Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/69

 S T O S T 59 arrangement and colour by Rembrandt s Carpenter s Family at the Louvre, or the Woodcutter and Children in the gallery of Cassel. Innumerable almost are the more familiar themes to which he devoted his pencil during this interval, from small single figures, representing smokers or drinkers, to vulgarized allegories of the five senses (Hermitage and Brunswick galleries), half-lengths of fish mongers and bakers, and cottage brawls, or scenes of gambling, or itinerant players and quacks, and nine-pin players in the open air. The humour in some of these pieces is contagious, as in the Tavern Scene of the Lacaze collection (Louvre, 1653), where a boor squeezes the empty beer-pot in his hands to show that the last drop has been sucked out of it. It would be tedious to enumerate the masterpieces of this kind. But those who have no other opportunities may study with pleasure and advantage the large series of dated pieces which adorn every European capital, from St Petersburg to London. Buckingham Palace has a large store, and many and many a good specimen lies hid in the private collections of England. But if we should select a few as peculiarly worthy of attention, we might point to the Rustics in a Tavern of 1662 at the Hague, the Village School of the same year at the Louvre, the Tavern Court-yard of 1670 at Cassel, the Sportsmen s Rest of 1671 at Amsterdam, and the Fiddler and his Audience of 1673 at the Hague. At Amsterdam we have the likeness of a painter, in a red bonnet and violet coat, sitting with his back to the spectator, at his easel. The colour-grinder is at work in a corner, a pupil prepares a palette, and a black dog sleeps on the ground. The same picture, with the date of 1666, is in the Dresden gallery. Both specimens are supposed to represent Ostade himself. But unfortunately we see the artist s back and not his face. Ostade painted with equal vigour at all times. Two of his latest dated works, the Village Street and Skittle Players in the Ash burton and Ellesmere collections, were executed in 1676 without any sign of declining powers. The prices which he received are not known, but those of the present day are telling when compared with those of the close of last century. Early pictures, which may have been sold by the painter for a few shillings, now fetch 200. Later ones, which were worth 40 in 1750, are now worth 1000, and Earl Dudley gave 4120 for a cottage interior in 1876. The signatures of Ostade vary at different periods. But the first two letters are gene rally interlaced. Up to 1635 Ostade writes himself Ostaden, e.g., in the Bagpiper of 1635 in the Lichtenstein collection at Vienna. Later on he uses the long s (f), and occasionally he signs in capital letters (Strauss collection, Vienna, 1647 ; and Hague museum, 1673). His pupils are his own brother Isaac, Cornells Bega, Cornells Dusart, and Richard Brakenburg. II. ISAAC OSTADE (1621-1649) was christened on the 2dof June 1621, at Haarlem. He began his studies under Adrian, with whom he remained till 1641, when he started on his own account. At an early period he felt the influ ence of Rembrandt, and this is apparent in a Slaughtered Pig of 1639, in the gallery of Augsburg. But he soon reverted to a style more suited to his pencil. He pro duced pictures in 1641-42 on the lines of his brother, amongst these, the Five Senses, which Adrian after wards represented by a Man Reading a Paper, a Peasant Tasting Beer, a Rustic Smearing his Sores with Oint ment, and a Countryman Sniffing at a Snuff-box. The contract for these pieces was made before 1643, when Leendert, a dealer, summoned him for a breach of his agreement before the burgomaster of Haarlem. The matter was referred to the guild, and evidence was adduced to prove that Isaac had promised in 1641 to deliver six pictures and seven rounds, including the Five Senses, for 27 florins. Isaac, in his defence, urged that he had finished two of the pictures and two of the rounds, which Leendert had seen, but neglected to fetch ; that he had begun the remainder of the series, but that in the meanwhile the value of his works had risen, so that he thought that on that ground alone he was freed from the obligations he had assumed. The guild decided that Isaac was bound to furnish the pictures before Easter 1643. But they reduced the number of the rounds to five, and assessed the price of the whole at 50 florins. A specimen of Isaac s work at this period may be seen in the Laughing Boor with a Pot of Beer, in the museum of Amsterdam; the cottage interior, with two peasants and three children near a fire, in the Berlin museum; a Concert, with people listening to singers accompanied by a piper and flute player, and a Boor Stealing a Kiss from a Woman, in the Lacaze collection at the Louvre. The interior at Berlin is lighted from a casement in the same Rembrandtesque style as Adrian s interior of 1643 at the Louvre. The value of these panels, which we saw estimated in 1643 at two florins apiece, was greatly enhanced in the following century, when the Laughing Boor at Amsterdam was sold for 56 florins. But the low price fixed by the guild of Haarlem must have induced Isaac to give up the practice, in which he could only hope to remain a satellite in the orbit of Adrian, and accordingly we find him gradu ally abandoning the cottage subjects of his brother for landscapes in the fashion of Esaias Van de Velde and Salomon Ruisdael. Once only, in 1645, he seems to have fallen into the old groove, when he produced the Slaughtered Pig, with the boy puffing out a bladder, in the museum of Lille. But this was a mere accident. Isaac s progress in the new path which he had cut out for himself was greatly facilitated by his previous experience as a figure painter; and, although he now selected his subjects either from village high streets or frozen canals, he was enabled to give fresh life and animation to the scenes he depicted by groups of people full of movement and animation, which he relieved in their coarse humours and sordid appearance by a refined and searching study of picturesque contrasts. Unfortunately he did not live long enough to bring his art to the highest perfection. He died at twenty-eight, on the 16th October 1649. The first manifestation of Isaac s surrender of Adrian s style is apparent in 1644 when the skating and sledging scenes were executed which we see in the Lacaze collection and the galleries of the Hermitage, Antwerp, and Lille. Three of these examples bear the artist s name, spelt Isack van Ostade, and the dates of 1644 and 1645. The road-side inns, with halts of travellers, form a compact series from 1646 to 1649. In this, the last form of his art, Isaac has very distinct peculiarities. The air which pervades his composition is warm and sunny, yet mellow and hazy, as if the sky were veiled with a vapour coloured by moor smoke. The trees are rubbings of umber, in which the prominent foliage is tipped with touches hardened in a liquid state by amber varnish mediums. The same principle applied to details such as glazed bricks or rents in the mud lining of cottages gives an unreal and conventional stamp to those particular parts. But these blemishes are forgotten when one looks at the broad contrasts of light and shade and the masterly figures of steeds and riders, and travellers and rustics, or quarrelling children and dogs, poultry, and cattle, amongst which a favourite place is always given to the white horse, who seems as invariable an accompaniment as the grey in the skirmishes and fairs of Wouvermans. But it is in winter scenes that Isaac displays the best qualities. The absence of foliage, the crisp atmosphere, the calm air of cold January days, unsullied by smoke or vapour, preclude the use of the brown tinge, and leave the painter no choice but to ring the changes on opal tints of great variety, upon which the figures come out with masterly effect on the light background upon which they are thrown. Amongst the road-side inns which will best repay attention we should notice those of Buckingham Palace, the National Gallery, the Wallace, Ellesmere, Ashburton, Holford, Robarts, and Bearwood collections in England, and those of the Louvre, Berlin, Hermitage, and Rotterdam museums and? the Rothschild collections at Vienna on the Continent. The finest of the ice scenes is the famous one at the Louvre. (J. A. C. ) OSTASHKOFF, a town of Tver, Russia, 163 miles by rail south-east from the capital of that government, on Lake Seliger, has a population of 12,500. The fisheries, which still employ a considerable number of the inhabitants, attracted settlers at an early date, but it is not till 1500 that the Ostashkoff villages are mentioned in Russian annals. The advantageous site, the proximity of the Smolenskiy Jitnyi monastery, a pilgrim-resort on an island of the lake, and the early development of certain petty trades, combined to bring prosperity to Ostashkoff; and its cathedral (1672-85) still contains rich offerings, as also do two other churches of the same century. About 200,000 pairs of boots are now manufactured annually; hatchets, scythes, shears, and similar implements are also- made; and tanning is another important industry.