Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century/The History-painters

CHAPTER II

The History-painters

It would be impossible to write the history of Dutch painting in the nineteenth century without naming Jan Willem Pieneman as its founder, even though it were only because he was the valued master of Jozef Israëls. This opinion may be regarded as hackneyed and antiquated; and it may be argued that Pieneman and Kruseman and their like did more harm than good to Dutch art, inasmuch as they led it into strange paths. But, apart from the fact that this extraneous tendency was the prevailing one in every country, Pieneman may be credited with having, by the strength of his personality, raised painting to the position of an independent art, able to produce a more powerful school than could ever hope to arise from the continual copying of seventeenth-century master-pieces.

Mrs. Ziesenis-Wattier - J. W. Pieneman (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

Pieneman was born at Abcoude in 1770 and destined for a commercial career, for which, however, he was disinclined. He therefore resolved to enter a factory of painted hangings, intending at the same time to learn something of the painter's trade. In the evenings, he drew from the antique and the nude at the Amsterdam Academy, which appears to have been very deficiently equipped, so much so that, according to Van Eynden and Van der Willigen, Pieneman's chief instructor was his own genius. To provide for his maintenance, he began to give lessons at an early date and had to accept commissions to colour prints. In 1805, he was appointed drawing-master to the School of Artillery and Engineering, then still at Amersfoort, and, although he had, in the meantime, won prizes and painted portraits and landscapes, he continued to fill the post until 1816, when King William I. gave him the directorship of the royal collection at the Hague. Four years later, he was appointed the first president of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Neither his landscapes nor his portraits brought Pieneman the fame which was soon to resound beyond the frontiers of our country. His first success was his Heroism of the Prince of Orange at Quatre-Bras, a large picture, twenty feet by thirteen, painted by order of the government for presentation to the prince. Before reaching its final destination in the palace at Soestdijk, it was exhibited in Amsterdam, Brussels and Ghent and, according to Immerzeel, was praised for its broad and powerful style, its accurate drawing and its fidelity to nature.

The Battle of Waterloo - J. W. Pieneman (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

This was followed by The Battle of Waterloo, the sketch for which is in the Duke of Wellington's possession. The picture, which is twenty-seven feet wide by eighteen high, represents the moment at which the Prince of Orange is being carried, wounded, from the battle-field. The chief figures are painted with attention to details and the wounded prince is thrown into much less prominence than the figure of Wellington himself, who stands like an equestrian statue in the centre of the picture, which serves as an apotheosis of the British field-marshal. Pieneman paid three several visits to London to paint portraits for this historical piece: during one of these, 1819 to 1821, he was the guest of the Duke of Wellington and, in addition to the necessary studies, painted a number of portraits of the leading nobility. In order to produce his large picture, for which he had no commission, he built a studio outside Amsterdam, beyond the Leiden Gate. Here he was visited by King William I., who bought the painting for forty thousand guilders for presentation to the Prince of Orange. It was exhibited in Ghent, Brussels and London and altogether earned about one hundred thousand guilders for the artist.

Portrait of an old Lady - J. W. Pieneman (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

Pieneman painted many portraits in Holland as well as in England and in these his artistic temperament is most strongly displayed. One might say of him that he had little of the refined classicism which is to be met with in neighbouring countries; that he possessed more temperament than education, more common sense than intuition and that he was entirely devoid of the pictorial sense which was never lacking in the seventeenth century. But that he possessed a real artist's temperament is proved by his often rough, but always forcible portraits; and, although far from being a quick draughtsman, he had a good idea of the construction of a head, which enabled him to turn out his portraits rapidly enough. He died in 1854.

Mrs. Leembruggen - J. W. Pieneman (The property of Mr. J. Leembruggen, Amsterdam)

The Battle of Waterloo shows none of those passions, of that hatred born of impotence, which urged the Allies forward on that summer's day. The figures of the Duke of Wellington and the other persons in the foreground are good portraits; but neither their attitude nor their action conveys the impression that a fierce and critical contest is taking place. Nor has Pieneman's drawing the suppleness necessary to express a great moment. And yet he possessed what the born artist who, with scanty means, conquers for himself a place in a barren period must needs possess: he had energy and influenced his times. Jozef Israëls has said of him that he was a genius who grew up in an inartistic age; and it was not his fault if the times in which he lived prevented him from developing himself In a society in a state of transformation, where, on the one hand, men, proud of their recovered nationality, asked for topical pictures representing the heroic deeds of the day, while, on the other hand, a pious tendency held sway and called for religious or kindred subjects strictly confined to the limits of the middle-class virtues, there was no opportunity for the exaltation of painting pure and simple and l' Art pour l' art for once became a misplaced maxim.

And then think of the makeshifts with which Pieneman had to content himself. Burdened by an early marriage, he painted his Quatre-Bras in a small upper-part in the Nes, where he had to roll up one half of his enormous canvas, crammed with life-size equestrian figures, in order to paint the other half He must have possessed a certain strength of will, a remarkable power of representation, to complete a work of this kind in circumstances such as these. And yet, though he was honoured in his time and distinguished by his sovereign, though he was socially esteemed and lived in "a stately house on a canal," though one may say of him that he was a great man in a slack time, he will never occupy a place in the ranks of our great painters nor even stand among our "little masters." His chief services to art were rendered as director of the Amsterdam Academy. Israëls describes him as an excellent drawing-master, thoroughly acquainted with the mathematics of the nude and unrivalled in the suggestion of an outline with a bit of chalk or charcoal. And it is certain that, as the master of Jozef Israëls, who drew for seven years under his guidance and never speaks of him other than with respect and esteem, he deserves an honourable place in the memory of us all.

Nicolaas Pieneman, his son and pupil, was born at Amersfoort in 1810, died in 1860 and enjoyed - chiefly at the Hague, where he lived - an even greater favour than his father, thanks to his many portraits of the royal family. It is a pure delight to hear Jozef Israëls reply, when asked how the younger Pieneman painted:


 * "Klaas Pieneman was a courtier; at an exhibition, he used to walk arm in arm with William the Third!"

He had neither his father's temperament nor vigour and, possibly by way of a reaction against the latter's frequent want of polish, he painted in a soapy and feeble style, especially his royal portraits, which are smooth and insipid and devoid of all life. On the other hand, he must not be judged entirely by his royal portraits: the portrait of his father in the Rijksmuseum and a Head of a Man in the Municipal Museum of Amsterdam are better, although in these too he misses the naturalness that distinguished his father. And, if he had not that charming Portrait of a Child in the Fodor Museum standing to his credit, there would be little say about him but that he was greatly liked and lived in a fine house in the Hague. This portrait, however, places him in a different category and we will gladly forgive him his smooth official portraits for the sake of the great feeling in this little picture.

The Surrender of Diepo Negoro - N. Pieneman (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

His contemporaries judged differently. Kramm writes:


 * "It is a pleasure to me to be able to write a page in the history of art which greatly increases the fame of the Dutch school of painting of our own times. It concerns the brilliant talent of that celebrated painter, Nicolaas Pieneman, who has achieved an European reputation with his many famous master-pieces."

He mentions a whole array of royal presents, of gold snuff-boxes richly adorned with brilliants and enamels, and enumerates an endless series of portraits of King William II., of the Crown-prince, afterwards William III., of the latter's sons the Princes William and Alexander, of Princess Sophie, of the suites of the King and the Crown-prince. Nicolaas Pieneman was the first painter to receive the Order of the Netherlands Lion; and it must be added that he was honoured not only in his own country, but also - or was it his royal models? - in Paris, for, at the International Exhibition of 1855, he was given the Legion of Honour for his life-size portrait of William III., in naval uniform, and of his royal father.

Portrait of a Child - N. Pieneman (Fodor Museum, Amsterdam)

Jean Augustin Daiwaille was born at Cologne in 1789 and, as a child, accompanied his parents to Holland, where he was educated for a painter by Adriaan de Lelie. Although his little genre-pieces met with considerable favour in their time, he was valued by his contemporaries mostly as a painter of portraits distinguished for their breadth of execution and their resemblance to the originals. He became director of the Amsterdam Academy of Plastic Arts and resigned his appointment in order to accompany an agent of the Dutch Trading Company to Brazil. Upon maturer consideration, he abandoned this plan and founded a lithographic establishment. Later, he settled at Rotterdam, where he occupied himself with portrait-painting until his death in 1850.

There is a certain want of definiteness about this short biography by Immerzeel and it is repeated in the account of Daiwaille's pupil, Cornelis Kruseman, who is said to have learnt his broad brushwork from Hodges, whereas Daiwaille, who was never satisfied with his work and never succeeded in finishing it, is supposed to have taught him only how not to paint. However, it often happens that later generations pass a different judgment; and many will discover finer qualities in the hesitations of this painter and pastellist than in the work of his over-praised pupil. Daiwaille's Portrait of Himself in the Rijksmuseum confirms the first impression: it shows us the melancholy face of one whose nature was his own worst enemy. The modernity of the analysis is astonishing in the pale-blue eyes; and the whole face is painted with a sincerity which none but a sensitive character would offer. The Portrait of Himself at Boymans' Museum is a more pleasant picture; and the same museum contains his very dainty Portrait of a Woman, in pastel. His best portrait, however, is that of H. van Demmeltraadt.

H. van Demmeltraadt - J. A. Daiwaille (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

Although Cornelis Kruseman dates back to the end of the eighteenth century (he was born in 1797 and died in 1854), he can hardly be considered a man of Jan Pieneman's generation. Not that the elder Kruseman helped Dutch painting forward: on the contrary, while Pieneman preserved, if not the artistic culture, at least the simplicity of the eighteenth century, Kruseman, endowed with less temperament, a greater desire for refinement and less vigour, displayed a hankering after more pronounced forms and, in the absence of a natural gift of colour, employed hard tones for his biblical or Italian subjects and, in general, turned the art of painting into an uncouth classicism.

Meanwhile, it appears that Kruseman showed a decided aptitude for painting at a very early age; anyway, in 1819, he made a great success at an exhibition at the Hague with a picture representing a blind beggar, lighted by a paper lantern, whose appearance had always impressed him as he went down the Spui of an evening. People thought that they had found a Dou, a Schalcken Redivivus; and he received many orders for candle-light effects, all of which he refused, because it was not his object in life to imitate candle-light and he took no pleasure in such things. He strove to express the loftier matters in human nature and he felt offended that it had not been recognized at once that he had painted this picture only because of the venerable head of the beggar. He aimed further than the Dutch genre-painters, whose manner he considered insignificant and undignified. This was the time when David was decking out his heroes in the form and garb of antiquity; it was also the time when Italy was regarded as the land of promise, as the cradle of art and when Raphael's smooth outlines were held to possess a distinction by comparison with which Rembrandt was often considered vulgar: an opinion shared by some of the younger literary men until as late as 1880.

Christ with Martha and Mary - Cornelis Kruseman (The property of Mrs. Labouchère, Zeist)

In 1821, Kruseman went viâ Paris to Italy, stayed three years in Rome and came back confirmed in his predilections. He began by painting biblical subjects and Roman peasants, the latter supplying him with the classical models which he had sought in vain in his own country. Nevertheless, he sacrificed himself in his turn to the national enthusiasm which had made the elder Pieneman the history-painter of Quatre-Bras and Waterloo and which drove Kruseman to paint a later episode: H. R. H. the Prince of Orange at the moment when his horse was wounded at Bauterzen, 12 August 1831, a picture which, like Pieneman's, may be looked upon as a sort of continuation of the doelen- or corporation-pieces. But this interlude had no influence upon the remainder of his work. The culture which he had acquired during his stay in Paris and his Italian journey had gradually alienated him from his own nationality. A long stay in Italy has never proved other than detrimental to any of our painters. It simply meant that they returned home seeing things from a point of view quite at variance with our national feeling. Ecclesiastical art brought into a Protestant country by a Protestant Dutchman must needs become theatrical. And in technique also Kruseman was doomed to fall short; for, though his ideas were formed upon the Italian masters of the Renascence and upon Raphael in particular, he lacked the feeling and the technical knowledge necessary to emulate the peculiar qualities of those masters. All that we can say, therefore, is that Kruseman knew how, at a given moment, to give to a certain public exactly what it demanded, namely, an ideal conception of biblical figures, devoid of sensual charm or passion. And the result was that, although theologians wrote in indignant terms to protest that this great man was indulging in anachronism in his biblical subjects and in spite of virulent criticism, he enjoyed a fame so universal as to exceed that ever known by Jozef Israëls, Jacob Maris, or even by Hendrik Willem Mesdag, who was so much more easily understood outside his own painting-room than either of the others.

Nor can this be called unnatural. The pictorial art of the Pienemans, of the Krusemans and, in particular, of Cornelis Kruseman was a direct echo of their time. As an historical painter in a period of newly-awakened national consciousness, Pieneman was the right man in the right place and he owes his reputation to his delineation of Quatre-Bras and the battle of Waterloo, which set the seal upon our liberty and renewed our compact with the House of Orange, to which the episode of the wounded Crown-prince lent an emotional side.

Kruseman, who had begun with a similar subject, devoted himself later on, after the peace had restored the ancestral Calvinism in a stricter form, mainly to the painting of Bible subjects, which were greatly admired for their "idealistic conception," to use the then prevailing phrase so popular in pious circles:

"Probably no people has at any time been more devoted to home-reading of an edifying character than our Protestant fellow-countrymen," says A. C. Kruseman in his History of the Book-trade.

Cornelis Kruseman's phlegmatic ideas were in the taste of the day: any passion would have disturbed the tranquillity of a view of life which demanded that everything should be gentle, pious and noble. The seventeenth-century paintings and prints, selected by a few, were thought low and common compared with the engravings published in the elegant almanacks of those days and accompanied by letterpress by serious authors. And the scenes of Italian peasant-life, the Neapolitan women, the pifferari, with their dark features, their sharp outlines against a blue sky, had what was known as a certain "nobility" of line which formed a great contrast with the vulgar Dutch people, the vulgar old-Dutch paintings, and which pleased the ladies.

The Three Sisters - Cornelis Kruseman (The property of Mr. J. D. Kruseman, the Hague)

And yet it was not only the women who formed the ranks of Kruseman's worshippers; these included practically everybody: the King, the Queen and, more, the painters. In connection with his St. John the Baptist, a painting which he had executed for the most part during his second stay in Rome, the Hague artists united to offer him a lasting memorial of the admiration with which they were seized at the contemplation of that work. This testimonial took the form of a silver cup, with cover and dish, beautifully designed and chased in the style of the sixteenth century and engraved with a suitable inscription in rhyme immortalizing the homage paid by the Dutch school to Kruseman after seeing his St. John, while a vellum document with Gothic illuminations spoke in well-chosen words of the painter's imperishable fame.

Public favour is fickle. The lasting duration which the inscription prophesied was fulfilled neither figurative nor literally. Most of his great works no longer exist. Thanks to his habit of continual repainting Kruseman was not easily pleased with himself and of constant treatment with some siccative or other, a process to which perhaps he did not give enough care, it happened that the paint, which was never quite dry under the surface, began to sink, so that the upper portion became unrecognizable, and, while the hands of the Baptist of the picture, at that time in the collection of King William II., had dropped to the ground, the head hung where the hands should be and great lumps of paint were heaped up at the bottom against the frame. The case is not without parallel: the same thing is told of English painters insufficiently acquainted with the secrets of their craft. Only a few of Kruseman's pictures escaped this fate, including the four religious paintings in Mrs. Labouchère's château at Zeist, his best work; a portrait of Three Sisters; and some of his other portraits and smaller pictures.

But the lasting fame that makes us mourn what is lost the more we admire what has been preserved, this also was denied him. His was not an art that excelled in artistic merit or originality of ideas: it owed its existence and its success to the conception of the subject, which, being the product of his time, was bound to die with the spirit of that time.

His chief pupils were Jan Adam Kruseman, his cousin, in whose studio Jozef Israëls was to work in later years, Vintcent, who, although he died young, turned with all his soul towards the romantic movement, Jan Hendrik and Johan Philip Koelman, of whom the latter was to prove the last adherent to classicism, David Bles, whom one would not expect to find here, Herman ten Kate, De Poorter, Elink Sterk and Ehnle.

Ada of Holland - J. A. Kruseman (Teyler's Institute, Haarlem)

Jan Adam Kruseman, born at Haarlem in 1804, is best known as a portrait-painter. His portraits were praised as good likenesses and excellent pictures. The fact is that, without showing the artistry of the old Dutchmen, they do impress us by their simplicity and a certain style. Jan Kruseman did not try to complete his education in Italy, but, after the departure of his master, Cornells, for that country, worked for two years in Brussels under the great David and went from there to Paris, whence he returned in 1825 and made a start with The Invention of Printing by Laurens Koster. He also began to paint corporation-pieces for the Baptist community at Haarlem and the Amsterdam Leper Hospital. Although, in his historical and biblical subjects, we are able to recognize a love of pronounced forms showing the influence of David or perhaps even more of Ingres, he possessed neither the vigour nor the tenacity of these painters. On the other hand, there was something in his colouring and his modelling that was more free and natural than in the elder Kruseman's and yet not to so great an extent that these pieces can be valued by posterity apart from historical associations. The case is different with his portraits, although in these he is terribly uneven. His simple and natural portrait of Adriaan van der Hoop, his Portrait of Himself in the museum at Haarlem, conceived in the style of Ingres, and a portrait of a more pictorial character exhibited under his name in the same gallery might have been painted by three different artists.

He had a great name as a painter and was especially valued as a portrait-painter, in which capacity, according to his contemporaries, he made thirty thousand guilders a year. He led an excellent life in Amsterdam, was a jolly companion, kind to his brother-artists, helping them when he could, and later, as director of the Academy, a zealous teacher. Together with Tétar van Elven, he founded the society known as Arti et Amicitiae and, with it, the Artists' Widows and Orphans Fund. He died in 1862.

The best-known of his biblical subjects is The Widow's Mite popularized through Steelink's engraving. De Genestet wrote a poem on it and the grave conception we do not know the painting itself and popular subject made it a favourite ornament for the sitting-room. He had as little romanticism in him as the elder Kruseman; only his ideas were a little less uncouth, less prejudiced, less hard, though quite as passionless.

Of all Cornelis Kruseman's pupils, the Koelmans alone remained faithful to the principles which their teacher proclaimed. Johan Philip Koelman (1818-1893) stood like a solitary on the ruins of classicism and became the more fanatical the more he saw his fellow-students and his own pupils departing in another direction. Jan Hendrik (1820-1887), the second of the brothers, went straight from Kruseman's studio to Rome and continued to live there till the day of his death. He painted many portraits and was, according to Vosmaer, who knew him in Rome, "a great artistic expert, a philosophical spirit, a most important man, yes, the type of a certain sort of artist: practical, experienced and positive in his execution, he is, at the same time, by nature a philosopher, whose deep-felt artistic speculations find utterance in fluent words and thoughts." Jan Daniel (1831-1857), a younger brother, the talented pupil of J. B. Tom the animal-painter, made excellent studies of draught-oxen in the South, went on to paint Dutch pastures with cattle and gave cause to expect that, had he not died at the early age of twenty-six, he might have developed into an independent and accomplished landscape-painter.

Johan Philip was born at the Hague and was brought up to his father's trade as a carpenter. He soon showed a taste for painting, studied under Kruseman and followed the latter to Rome, where he remained for fifteen years, painting, drawing and modelling. On his return to the Hague, he painted Roman scenes, some of them with all the delicacy of a miniaturist. Later, when he succeeded Van den Berg at the Academy, he was more of a sculptor and an architect than a painter. Vosmaer calls his draughtsmanship severe. In these latter days, we should be inclined rather to call it unfeeling, at once hard and slack. At a time of more widespread culture, his lack of depth and originality would have been more apparent. He had nothing whatever in common with our seventeenth century masters, who above all were good painters, as were the Hague landscape-painters after them. But, notwithstanding his theories, notwithstanding the complete set of thoughts, principles and opinions which he had acquired from the Italian masters, Koelman was great enough, as a teacher, to inspire independent pupils.

Mr. A. Dieudonné van Baerle - J. A. Kruseman (The property of Dr. C. E. Daniëls, Amsterdam)

The doom of classicism had come. No words, no theories are able to impede the progress of imperious life or to arrest the spirit of the age. Our country, in its turn, underwent the influence of the romantic movement, which came to us viâ Belgium and showed itself first in literature. The painters followed in the wake of the poets and novelists. But it was essentially a foreign movement and, therefore, imperfect in its manifestations.

Henri Beyle, in his Histoire de la peinture en Italie, says that what our soul asks of art is the portrayal of the passions and not of deeds provoked by the passions. And it was just this passion, which, in literature, was destined not to flame up until after 1870, that these natures were unable to render, either because they were over-polished by education or because they considered it incompatible with the calm belief of the time. Even the religious contests, surely the outcome of the most impetuous passion that could take fire in the Netherlands, had become dissolved in a calm, pious, conscientious life.

When all is said, did not all the romanticism of that time, with one or two great exceptions, consist rather in the painting of deeds provoked by passions than in the portrayal of passion itself? And did not the Dutchmen of that time lack just the inspiring vigour with which a Delacroix translated romanticism into the purely pictorial, while, on the other hand, they lacked the expressive line with which the German painters conveyed the emotional side of romanticism? The passion of the first was to be kindled with us later in the bursts of colour of the Hague school, in the visions of beauty of Matthijs Maris, to blaze most brightly in that not yet fully understood visionary Vincent van Gogh. The views of the second were shared (although the Germans showed more nervous lines) by that Dutch Parisian, Ary Scheffer, the artist in whom the weak, but also the emotional aspect of romanticism found a more than enthusiastic spokesman.