wateeside Size of the original etching, 4% X 7% inches In the Museum of Kne Arts, Boston nearly as possible the pictorial equivalent of this classic literature; and for us, even if it misses, through the deliberate care with which it is composed, something of the freshness and spontaneity which we are accustomed to require of the greatest landscape art, it still has power to express, as no other can, certain moods of man's more subtly refined and intellectualized emotional experience — his dreams, and his desires for the ideal. If Claude's appeal is still felt to-day, in spite of the great change that has come over our ideas of landscape art, in general, one can realize how powerful this appeal must have been to a generation thoroughly prepared to accept his ideas and his sentiments. The influence of Elsheimer, on its more immediate and superficial side, which continued to be felt long after his death, was thus powerfully reinforced by this young apostle of the serene classic spirit, whose fame, quickly acquired, spread from Rome all over the world, tempting more and more young men to take the road to the world's capital. Some, already there, who had formed part of Els heimer's circle, came, in turn, under his spell, like Pieter de Laer, who made at least one landscape etching in the style of the master. Bartolomeus Breenbergh, who arrived in Rome in 1620, the year of Elsheimer's death, and left in 1627, the year of Claude's arrival, returned there later, and published, in 1640, a set of small prints etched with an exceedingly fine needle. Berchem, one of the best known Dutch etchers of the seventeenth cen tury, who had studied with Pieter de Laer, and who spent most of his life making studies of the peasants of the Roman Campagna, came later, and he was followed by his pupil, the animalier, Karel du Jardin. Herman van Swanevelt was perhaps the most prolific producer 77 00 Claude Gellee. The Herd in the Storm Size of the original etching, 6}4 X 8% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston of the entire group in the field of etching. But he was far inferior to his fellow-countryman, Jan Both, in whom the "Arcadian school" found a representative second only to Claude himself. It is significant that Both, like Goudt, like Poelenberg — like Breenbergh, too, according to some accounts — was born in Utrecht. For, just as, in the gradual de velopment of Dutch art, with its dual strain or tenden cies, Haarlem became the centre of the more radical, native school, composed of men like Goyen, Molyn, the van de Veldes; so, in the same way, this other city, keep ing closer contact with the older culture and civilization to the south and east, gathered to itself the persisting classical, conservative elements, and became the head quarters of the Italianate art and influences. Both, born in 1620, could hardly have come into any very close personal relations with Goudt, who died in 1630. But he studied under Abraham Bloemaert, who had also taught Poelenberg, and who himself had studied in Paris. So it was natural that, when sufficiently ad vanced in his studies, he should have looked abroad for further instruction, and set forth in due course for France and Italy. He travelled with his brother, Andries, a year older, who had also studied under Bloemaert. The brothers seem to have had a remarkable affection for each other, and they collaborated in the first pictures they painted on Italian soil. In these pictures the landscape was ex ecuted by Jan, who immediately came under the spell of Claude, at Rome, the figures being introduced by Andries, who had studied the works of Bamboccio. The talent of the brothers, working together in this way, in perfect harmony and unison, attracted instant 79 Jan Both. Landscape with an Ox-Cart Size of the original etching, 10 X 7% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 80 attention, and they won both fame and fortune. In directly, no doubt, their success was the immediate cause of the fate which shortly overtook them, and put a sad end to this fraternal partnership. For, without it, they would scarcely have left Rome to visit Venice, where, their means permitting them to indulge in the festivities of that gay capital, as Guardi and Canaletto showed it to us, little changed, no doubt, a century or so later, Andries fell one night from their gondola, when returning from an entertainment, and was drowned in the canal. The account of the incident is meagre in its details, and permits us merely to guess at the condi tion of the young burgher artist, at the time. Jan did not remain long in Italy after his brother's death, but returned to Utrecht, where he is said to have endeavored to supply his artistic loss by having Poelen berg paint the figures in his landscapes. Both Jan and Andries etched. The latter produced some thirteen plates, all figure studies — including the items enumerated in Weigel's supplement to Bartsch — while Jan executed fifteen, ten of them being landscapes with figures. The remaining five are devoted to the il lustration of "The Five Senses of Man," one of those suites to which, as we have seen in the case of Jan van de Velde, the Dutch taste was so strongly attracted at that time. But it is by his landscape etchings, so few in number, yet so beautiful in quality, that Jan Both will be remembered. "From Claude," writes Mr. Binyon, "Both had learned how to produce, with a nice management of the acid, an exquisite softness in his distances. The at mosphere is limpid and bathed in sunshine, and the foregrounds are suggested with that fight touch §1 82 and selection of detail which are first requisites in an etching." It is, however, as difficult for the student to judge of Both in the impressions ordinarily seen of his work, as it is of Ruysdael, and for the same reason. The publisher, to complete what the artist had, with sure tact, inten tionally left unfinished, defaced the plates, in their sec ond state, by ruling lines across the sky and so destroying a large share of their delightful atmospheric quality and suggestion. But, even with this drawback, Both's prints are most agreeable to contemplate, and combine, to a degree unusual in etching, carefully planned pictorial qualities with perfect freedom and taste in execution. With Both, as has already been said, we reach the culmination of this alien and exotic school of Dutch etching, which, taking its inspiration from foreign artists and from the Italian soil, long flourished on home ground. There it came, in the course of time, to supplant, to a greater or lesser degree, the purely native school, with its often rude but always racy note, infecting even such sound local etchers as Adriaen van de Velde and Antoni Waterloo. In the latter it is interesting to note the two currents running along, side by side, in separate series — those in which he, too, attempts the interpre tation of Biblical and mythological scenes in an idyllic landscape, and those, far more interesting and suc cessful, in which he gives us, without the least subter fuge or affectation, his quiet little glimpses of the pleasant Dutch countryside. But Waterloo, who re mained up to the early years of the last century the representative Dutch landscape etcher of his age, still remains too considerable a figure to be presented in this summary way at the end of an article on a school 83 CO Jan Both. Stone Beidge (Ponte Molle, neae Rome) Size of the original etching, 7% X 10% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston with which he had only a casual connection. He de serves fuller, more individual treatment, and we shall hope, at some future time( to make him the subject of another article, dealing exclusively with his own pleasant and restful, if somewhat shallow and super ficial, art. ZEEMAN AND BACKHUYSEN kEYNIER NOOMS, or Zeeman, as he was called by his contemporaries, because of his fondness for marine subjects, has a double interest and significance for us to-day. In the first place, he was one of the most accomplished etchers of his time in Holland — easily the first among those who made a specialty of ships and shipping. In the second, after two hundred years, he became the master of Charles Meryon, who attached the highest impor tance to his work, studied and copied it with the closest attention, and, finally, dedicated to him his own series of " Eaux-Fortes sur Paris." The dedication took the form of a poem, which Meryon also etched on copper and printed as a separate sheet. In it his admiration and al most, it would seem, his personal affection, for the Dutch etcher finds expression, and he makes graceful acknowl edgement of his indebtedness in the following lines : — "Of this first work and new, Where I have Paris shown — A ship adorns her banner — And tried to make my own My master's simple manner, Accept the homage due," ending with the fervent apostrophe and prayer: — CO iL^jyi gaps Reynieb Zeeman. Skating Scene Size of the original etching, 5X9 inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston "My master and man of the sea, Reynier, thou whom I love Like another part of me, May I see thee soon above!" * A curious thing about this dedicatory poem is that there is in it no reference to Zeeman as an architectural etcher, though it was one of his plates in a series of Paris views — Le Pavilion de Mademoiselle et une Partie du Louvre — that originally attracted Meryon — that even crystallized his vague notion of executing a similar series ' of his own on the same subject, as he himself states in the course of the notes, entitled "Mes Observa tions. . . ," which he jotted down on the margins of Burty's catalogue of his etchings. "This first plate," he writes, "has had a notable in fluence upon me. I came upon it one day, while going through a box of etchings at Vigneres', and it immedi ately arrested my attention, as much because of the interest of the things represented, as of the brilliance of its execution, the life that lends gayety to the whole scene. I seized upon it at once with the intention of re producing it for my own greater enjoyment; and from that very moment I conceived the project that I was then vaguely meditating, of undertaking a series of views of Paris, of my own selection, of which, in my mind, La Pompe N.D. was to be the first." Meryon's admiration for Zeeman is further amplified and justified in the continuation of the above: — "As I have already had occasion to say in several cir cumstances, these copies after Zeeman, a master aqua fortist to whom I attach the highest importance, have 1 " Charles Meryon, Poet." By William Aspenwall Bradley. The Print-Collector's Quarterly, October, 1913, pp. 336-64. mM --^^«^|Jff^ COCO 7/Vr m kornen yant yoorharch S. J/arJiau tat Parys Reyniee Zeeman. Enteance to the Faubourg St. Maeceatj, Paeis Size of the original etching, 5% X 9% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston not . . . anywhere the naivete^ the spirit, the freshness, which distinguish the originals. At that time I did not know this artist's manner of etching, to which attentive examination of his works initiated, me shortly after wards. I made these four views of Paris, as well as the little marines . . . above all with the aim of acquiring the knowledge I needed of the methods of the art. It was thus that, in the water-mill of Saint Denis [Un Moulin d eau pres de Saint-Denis] I proposed to push the action of the acid as far as possible: whence comes the excessive vigor, the heaviness, of this plate." The other plates by Zeeman mentioned above were Entree du Faubourg Saint-Mar ceau, d Paris, and La Riviere de Seine et l' Angle du Mail, a Paris, in the same set as the two others, while the little marines were Jan van Vyl's Galiot, at Rotterdam; Haarlem Boats at Amster dam; Zuyderzee Fishermen, and Passengers from Calais to Flushing. Meryon's copies are, of course, reversed from Zeeman's originals, which, despite the French art ist's modest disclaimer, they not infrequently surpass in strength, completeness, and solidity of construction. A mastery of the medium is already beginning to mani fest itself, to which the Dutch etcher could never attain. Yet Zeeman himself was a skillful etcher, worthy of all the praise Meryon bestowed upon him. Without a trace of the genius of Rembrandt, who was considerably his elder, he has, nevertheless, in his best work, a truth of observation and rendering, coupled with a charm and purity of linear style, that puts him in the very front rank of craftsmen on copper. 90 Ltjdolf Bacehtttsen. Marine, -with a City in the Background Size of the original etching, 7 X Ws inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston II Of Zeeman, the man, virtually nothing is known — less, even, than of Ruysdael. The very place of his birth is a mystery, but there seems no particular reason to doubt that he was born in Holland, and the date is generally placed about 1623. The inscription on the first of a series of marine views (B. 23-38) proves that he was living in Amsterdam in 1656, and presumably he worked there the greater part of his life, judging by the number of the views of that city and its shipping which he executed. Heinecken reports that he was at first a simple sailor, but that his genius led him to desert that calling and apply himself to painting. In this respect, of course, his career was, later, closely paralleled by that of Meryon, his pupil, who resigned his commission as a lieutenant in the French navy, to devote himself to the practice of his art. According to the same authority, Zeeman once spent a long time in Berlin. Certainly the Paris views (B. 55-62) make it clear that he visited France, while a second series of marines (B. 107-118), which carry the address of a London publisher, Tooker, seem to indicate that he may have visited England as well; though, as a matter of fact, there is nothing abso lutely conclusive in the addresses of publishers at that period, since the copper plates were often bought and passed on from publisher to publisher, after they had once left the hands of the artist. As an etcher, Zeeman was most prolific, and it has been difficult to determine the exact number of his plates. Bartsch enumerates 154, but Dutuit raises this to 179, including those described in the Rigal catalogue and in Weigel's supplement to Bartsch, as well as two that had 92 Reynier Zeeman. Marine Piece Size of the original etching, 7% X 11% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston not been attributed to Zeeman by any previous writer. These large portraits of the Dutch admirals, Ruyter and van Galen, were engraved by Motizyn; but both contain, in the lower portion of the plate, the same little repre sentation of a naval battle, etched by Zeeman. It will be recalled, in this connection, that Willem van de Velde the Elder was also in the habit of supplying marine views to be similarly used as pendants to the portrait engravings of his contemporaries; though, unlike Zee- man, he did not etch or engrave these himself. The above portraits seem originally to have formed part of a series of four, of which the two others rep resented Martin Harpertsz Tromp, killed in a battle with the English, and Cornelius Tromp, his son. The last was the only one of the quartette who did not die a violent death. Zeeman also collaborated with Mou- zyn on an Apotheosis of Admiral Harpertsz Tromp, in which the naval hero is represented as being borne on a fiery chariot to the gates of Eternity, by Renown and Death. Zeeman's share is, however, here also limited to the view, in the lower part of the plate, of the naval battle of August 7, 1653, near Scheveningen, in which Tromp lost his life. Naval battles, indeed, form no inconsiderable element in Zeeman's work, as they did in that of both the Willem van de Veldes — not unnaturally, when one considers how often the little Republic was at war with her mighty rivals, France and England, in the second half of the seventeenth century, just at the time when Dutch art, including etching, was at its height. Thus three small plates, of the utmost rarity — they are cited in the Marcus Catalogue, Amsterdam, 1770, but neither Bartsch nor Dutuit had ever seen them — represent 94 Reynieb Zeeman. De Stadts-Herbergh Size of the original etching, 7ys X 12V's inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston " The Naval Battles, Forever Memorable, of the Admi rals de Ruyter, Tromp, and Bankert, June 7 and 14 and August 21, 1673, against the Anglo-French Fleet." One whole series (B. 99-106) is devoted entirely to the theme of naval warfare, though, as the title, "Nouvelles in ventions de combats Navaeles," inscribed on a ban- derolle, indicates, these plates do not represent any particular historic scenes. Doubtless the commanders could be prevailed upon, in their hours of leisure, to put their vessels through their paces to please the popular artist, who so flattered the national pride. Perhaps they were even under instructions from the Admiralty to do what they could to facilitate his efforts, as in the case of the van de Veldes. Like them, Zeeman may possibly have held some official position in the pay of that de partment, for the fuller enlightenment of his fellow- countrymen as to what was going on in the fleet and on the high seas. One can imagine how stimulating to the tax-payer might prove such a print as the one (B. 167) showing a naval battle at the very critical moment of the engagement. In the foreground, towards the left, floats the dismantled hulk of a ship, beyond which five other ships are shown enveloped in smoke. One is dis charging its broadside. Probably this plate also be longed to a series of which the others are missing. On the whole, however, Zeeman finds his distinctive field in the more peaceful employments of the Dutch sailors of his time. Just as the two van de Veldes, father and son, unfold for us a great panorama of Holland's naval glory in the seventeenth century, so Zeeman de lights to give a detailed picture of her maritime suprem acy in other ways. Although he himself has composed several cantos in the great epic of sea-warfare waged by 96 CD Reyniee Zeeman. Old Gate oe St. Beenaed, Pasts Size of the original etching", 5% X 9% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston his country for the maintenance of that supremacy, and although his battle pieces have something of the magnif icence of the old sea-fights, he is above all the laureate of the Dutch merchant marine, and he loves to show us the stout ships, the sturdy sailors, the sandy shore, and the well-built ports of the prosperous cities. One whole series, of eight plates, is devoted to the depic tion of " The Ports of the City of Amsterdam " (B. 1 19- 126), and here Zeeman is particularly happy in being able to combine the two motives — shipping and archi tecture — in the treatment of which he particularly ex celled. In this delightful series the stir and bustle of harbor life are admirably indicated, with a suggestion of that sentiment of adventure and romance, which always pervades such places. Perhaps the most attractive and successful of the plates is the one representing De Stadts-Herbergh, which also serves as the title-piece for the entire set. All the foreground is occupied by a canal, bordered on the right by a wooden pier with a railing. In the middle stands a large building — possi bly a Customs House — above the steep roof of which rise clumps of masts with flags, rigging, and spars, across nearly the entire background. At the left there is a drawbridge of quaint construction, with glimpses of other buildings in the distance. On the canal are seen a couple of small boats, while everywhere — in the boats, on the pier, on the drawbridge — men are rowing, crab bing, walking, leaning against the railing, or standing about and talking in little groups. An air of life, active but without excitement, pervades the whole plate, and this is heightened by the bright ripple running along the water stirred by a breeze which flaps the sails, streams out the flags gayly, and whips the ropes of the rigging, whose carefully studied lines and loops, caught up into an intricate and interesting pattern, gives quite a Whistlerian note to the composition. This plate is all the better for having but slight indication of sky and cloud — Zeeman's peculiar weakness as an etcher. Of similar interest, though of less significance artisti cally, is the series, referred to above (B. 107-118), of which the title-print bears the words: Quelque port de Meer faicts par R. N. Zeeman A. amsterdam A. 1666, written on a signboard leaning against a barrel in the left foreground. Here, however, the port, apparently, is not that of a great city, like Amsterdam, but of some smaller coast town, where the ships lie in a roadstead dominated by high, precipitous cliffs, and the loading and unloading of the small boats is done on the low, sandy shore, below the battlements. Here again we have the air of bustling activity in the carefully worked out movements of individualized sailors and roustabouts, and in the coming and going of craft, large and small, across the face of the water, sometimes with sails hang ing idly, as if in a calm, sometimes with a fair wind fill ing them. In one, the scene has a semi-warlike aspect. Two men-of-war have been in port, and now they are evidently about to put out to sea again. Both are firing salutes, and the smoke drifts away from the mouths of the guns, in large round clouds, while the sailors aloft unfurl the sails. On shore, a group of officers bid a fond farewell to their female companions, before embarking in the tender, in the stern of which a seated sailor blows a recall on his trumpet. A second boat, filled with men, has, meanwhile, almost reached the first ship, and a sailor stands ready in the bow to lay her alongside with 99 oo Reyniee Zeeman. Hittligewechs Pooet Size of the original etching, 6% X 11% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston his landing-hook. It is a gay and animated little picture, with, at the same time, something mellow and medita tive about it, produced in part, perhaps, by the sunset hour of departure. A third series, entitled "Different Vessels of Amster dam" (B. 63-98), contains, incidentally, several views of that city, including the interesting print, architectur ally, of The Block House, which shows the canal in the foreground frozen over, and everything on runners — ¦ even a small boat, which is careering along under full sail — a novel species of improvised ice-boat. But the main interest of this series, as the title indicates, lies in the various pictures of the ships themselves, shown sometimes two on a plate. "Ships, with their ordered intricacy of rigging and their mysterious beauty, have an endless fascination for him (Zeeman)," writes Mr. Binyon, and he has here indulged to the full his delight in their representation. Everything, from the great Black Bear of the far-away Greenland service, to the humble fishing smack and the galiot, — like the one in which the van de Veldes followed the manoeuvres of the Dutch fleet, — finds a place here, and the series as a whole is of infinite interest for those who share Mr. Masefield's enthusiasm for ships and shipping — find a poetic charm in everything that pertains to their past history. Zeeman is no snob or aristocrat, as his fellow etcher Backhuysen was inclined to be, and he treats all types with equal zest and sympathy. "His men-of-war move with royal stateliness," but "equally good in their way are plates like the fishing boats (B. 38) setting out at morning over the still sea, bathed in a wash of limpid air and sunshine." This atmospheric quality is one of the great charms of 101 oto Reyniee Zeeman. A Sea-Poht Size of the original etching, 7% X 11% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Zeeman's prints, when they are seen in good impressions. The lighting effects and the shadows are always care fully observed, so that often it appears possible to tell the precise time of day indicated. The skies alone are bad. Unlike Both and Ruysdael, Zeeman did not have the tact to perceive that the white paper was able to give a far greater effect of sunlight and spaciousness than any number of criss-cross lines, and his clouds have too mas sive a bulk, too hard and definite a contour. It is possi ble, however, that these may, in part, at least, have been executed by another hand. Mention must also be made, in this connection, of Zeeman's skill in suggesting the brittle texture of ice in the delightful scene of skaters on a frozen canal (D. 155). Here the ruled lines on the surface of the ice itself are as suited to their purpose as they are hard and unsatis factory when transferred to the sky. The subject, of course, was an exceedingly popular one in Dutch art, and reminds us of the delightful passage describing a similar scene in Pater's "Sebastian van Storck." Ill Zeeman's only serious rival as an etcher of marine subjects among the Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, is Ludolf Backhuysen. Backhuysen's life is recorded with a fullness of detail that contrasts with the blank confronting us in the case of Zeeman. Born at Embden, in 1631, like Ruysdael he did not immedi ately become an artist, but, until he was eighteen, held a post under his father, who was secretary of the States General. The beauty of his handwriting, and his skill in keeping accounts, brought him the offer of a position 103 with a merchant in Amsterdam. There, at the age of nineteen, he started on his artistic career, with the instru ment to the use of which he was already accustomed, namely, his pen. "His master was nature," says the old account. "Amsterdam offered him the spectacle of a port con stantly filled with vessels : it was these vessels that he drew, and his drawings often brought him a hundred florins and even more. He was advised to paint and, taking Allardt van Everdingen as his master, he learned the secrets of art, while continuing to appropriate those of nature. To surprise these last, he was not afraid to affront the greatest dangers, and, trusting himself to frail barks, he went to study the storms amid the wildest waves, ready to engulf him. Often he was forced to re turn by the sailors, who refused to share his audacity. Then, as soon as he reached shore, without suffering any thing to distract him for an instant, without looking at anything or speaking to anybody, he ran to his studio and threw upon the canvas the horrors that had so recently aroused his wonder and admiration." Backhuysen's paintings were tremendously popular in his own time, and the burgomasters of Amsterdam ordered a big marine from him as a present for Louis XIV of France. But though becoming a painter, and a highly successful one, he did not cease, at the same time, to be a penman. He was the best calligrapher in Amster dam, and, like the eldest van de Velde, father of Jan and Esaias, and founder of the family on Dutch soil, he gave lessons in the art. To fix its principles, he even invented a method, and this method is said to have sur vived him many years. Besides his penmanship, which, as his biographer complains, took much precious time 104 o at Reynier Zeeman. Plaice Boats or Pinkies Size of the original etching, 5*/$ X 9^4 inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from his painting, his leisure hours were devoted to poetry, and he numbered among his friends the best poets and the most celebrated savants of his time. He died at Am sterdam, in 1708, at the advanced age of seventy-eight. He was already seventy-one when he executed the thirteen, and perhaps fifteen, plates which are credited to him — an instance of belated activity, in a new me dium, comparable to that of Corot, who made his dozen lithographs at about the same age. But Backhuysen's etchings, though produced so late in life, are neither languid nor feeble. On the contrary, the artist's great ships, with their whipping flags and their swelling sails, while perhaps a trifle theatrical as compared with Zee- man's, are even more tinged with the golden glory of romance. There is something less Dutch, one feels, than English and Elizabethan about them. "No one, till Turner came," says Mr. Binyon, "suc ceeded at all in painting the mass and weight of water as the tides move it in deep seas." But although Turner may surpass them in the rendering of the water itself, both Zeeman and Backhuysen remain superior to him in the interpretation of that life which moves upon it in sturdy keels. In Turner's pictures, the ships generally seem mere accessories to the marine subject — like the human staffage of Claude's landscapes — and are quite evidently studied with no particular sympathy or close ness of observation. For the two Dutch artists, on the contrary, the ships are clearly the principal objects of interest, the sea itself being the accessory in their case, though both render quite adequately for their purposes, the short, sharp chop of the shallow Dutch waters — particularly Zeeman, who is notably superior, in this respect, to Backhuysen. 106 o ^1 Reyniee Zeeman. The Blockhouses Size of the original etching, 5% X 93A inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Where both excel is in the suggestion of the buoyancy of their barks, of their sensitive and varied response to the elements of which they are at once the playthings and the conquerors, through man's ingenuity. Each picture, one feels, however slight, is the result of close and thorough preliminary observation. And if this is true in the case of individual vessels, it is even more striking where the problem is to show a number of ships in their varied, yet consistent, reaction to wind and wave. We never see here, as we do occasionally in Turner's pictures, one ship in violent motion during a gale, while the others ride at anchor almost as quietly as if there were a dead calm. A single spirit inspires the whole scene, and each individual vessel shares in it. Thus both Zeeman's and Backhuysen's ships seem to us vital, sentient creatures, like the ships of few other artists whom we know, and give us an almost mythic impression of elemental life — as though these fabrics, made by men's hands, were really the offspring of the old sea-monsters, so often represented by Backhuysen on his steering-boards, and sometimes, fancifully, in the water itself. Studied as they are, in all the detail of their rigging — though the effect is never baldly realis tic — they have, each of them, an individual expression, a physiognomy, of their own, and Backhuysen's, in par ticular, through some magic of arrangement in ropes and spars, often give an effect of sheer fantasy that is fasci nating. In short these two artists express a sentiment rarely encountered in pictorial art, although it is common enough in poetry — especially in English poetry. Kip ling and Masefield both have it among the moderns. So has the latest of them all — the young English poet, 108 oCD Ludolf Backhuysen. Maeine Piece Size of the original etching, 67/s X 9ys inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston so lately dead, James Elroy Flecker, who, in his poem entitled " The Old Ships," has written, with such en chantment, of vessels still older than those of our Dutch artists: — "I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep Beyond the village which men still call Tyre.'' The ships of Zeeman and Backhuysen are like eagles, rather than swans, as they sweep along under full sail. But often they, too, are so superb, so magical, that one half expects, with the same poet, to see their masts "burst open with a rose, And the whole deck put on its leaves again. '' ANTONI WATERLOO A S in the case of so many Dutch etchers, — and /\\ of two with whom we have dealt particularly, / >\ Zeeman and Ruysdael, — almost nothing is A. Jv known of the life of Antoni Waterloo, and this is the more remarkable in that there is perhaps no other landscape etcher of the period who tells us so much about himself through his work: the places that he liked, the villages that he visited, the views that he admired, the roads that he rambled along, the folks that he met there going about their business or idling in the shade. He tells us still other things too — things about his character as a man of affairs and as an artist. He was clearly an indefatigable, also a conscientious, worker, though not one of the most refined sensibility .or the deepest devotion to nature, even in those aspects that most attracted him to her; and we see that he studied the fashions and sought to follow them himself in a more sedulous manner than a really great artist would have done. For, while he never, so far as we are aware, drifted southward on "the Road to Rome," that at tracted so many of his contemporaries, he attempted, at one time of his life, to capture a little of the spirit of 111 the Italianate school, and so lost something of the " first free careless rapture" of his first work — if we can use so strong a word as "rapture" to express the quiet and sedate, though genuine and communicable, pleasure that he derived from certain characteristic aspects of the Dutch landscape. Waterloo was born in 1618, and his birthplace is given variously as Amsterdam, Utrecht, or Lille in Flanders. All that appears certain, beyond this, is that he lived a number of years somewhere between Maarsen and Breukelen, in the neighborhood of Utrecht; but even this certainty rests upon the fact that a large part of his prints are said to represent scenes in that vicinity, rather than upon any external or documentary evidence. In the same way it has been assumed that he made an excursion into the north of Germany. For, in the mu seum at Hamburg, there are several drawings signed by Waterloo, on which he has written the names of villages in the outskirts of that commercial capital. Dr. Strater, who communicated this information to Dutuit, also pointed out that the drawings for one set of prints (B. 71-76), by the same artist, as well as for several other individual etchings, seem to have been made on the banks of the Meuse, between Liege and Dinant. Waterloo was a painter as well as an etcher, but his paintings are rare to-day. Dutuit had seen but one of them — a landscape "agreeably composed and enriched with charming figures from the brush of Adriaen van de Velde" — figures being the particular bete noir and stumbling-block of Waterloo. The Dresden museum possesses two of his paintings; that at Munich three. Only one of the five is signed. Drawings by Waterloo 112 are more common, and are occasionally to be seen in the American market, as in the case of the drawing for the small plate, The Rock with a Hole in it (B. 3). But Waterloo seems to have owed his contemporary fame less to his paintings and drawings than to his etchings, of which he executed more than a hundred. Both Bartsch and Dutuit place the total number at 136, so it seems likely that we possess to-day everything, or practically everything, that he executed in that medium. This is, in itself, a remarkable circumstance, and points con clusively both to his great popularity in his own time, and to the large editions made from his various plates to meet the demand. In fact, we know from contem porary report, that he was highly successful, and that his works sold for good sums. In spite of this, the artist who may, in a sense, be called the landscape etcher par excellence of the Low Countries — the one whom the Dutch themselves regarded as their favorite in this field, and whose fame lasted longest after his death, rivalling van Ostade, an etcher of figures, in this re spect • — is said to have died in poverty, in the hospital of Saint Job in Utrecht, though another account has it that his demise occurred in Amsterdam on February 28, 1677. Only one other fact may be reasonably inferred con cerning the outward circumstances of Waterloo's life, and that is of interest since it serves to connect him in a way with the artist who was the greatest of all Dutch etchers, as Waterloo was one of the most popular • — Rembrandt. It is possible that he may have met Rem brandt at the sale of Seghers' effects in 1645. Yet even this inference hinges upon a debated point as to the au thorship of certain plates in one series (B. 89-94) which 113 were published as Waterloo's own, but which may have been the work of Seghers himself. These plates, three in number — View of a City in Holland (B. 90), The Village beside the Canal (B. 91), and The Village in the Valley (B. 93) — resemble plates by Seghers very much more than they resemble other work by Waterloo. Moreover, they are signed in a dif ferent manner from the remaining plates in the same series — A.W. exc, instead of Antoni Waterloo f. Now we know, of course, that Rembrandt bought one of Seghers' plates at this sale — a Tobias and the Angel, which he reworked, changing it into a Flight into Egypt — and there is no inherent reason why Waterloo should not have done likewise. There exists, in the museum at Amsterdam, a first state of The Village beside the Canal, without the foreground and foreground figures that Waterloo undoubtedly himself added in the second state. Dr. Strater attributes this first state unreservedly to Seghers, and we can see no reason to question this attribution. So we think the chances are all in favor of the two artists having met at this historic sale, if they had not done so a hundred times already. II One striking difference between Waterloo and nearly all the earlier Dutch landscape etchers, including Segh ers, lies in the choice and treatment of subject. When we think of the Low Countries, the first picture that presents itself to the mind's eye, is pretty certain to be the wide expanse of a flat country flecked with wind mills and farmhouses, and cut up into a more or less regular checkerboard pattern by an intricate network 114 ^!C«. Antoni Waterloo. View of a City in Holland Size of the original etching, 4% X SVs inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston of canals and hedges, and this is the way the majority of Dutch landscape artists thought of their own coun try, and saw it, till, in the field of etching, we come to Antoni Waterloo and Ruysdael. Of the former, who was the older by quite a number of years, and who may very well have exerted some influence upon the younger man in this respect, Bartsch says: — "He has seldom chosen to represent a scene of any great extent: a little corner of the forest; a part of a brook, its bank covered with verdure; a rock; an isolated village situ ated on the shore of a canal; a hermitage — such are the subjects he selects by preference," and it is to this narrowing, this restricting of the scope of his repre sentation, that Waterloo owes, in very large part, his undeniable charm as an etcher. For, if not a great artist, he is a true poet — at least when he follows the bent of his own native inspiration, and shows us the things, the scenes, in which he is really interested, in which he found a genuine appeal to his sedate sensi bility. Then his best plates become veritable little poems and, so regarded, can afford a very real and rare pleasure. Such is the case with a plate like the one entitled The Cemetery on the Water's Edge (B. 22), chosen almost at random from a portfolio of Waterloo's earlier etch ings. A picturesque group of church buildings, sur rounded by a wall, occupies the space at the left, the spire of the church itself barely showing above the steep roof of the building in the immediate foreground. In the wall opens a big door, which is reflected in the water, and on either side of this door stand two large, shapely trees. Along the towing path, in the centre of the pic ture, a horse, ridden by a man, draws a boat in the direc- 116 Antoni Waterloo. Steeple of a Village by the Sea Size of the original etching, 3% X 5% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston tion of a little village in the distance, which seems swim ming in still, limpid air and sunlight. The contrast between these distant sunlit spaces, and the cool tran quil shade of the church environs and enclosure, is pleasantly suggested, and the quiet, intimate charm of the little composition, which shows much skill in ar rangement, is incontestable. Still more attractive and interesting is the one en titled Steeple of a Village by the Sea (B. 24) in the same series of "Twelve Views." The village appears to be situated on a long headland, which reaches out into the sea across nearly the whole of the plate, and thus presents its side view to us, obliquely. Advantage is taken of the picturesque silhouette of the roofs, interspersed with trees, and dominated by the pointed spire, to make a very striking and tasteful pattern against the back ground of the delicately wrought sky, with filmy clouds. The immediate foreground is full of detail, such as the ladder leading down the steep bank to a little landing stage, where a woman, on her knees, is engaged in wash ing the clothes. There are also several boats, of which the two largest carry the line of the headland straight across the plate to its extreme limit on the right, thus completing the composition. This plate also shows great skill and feeling in the biting, and is worth studying in order to note the varying quality and texture of the lines in different parts of the plate. They are coarsest and closest in the church roofs and gables, whose dark mass is thus rendered the more monumental and effective. The Little Hamlet (B. 29), still in the same series, is such a subject as Rembrandt might have chosen — did, in fact, often choose — in his fondness for farmhouses. And though, of course, Waterloo's treatment has none of 118 Antoni Waterloo. The Little Hamlet Size of the original etching, 3% X 5% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston that master's wonderful power of abstraction and elim ination, he renders with taste and intelligence the more superficial aspect and sentiment of the rustic scene, and comes close to rivalling the work of such a modern master as Charles Jacque, in this vein of romantic pastoralism. Waterloo's romanticism took another and equally modern turn. He loved old buildings in a way that sug gests Sir Walter Scott, and, like Scott, he found them near at home. Castles and other memorials of the mid dle ages in architecture were still scattered over the Low Countries, and Waterloo gives us glimpses of them in such plates as The Man in a Cloak, and His Dog (B. 43) and The Hedge Gate under the Trees (B. 44). In the former also he has recognized the element of the pic turesque added by the modern frame building erected against the ancient masonry wall, with its arches, at the left, and the different textures of the two are well indicated. A romantic little chapel crowns the woody and rocky height in The Two Hermits (B. 47), showing clearly that religion also had its romantic side for Waterloo, in quite a modern manner, just as it had for Scott, again, in such novels as "The Monastery" and "The Abbot." Yet he was entirely catholic in his choice of subjects and, in the same series, he is as ready to show us a man beating his ass, as the two holy brethren ascending the hill to their secluded hermitage. The truth is, of course, that for Waterloo, as for Claude and Both, the human figures are in reality mere staffage designed, at most, to heighten some particular sentiment of the landscape, and generally for no more serious purpose than to observe a fading convention. He 120 Antoni Waterloo. Two Hunters Resting Size of the original etching, 6X8 inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is a landscape etcher, pure and simple, and his figures are so badly drawn, so commonplace and uncharacteris tic, that we can only wish he had left them out entirely, instead of drawing attention to them, as he so often does, in the titles. It seems grotesque that charming glimpses of woodland and roadside scenery, full of a fresh sylvan and vagabond sentiment, should be la belled as The Man and the Woman by the Little Bridge (B. 59), The Traveller and His Dog (B. 60), The Three Young Boys and Their Dogs (B. 61), The Two Horsemen (B. 63), The Two Boys and the Barking Dog (B. 64), and so on, when the figures whereby they are thus identified, are often actual blemishes, and merely serve to distract our attention from the real beauties of these plates. In his later series Waterloo tends to work on an in creasingly large scale, with a corresponding loss both in intimacy of charm and in delicacy of execution. Though certain of these large plates, like the Farmhouse by a River (B. 116) and The Great Mill (B. 119), are his most famous productions, they are by no means among the most pleasing. On the contrary, all that is coarsest and most commonplace in his facture comes most clearly to the surface in them, especially in his treat ment of trees and of foliage. There was a time, even long after his death, when Waterloo was regarded as the master of leaf and branch in etching. "Waterloo's subjects are the woods which he rendered like a veritable master," writes Bartsch; "all the truth of nature is found here, above all in the foliage, which he interpreted in an admirable manner." But although so recent a writer as Sir Frederick Wed- more echoes this appreciation in his latest volume on "Etching," and instances such an admirable plate as 122 -^.- - . -; ,--- - 1^ fife =S4 £T? SP r; -- .- ' ', *SP5 ' ™ ~ ';.. v*.^JSHBb^' ki -- ...... i ^" ':¦; -.:': * " wi3 :': »"'¦ -^ iiipllf* •' * '¦".¦* ^g*.S^QBB^?^^R!!aaMM3B 1 3 S&_^B"V",< | V< s -.»*•;¦ '""*'¦'•',> :'-"*sSi| f"..""s,™.. rJ^S jpfPlfflra Pi "^¦? -w'-'i sH* i * ^ .¦'¦"¦'¦'¦ 1 3^ - ^liflfc^H Antoni Waterloo. The Great Mill Size of the original etching, 11 X 8% inches 123 The Two Bridges (B. 47), as an example of his felicity, it is no longer possible to. accord Waterloo the same un qualified praise on this score. Compared with the best modern etchers he seems harsh and mechanical, and there is little evidence in his work of any serious or sym pathetic study of natural forms for their own sake, as there is, for example, in Ruysdael. Yet Waterloo fol lowed Ruysdael in the attempt to achieve a fuller, more painter-like representation of foliage, and it is easy to see how effective, how naturalistic, his treatment must have appeared after the naive efforts of such early etchers as the van de Veldes. Like a painter, Waterloo, without abandoning pure line, though somewhat debasing it, attempts a tonal interpretation of his material. Through it he seeks a fuller modelling, a subtler effect of color, than had hith erto been achieved in landscape etching. He particu larly loves to show the flickering reflection of sunlight on the treetops; and he pursues this phase of his sub ject to the point where he weakens his plates through that excessive multiplication and dispersal of the lights, to which all critics have directed attention. Thus, where the van de Veldes are naive, Waterloo seems a little sophisticated and insincere; and, as between the two, we much prefer the simpler, more purely stylistic treatment of such an artist as Esaias van de Velde, to Waterloo's rather heavy, over-elaborate method of imitation. In the former there are, at least, balance, harmony, and a strong feeling for linear design, all of which are more or less sacrificed in the latter, for the sake of immediate effectiveness. As a matter of fact, there is no Dutch etcher of the seventeenth century who succeeds very well with foli- 124 to i ux-tnit et fiat. Antoni Wateeloo. Laege Linden in Fbont of the Inn Size of the original etching, 9Vi X 11% inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston age. Between Waterloo, who is satisfied with too facile a formula, and Ruysdael, who never succeeds in achieving a formula at all, there is no artist who may be regarded as having actually solved the problem, unless perhaps it be Verboom, who etched but few plates, though these are masterpieces. On the whole, it was left for the artists of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century to solve their problem, and men like John Crome, in England, and Theodore Rousseau, in France, may be considered; in this respect, the true successors of the seventeenth-century Dutch landscape etchers — the continuers of their work. Ill On the technical side there is much that is interesting about Waterloo, for he was one of the first modern etchers to experiment with his medium, to multiply his means of expressing himself upon the copper, and to avail himself of the full resources of his medium. According to Bartsch, the method he employed was to let the acid delicately bite his plates, without ever submitting them a second time to the operation. To safeguard his backgrounds against the action of the acid, he took care to stop them out, and obtained, in this way, the gradation of his planes. Bartsch cites particu larly, in support of this theory, The Two Men Before the Gate (B. 56), where the great mass of the woods sep arates itself perfectly from the tree in the left foreground, which is deeply bitten by the acid. But ordinarily he gave his plates a general bitihg, then added, with the burin alone, the harmonization of the tones, as well as the strong shadows, wherever he judged it necessary. 126 As an example of this method, Bartsch takes The En trance of the Wood Surrounded by a Hedge (B. 55), where three different planes have been bitten feebly, and to the same degree. The gradations have been effected afterwards by a more or less free use of the burin, an instrument of which Waterloo, in general, availed him self abundantly. From these methods one serious drawback has arisen. Waterloo's plates having been delicately etched with acid, and then charged with a great deal of burin work, it happened that, as they became worn from printing, the etched lines grew visibly weaker, while those made by the graver, being deeper, did not diminish in the same proportion, so that the tones became confused and the harmony was destroyed. It is for this reason that it has sometimes been believed that these bad proofs have been retouched — an error, according to Bartsch, who claims that the effect is produced entirely by the wear ing of the plate. Some few plates were, indeed, retouched afterwards, by other hands, but this new work "occurs mostly in the wooded foregrounds, rarely on the tree-trunks, never in the foliage." A greater number have been rebitten. They can be distinguished by the fact that, in all the places where delicacy is required, the lines are coarse and crude, that there is no gradation in the tones, that the distances are as vigorous as the foregrounds. The whole plate offers nothing but an assemblage of black and monotonous masses, opposed to pure whites devoid of those delicate half tones, and those touches of brilliant black, which produce the striking effect so justly admired in the good proofs. 127 Such proofs are rare in American collections, though imperfect ones are common enough, so it is not an easy matter to judge accurately of the artistic merits of Waterloo without a little search for fine impressions. In conclusion it may be repeated that Waterloo, if not a great artist, is a most agreeable minor master, and that he excels in the rendering, if not of trees and foliage as such, at least of a certain sense of leafy se clusion and solitude. In his later, and larger plates — particularly in those which deal with Biblical and mythological subjects, and where he invents an entirely imaginary landscape to suit his mood — boskage be comes as it were, an obsession, and the artist appears bent, with the English poet, Andrew Marvell, upon " resolving all that's made To a green thought in a green shade.'' This shade itself, and not the trees that produce it, one feels, is the real theme of much of Waterloo's art; for, as has been said, he was, above all, a sentimentalist, only secondarily a nature-lover and a student of nature. This makes the limitation of its appeal to us at the pres ent day, just as it does that of much of the art and liter ature of the 1830 period. But it is easy to see how such pictures, with their calm, idyllic atmosphere, should have appealed to the substantial Dutch burghers of the seventeenth century, for whom they fulfilled the pri mary function of Dutch art, in general, by furnishing them, in the words of Pater, "with an ideal world, beyond which the real world is discernible indeed, but ethereahzed by the medium through which it comes to one." 128