Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 3, 1910.djvu/572

 55 8 ADRIAEN BROUWER SECT. Brouwer's youth up to the time when he entered Frans Hals' studio. 1 A young lad, who was employed by Frans Hals to look after his children (Houbraken, ii. 191), could scarcely have painted by that time all the early works which pertain to the first period of Brouwer's career. Brouwer came to Frans Hals not as an independent artist, who had already produced numerous important pictures, but as a pupil who had only done his pre- liminary studies. According to Houbraken's story, Frans Hals made Brouwer work for him, and sold his pictures at a considerable profit as the productions of a great unknown master. Brouwer's fellow-pupils, Ostade and others, bought for a few pence some of his pictures, among which are named the series of " The Five Senses " and " The Twelve Months." Gradually Brouwer began to realise his powers and the value of his work. He ran away quietly to Amsterdam, and went to the inn kept by Bernard van Someren, who had himself been a painter in his youth, and had a son Hendrich who was also a painter. Here Brouwer gradually achieved fame and honour, and received as much as a hundred ducats (about ^20) for a picture of " Card-Players fighting," which is now at Munich (see No. 172). Meanwhile he must have become more and more widely known at Haarlem. He was a member of the Society of Rhetoricians. The director, P. Nootmans, dedicated a tragedy to him as " the world-famous Haarlem painter." Rubens's pupil, Mathijs van den Bergh, expressly describes him as " Haarlemensis " (a native of Haarlem) in the inscription on a drawing after one of Brouwer's pictures. In short, Brouwer became thoroughly naturalised in his new Dutch home. Then home-sickness came over him. At the end of 1631 he went to Antwerp, without reflecting that, although he was by birth a Fleming, he would be an object of suspicion to his former fellow-countrymen and to the Spanish troops, through his long residence in the North. He delayed providing himself with the necessary papers of identity, which freed a traveller from molestation, as the records of the coming and going of numerous artists sufficiently prove. Brouwer somehow drew suspicion on himself and, a year after his return, was arrested as a spy. He was con- fined in the citadel, as any other man would have been under similar circumstances, and he remained there, like any other suspected person, until, first of all, certain influential citizens of Antwerp stood surety for him, and, secondly, until the debts which he had incurred during his captivity were all paid. These things happened in September 1633. He then went to the house of Paulus Pontius, the copper-engraver, and remained in Antwerp, as the records testify, until he was buried there on February i, 1638. The records mention his admission to the Guild of St. Luke, in the winter of 1631-2, and to the Society of Rhetoricians, his presence at their yearly festivals, his acceptance of pupils, and, above all, 1 Schmidt Degener's own essay (see Onze Kunst, 1908) shows that the inferences from his theory do not agree with the facts. On p. 4 he says that Brouwer was certainly at Antwerp in the two or three years before 1625, and, on p. 6, that he was at Amsterdam in March 1625. There is no proof of this. We only know that on July 23, 1626, Brouwer was a witness to the declara- tion of other parties concerning a sale of pictures which had been concluded in March 1625 j there is no reason to suppose that he was present at the sale. On p. 7, Schmidt Degener says that Brouwer did not remain long in Amsterdam, but soon went on to Haarlem ; on p. 8, on the con- trary, he states that in 1627 Brouwer, after living for five or six years in Haarlem, was already regarded as a native of the town.