Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 4, 1912.djvu/597

 SECT, xvi PAULUS POTTER 583 finished artist. There are dates on pictures of his painted in that year ; indeed, there are dated pictures of the year 1640. At first Paulus lived with his father at Amsterdam. In August 1646 we find him at Delft ; three years later he is mentioned in the guild- registers of The Hague. In May 1652 he returned to Amsterdam, where he died of consumption in January 1654. He attained no greater age than twenty-eight years and eight weeks a fact which is far too often left out of account by critics of his life's work. Potter devoted himself exclusively to the painting of animals, chiefly domestic animals in Dutch pastures. Probably he was no traveller. The sphere of his activity was restricted to three towns, Amsterdam, Delft, and The Hague. More than any other of his contemporaries, he was the painter of the illimitable Dutch plain with its cattle, horses, and smaller animals. He renders excellently the character of the " polders." They are viewed for the most part from a somewhat elevated standpoint, on a dyke or a hill. He must often have seen the " polders " from the windows of his house at what was then the south-eastern boundary of The Hague. In that direction he looked out upon the country-house of Binkhorst and the village of Rijswijk, both of which are often represented in his pictures. The towers of Delft, too, appear many a time on the horizon. In a large group of Potter's pictures there is no middle distance. It is hidden by the dyke, falling steeply at the back, which, as has been said, very often forms the foreground. This often disturbs the coherence of the picture, especially when the animals in front, as in the famous " Bull " at The Hague (48), are painted life-size. The fact that the "Bull" nevertheless stands out against the background in extraordinarily plastic relief proves that this youth of twenty-one was admirably skilled in suggest- ing atmosphere. Potter is the painter of placid and comfortable animal life. He does not care for animated scenes such as Wouwerman painted. Where he attempts them, as in the great "Bear-hunt" at the Rijksmuseum (160), he fails completely. He fails, too, in painting men and women. Bode justly observes that Potter is so very much of an animal portrait-painter that he is not only free from any tendency to give a human character to his animals, but even errs in the opposite direction, and in painting men seems inclined to give them an animal character. Yet it must not be forgotten that there are among Potter's works a whole series of clever and amusing genre subjects ; reference may be made, for instance, to Nos. 90, 97, 113, 114, and 149. Moreover, in some of the scenes outside a house or stable there is seen through the open door an effect of sunlight entering from the back, recalling the similar effects of light in Pieter de Hooch's pictures (see, for example, No. 114). Potter observes every detail of nature as if through a microscope j he reproduces every accident. Not a blade of grass in the foreground, not a leaf on a tree, not a hair on the hide of his animals, escapes his eye. But he subordinates the details to the whole effect. In spite of the abundance of details his pictures, with few exceptions, are harmonious and restful. It is one of the most noteworthy qualities of the Dutch school that a Dou could paint every fibre on a broomstick, a De Heem every dewdrop on his