Front matter
0'
W. E. DUtTS
Digitized
CHAPTER I. The Rise of a National Art i
CHAPTER n.
Holland and its Art in the Seventeenth Century ... 6
CHAPTER HI.
CHAPTER IV.
The Artist Life of Frans Hals 26
CHAPTER V.
The Boyhood at Antwerp 32
CHAPTER VI.
At Haarlem 41
CHAPTER VIL
The Doelen Pictures — General Considerations .... 47
CHAPTER VIII.
The First Doelen Group (St. Joris), 1616 50
CHAPTER IX.
The Middle Doelen Groups, 1627 60 viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER X.
The St. Adriaen's Group of 1633 and the St. George's Group
OF 1639 : the REGENTESSEN GrOUP OF 1641 ....
CHAPTER XI.
The last two "Regenten" Pictures, 1664 . . ... . 75
CHAPTER Xn.
Other Portraits: The First Period .. , . . . . 82
CHAPTER XHI.
Character Portraits of all Periods : The Jester (of Amsterdam)— The Gipsy (of the Louvre) — The Sandlooper (of Antwerp) — Various Topers — Singing Boys, Hille Bobbe, etc. ioi
CHAPTER XIV.
Maria Voogt, 1639, in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, with a
Note on the Bridgewater Portrait no
CHAPTER XV.
The Later Portraits . 118
CHAPTER XVI.
Upgatherings ' • . 123
*
CHAPTER XVII.
Conclusion . 128
List of Works by Frans Hals, arranged according to the Galleries in which they are hung 133
List of the Pictures which have appeared under the name of Frans
Hals at Burlington House since 1871 145
Prices obtained for a few Pictures by Frans Hals . . . 151
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Illustrations are arranged in this list as far as possible in chronological order ^ with the exception of the last three ^permission to use which was obtained when the greater portion of the volume was printed off. But it has not been found pra£lically convenient to place the plates themselves chronologically throughout the text^ as that method often brings the illustrations near to text which has no reference to them. The plates are therefore placed as near as possible to the text which refers to them^ or makes them interesting., and since their numbers correspond to those in this list, and they are in most cases dated, the place of any picture in the chronological sequence can be ascertained at a glance.
TO FACE PAGE
1. Portrait of the Painter by Himself i
(^Devonshire House?)
2. Chalk Drawing of a Lady 124
{Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower.^
3. PiETER Van der Morsch. 1616. Photogravure Plate ... 84
{Lord Northbrook.)
4. The Merry Trio. 1616. From the copy by Dirk Hals (?) . . 30
{Berlin Museum.)
5. The Banquet of St. Joris' Shooting Guild. 1616. Photogravure
Plate 50
6. Detail of the Same. Two figures on extreme right. Photogravure
Plate 54
7. A Dutch Nobleman. 1620. Photogravure Plate .... 86
{Cassel Gallery)
8. A Dutch Lady. 1620. Photogravure Plate 86
{Cassel Gallery)
9. The Laughing Cavalier. 1624. Photogravure Plate ... 90
( Wallace ColleHion.)
10. Frans Hals and his Second Wife, Lysbeth Reyniers. Photo-
II. Jacob Pietersz. Olycan. 1625 64
{Mauritshuis, Hague)
b
X FRANS HALS
TO FACE PAGE
12. Aletta Hanemans. Wife of the above. 1625. Photogravure Plate 88
{Mauritshuis, Hagtie.)
13. A Lady in a Cap and Ruff .94
{Devonshire House.)
14. Meeting of St. Joris' Shooting Guild. 1627 .... 60
15. Meeting of St. Adriaen's Shooting Guild. 1627 ... 62
16. NicoLAEs Van Beresteyn. 1629 96
17. Madame Van Beresteyn. 1629 - . 96
18. Van Beresteyn Family Group. 1630 ..... 98
19. The Fool, or Lute Player. From the copy . . . .102
20. La BohFmienne 104
21. Nurse and Baby 100
{Berlin Museum.)
22. Portrait of a Lady 140
{Berliti Museum.)
23. Albert Van der Meer. 1631 100
{Rathaus, Haarletn.)
24. Cornelia VooGT. Wife of the above. 163 1 100
25. Officers of St. Adriaen's Shooting Guild. 1633. Photogravure
Plate 66
{Rathatts, Haarlem.)
26. Detail of the Same. A seated figure to the right .... 66
{Rathaus, Haarletn.)
27. Detail of the Same. Colonel Jan Claasz Loo . . . . 68
{National Gallery, London.)
{Boydell Museum, Rotterdam?)
30. Lucas de Clercq 142
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi
TO FACE PAGE
31. Feyntje Van Steenkiste. Wife of the above 142
{Corporation Gallery, Edinburgh.)
33. Portrait of a Woman 138
{Corporation Gallery, Edinburgh.)
34. WiLLEM Van Heythuysen. Full length. Photogravure Plate Frontispiece
{Liechtenstein Gallery, Vienna.)
34B. WiLLEM Van Heythuysen. Seated 135
{Brussels Gallery?)
35. Man in a Lace Collar 140
{Dresden.)
36. A Merry Toper. 1636 126
{Buckingham Palace?)
38. Single Figure. The standard bearer. From the extreme left of the
shooting company of Captain Reael (La Compagnie Maigre) 1637 , 74
39. Officers of St. Joris' Company. 1639 .70
40. Maria Voogt, or Van der Meer. 1639 no
41. A Woman in a Ruff 136
{National Gallery, London?)
42. A Fisher Boy 104
{Antwerp Gallery.)
43. Regenten of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, 1641 .... 72
43B. PlETER TiARCK 1 36
{Sir Cuthbert Quitter.)
44. Professor Jan Hornebeek. 1645 . . . . , . .118
{Brussels Gallery?)
45. An Elderly Woman holding a Glove. 1650 . . . .118
46. Hille Bobbe (properly Alle Bobbe). 1650 106
{Mtiseum, Berlin?)
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE PAGE
47. Ren£ Descartes. 1655 118
{Louvre, Pai'is.)
{Museum, Berlin.)
49. Young Man in a Flap Hat. 1660. Photogravure Plate . . 120
{Cassel Gallery.)
50. Regentessen of the Oudevrouwenhuis (Old Women's Alms-
house?). 1664. Photogravure Plate 76
51. Regenten of the Oudemannenhuis (Old Men's Almshouse).
1664 .80
52. Boy with Grapes .138
{Sir David Baird.)
53. Portrait of a Youth . . . 136
{Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower.)
54. Portrait of Hals 6
{Earl Spencer^
55. Portrait of Admiral de Ruyter 12
{Earl Spencer.) . . '
APPROXIMATE CHRONOLOGY OF THE CHIEF KNOWN EVENTS OF THE LIFE OF FRANS HALS
1580. Probable date of the birth of Frans Hals at Antwerp.
1600. Apparently at Haarlem (where he remained to the end of his life).
1604. Karel Van Mander left Haarlem.
161 1. Frans Hals married Anneke Hermansz.
1613. First known pifture— Pieter Schrijver, "Dr. Scriverius" (Warneck Colle6lion,
Paris).
1614. Portrait of the minister, Johannes Bogardus (no longer existing). 1616. First great Doelen pi6lure at Haarlem.
1616. Death of his first wife, Anneke Hermansz.
161 7. Marries his second wife, Lysbeth Reyniers.
1644. Ele6led a dire6lor of the Guild of S. Lucas at Haarlem.
1652. Distrained upon for debt by Jan Ykess the baker.
1662. Applies to the municipality for relief.
1664. Receives a pension from the municipality.
1664. Paints his last two pi6lures (Managers of the Almshouses at Haarlem).
1666. (Sept. 7.) Buried in the choir of S. Bavon at Haarlem.
[An approximate chronology of the chief of his surviving pictures is given on pages xv, xvi. ]
xii
APPROXIMATE CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PICTURES BY FRANS HALS
To avoid confusion the dates are accepted as givett or suggested in the Official Catalogues
of the respedive Galleries.
The pi6lures which are marked with a dagger f are reproduced in this volume.
Paris (M. Warneck) . . 1613. Dr. Peter Schriverius (Pieter Schrijver,
poet and historian).
f Haarlem 1616. St. Joris' Doelen (twelve figures).
fLondon (Ld. Northbrook) 161 6. PiETER Van der Morsch {The Herring
Seller').
f America (copy at Berlin) 16 16. The Jolly Trio.
fCassel £620. Portrait of a Nobleman.
fCassel 1620. Wife of the above.
■f" London (Duke of Devonshire) 1622. Portrait of the Painter in a hat and
ruff (frontispiece of this volume).
Frankfort (Stadel Gall.) . 1624. Portrait of a Youth.
f Amsterdam (Rijks) . . 1624. Frans Hals AND Lysbeth Reyniers.
fLondon (Wallace Coll.) . 1624. Portrait of an Officer {The Laughing
Cavalier).
fHague (Mauritshuis) . . 1625. Jacob Pietersz. Olycan.
f Hague (Mauritshuis) . . 1625. Aletta Hanemans, wife of the above.
Berlin 1625. A SiNGiNG BOY (with light blue feather).
Berlin 1625. A Nobleman (with pointed beard).
Cassel 1625. Two Singing Boys.
fHaarlem 1627. St. Joris' Doelen (eleven figures).
f Haarlem 1627. St. Adriaen's Doelen (twelve figures).
fAmsterdam 1627. A Merry Drinker.
Brussels (Arenberg) . . 1627. Two Singing Boys.
Berlin 1627. A YoUNG Man in a violet cloak.
fBerlin 1627. JOANNES ACRONIUS.
Berlin 1627. YoUNG Man in a broad-brimmed hat.
Berlin 1627. You NG WOMAN in a black dress and lace collar.
•f Paris (Louvre) .... 1629. NICOLAS Van Beresteyn.
f Paris (Louvre) .... 1629. MADAME Van Beresteyn.
f Paris (Louvre) .... 1630. VAN Beresteyn Family Group.
France (Gustav de
Rothschild) .... 1630. The Lute Player ( The Fool).
t Copy at Amsterdam.
XV xvi IMPORTANT PICTURES BY FRANS HALS f Paris (Louvre) .... 1630.
Berlin 1630.
fBerlin 1630.
-f-London (National Gall.) 1633.
t Rotterdam 1634.
Gotha 1635.
Gotha 1635.
-f-Edinburgh 1635.
-f-Edinburgh 1635.
St. Petersburg .... 1635. •f-London (Buckingham
Palace) 1636.
f Amsterdam 1637.
Frankfort (Stadel) . . . 1638.
Frankfort (Stadel) . . . 1638.
fAmsterdam 1639.
London (Bridgewater Gal.) 1640.
f Antwerp Gallery . , . 1640.
•j-Haarlem 1641.
f Brussels 1645.
fBerlin 1650,
•f Paris (Louvre) . . . . 1655.
■fBerlin 1656.
Dresden 1660.
St. Petersburg .... 1660.
St. Petersburg .... 1660.
fCassel 1660.
-j-Haarlem 1664,
La Boh£aiienne.
A Jolly Toper.
Nurse and Child.
Albert NiEROP(?) orALBERT Van der Meek.
Cornelia Van der Meek, wife of the above. St. Adriaen's Doelen (fourteen figures,
with -fCol. Jan Claasz Loo).
Portrait of a Man in a ruff.
Portrait of a Man.
WiLLEM Van Heythuysen (small portrait,
seated).
Young Man in broad hat.
Young Man (wrongly called a portrait of
the painter).
Portrait of a Man.
Portrait of a Woman.
Portrait of a Naval Officer.
Portrait of a Man.
The Shooting Company of Captain
Reael {La Couipagnie Maigre). Finished
by Pieter Codde.
Portrait of a Man.
Wife of the above.
St. Joris' Doelen (nineteen figures with
Colonel Jan Loo).
Portrait of Maria Voogt or Van der
Meer.
Portrait of an Old Lady (in the style of Rembrandt).
A Fisher Boy ; the landscape painted probably by Ruysdael.
The Managers (Regenten) of St. Elizabeth's Hospital (five figures).
Portrait of Professor Jan Hornebeek.
A Portrait of a Middle-aged Woman.
HiLLE Bobbe (Alle Bobbe).
Rene Descartes.
Tyman Oosdorp. - :
A Young Man.
A Young Man (half-length).
A Young Man.
A Young Man in a broad-brimmed hat.
Men Governors (Regenten) of the
Old Men's Almshouse (Oudemannen-
HUIS) (six figures).
Lady Governors (Regentessen) of the
Old Women's Almshouse (Oude-
vrouwenhuis) (five figures).
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRANS HALS
Baumann, H, R. Frans Hals. Rejseminder. Twelve illustrations. Copenhagen.
(i.) Frans Hals und seine Schule. Leipsic. 1871.
(ii.) Studien zur Geschichte der Hollandischer Malerei. Brunswick. 1883. (iii.) Also passim in the " Gazette des Beaux Arts," e.g., 1864, xvi. 299 ; 1865, xviii. 103 ; 1868, xxiv. 219, 431 ; 1869, i. 162 ; 1885, xxxi. 349. Boland, J. A. ; Ten Brink, J. ; and Ter Gouw, J. The Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam. Etchings by J. A. Boland. Text by Ten Brink and Ter Gouw. Haarlem. 1876. F°.
Burger, W. [Pseudonym for Theophile Etienne Joseph Thore.]
(i.) Tresors d'art exposes a Manchester en 1857. Paris. 1857. 12''. (ii.) Musees de la HoUande, Amsterdam et la Haye, etudes sur I'ecole
Hollandaise par W. Burger. Paris. 1858. 12°. (iii.) Etudes sur les peintres HoUandais et Flamands. Galerie Suermondt a Aix-la-Chapelle. Par W. B., avec le catalogue de la colle6lion par le Dr. Waagen, traduit par W. B. i860. Bruxelles (printed) et Ostende. 8°. Chef-d'oeuvres de Frank Hals. Reproduits par la Photographic. Nine plates.
Haarlem. 1870. F°.
P. 255.
Descamps, Jean Baptiste.
(i.) La Vie des Peintres Flamands, Allemands et Hollandois avec des portraits en taille douce, etc. Four volumes. Paris. 1753-64. 8". (ii.) Voyage Pittoresque de la Flandre et du Brabant avec des reflexions relativement aux arts, et quelques gravures. Second edition, augmente de la vie de plusieurs peintres Flamands. Anvers (1770?). Encyclopsedia of Painters and Paintings. New York. Sons of Scribner. 1886. Fromentin, Eugene. Les Maitres d'autrefois. Paris. E. Plon. 1882. Head, Percy Rendell. Illustrated Biographies of Great Artists — Sir Anthony Van
Dyck and Frans Hals. Sampson Low, Marston and Co. London. 1879. Houbraken, Arnold. De groote Schonburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders. The Great Theatre of the Dutch Painters. With portraits, published in Dutch. Three volumes. 1718-21. 8°.
Knackfuss, D. Frans Hals. (Kiinstler Monographien.) Velhagen und Klasing. Leipsig. 1 896.
Moes, E. W. Frans Hals. Heliogravures from his pictures in the Netherlands. Text, in Dutch, by E. W. Moes. Haarlem. 1897. F°.
C xviii BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FRANS HALS
School, in de teeken en schilderkunst. Haarlem. 1787. P. 134. Schrijver, Pieter, or, in his Latin style, Petrus Schriverius.
*It is this work which describes the Doelen picture of 1616.
Unger, W., and Vosmaer, W. Etchings after Frans Hals, by Professor W. Unger,
with preface by Karl Vosmaer. Leiden. 1873. Van der Willigen, A. Les Artistes de Harlem. Notices historiques avec un precis
sur la Gilde de St. Luc. Harlem, les h^retiers F. Bohn. 1870. Van Mander Karel. Het Schilder-Boek waer in voor erst de leerlustighe Jueght
draghen, etc. In two parts. Haerlem, 1604. 4°.
*There is no reference to Frans Hals in this first edition. ~ .
• Another edition in four parts. Amsterdam. 1618 (16, 17, 16). 4°.
"This is the edition, issued after Karel Van Mander's death, which claims Frans Hals as his pupil. Dr. Willem Bode purchased a copy at the Auction Wiegel, with manuscript supplement, 1679, signed with a monogram, which Dr. Bode considers to have been Mathias Scherts. These notes contain a brief notice of Hals, and are printed in Dr. Bode's "Frans Hals and his School."
Vosmaer. Gazette des Beaux Arts. 1885.
Wilmot Buxton, H. J. Art Text Book. German and Flemish Painting. Sampson Low Marston and Co. London. 1881.
CORRIGENDA Page 21, line 19. For " on a table " read " at a table." Page 72, line 23. For "p. 109" read "p. 1 10."
lLiii]\laii^l photo.
I. PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER.
(Dcvous]i!i-e [h'lise.)
CHAPTER I THE RISE OF A NATIONAL ART HERE is perhaps no task more alluring to a writer on this subjedt than the attempt to account for the Art of any given country and period by the diredt influence of National surroundings. There is at the same time no pursuit which is perhaps more illusory, or more liable to meet with contradictions at every turn. The belief that the great schools of painting, of sculpture, of literature, which the world has seen may be dired:ly traced to causes which lie within the National History, or are at least the direct outcome of certain impulses which favour the growth of these manifestations of Human Mind, is one which is so widely accepted that it will seem almost treason to say that one doubts its complete accuracy, at any rate in the very sweeping sense in which the theory is usually set forth. There is indeed no question that there are two or three of the most striking periods of Art Production in the world's history which occur in such close conned;ion with stirring periods of political life and upheaval that it is almost impossible to escape from the argument of " Post hoc, propter hoc." Yet the scores, nay hundreds, of instances in which periods no less stirring, heroic, dramatic, in many countries, have been followed by no such manifestations of art inspiration, or indeed by any growth of art inspiration at all, stand as a reminder that we are generalizing from very few, though striking cases, and that the instances where no such results have followed are in an enormous majority.
B
For example — and it is the best example to choose, since it is that from which escape seems least possible — it is to be doubted if any ledturer or writer on Greek Art has ever failed (I cheerfully plead guilty myself) to attribute the great period of Athenian Art in the fifth century B.C. to the stimulus given to national character by the Persian wars, and to the atmosphere of patriotic enthusiasm which followed upon them. There is a certain exhilaration in this vision of a sudden outburst of new and rich life as the immediate consequence, and in some sort the reward, of a heroic struggle. But there are restraining considerations which make even that crowning example more than doubtful. It is indeed quite true that Athenian splendour found its opportunity in the sudden access of wealth which came to Athens as treasurer for all Greece of the money of the great league for the defence of all the states alike. The enthusiastic patriotism may be accepted as an historical fad;. It showed itself in a readiness to use other people's money, intended for quite a different purpose, to the glorification of Athens alone. There you have the opportunity no doubt : and you further establish the unfortunate fad;, that Art has no inseparable connedion with Morals. But when one seeks to prove that Pheidian Art was the dired outcome of some new birth of Hellenic spirit, one is met at the threshold of one's argument by two restraining thoughts. First of all there is the fad, which any close student of Attic Art, who has the eye of the artist to add to the knowledge of the archaeologist, will have fully realized — namely that Attic Art was already well on the way towards superb achievement before the Persian host set foot on Marathon ; and that if the great struggle for national freedom had never happened there would have been, given the presence of a genius like Pheidias, some great and splendid outcome, though not in just the same shape perhaps, nor with the same opportunity for displaying itself as was, in fad, given to it.
Moreover, the argument takes no count of that same apparition of genius, in this case at a singularly happy moment, when the position of art was ripe for a coming development. Genius is a thing which has a curious way of its own of refusing to agree to any of the rules laid down for its appearance by those who believe in evolutions in art ; it refuses to coincide with up-
RISE OF A NATIONAL ART S
ward steady progresses which raise the general average of art produdtion : with state-aided movements which spread a dead level of praiseworthy mediocrity, like Nile mud over a wide area. It obstinately refuses to appear when the ground has been carefully prepared for it by the most elaborate system of art schools. It crops up suddenly amongst the briars and the thistles of negledl. At one time it shows itself, solitary though in a great crowd, with a Rembrandt, that Melchisedek amongst artists, without father or mother, without country or age, an absolutely solitary, original, self-centred genius. Sometimes it steps on to the stage when it is already occupied by great players, amongst whom it still towers a head and shoulders taller by virtue of its superior power. So came Michelangelo. Sometimes it rises alone out of a dreary level of mediocrity. So came Velazquez into Spain, whose art was almost as dry and dull and dusty as its own midlands. Sometimes it rejects all that has gone before. Sometimes it seizes all that has gone before and builds upon it a superb superstructure. So wrought Pheidias. You cannot tell whence it comes nor whither it will go. It is as the wind which bloweth whence it listeth. You can lay down no laws either for its appearance, or for its a(5lion when it has appeared. Now Pheidias was born, it seems certain, some years before Marathon. The question of whether Greece was to have a genius or not was settled some years before that inspiring event. And be it well remembered that all the battles upon earth cannot create genius in one already born. That matter had got itself settled by the appearance in the world of the small infant, who was presently known as Pheidias. That is always Nature's affair. Circumstances, surroundings, opportunities or their absence, atmosphere, may foster and encourage, may divert or neutralize, may stifle entirely, but can never create genius. Marathon and Salamis did not make Pheidias and his men, but they presently " provided the market," and gave the opportunity.
If we turn to the great Italian period we shall equally find the favourite theory fail us under close examination. The varying circumstances under which art flourished or failed in the various cities of Italy baffle us by repeated contradictions. Freedom, says one, is the true soil on which the arts of Peace, the Liberal arts, alone can flourish. Then we look at Florence under the dominion of the Medici, and find a Leonardo, a Donatello and a Michelangelo, " An enlightened despotism," says another, and points to this same period of the Medici (we have left the age of Peisistratus too far behind to bring it in again at this point). Then we look at the furious, ungovernable, passionate days of Florence in the early thirteenth century, and find a Dante and a Giotto growing quietly in that unweeded garden. In greater and in less degree the same contradictions repeat themselves all over the Italian continent. Monarchies or Republics, Despotisms or Free States produced, or failed to produce, their crops irrespective of their conditions. Some centres, as Rome itself, curiously failed to contribute largely to the stock. Some, as the kingdom Naples, were wholly barren, save at a few points, the old Greek salt of southern Italy appearing, in some mysterious fashion, to have lost its savour. The fadts are unmistakeable ; Despot or Doge, King or Pope, the Artist came and went, or refused to come and go, in a manner which leaves little doubt that it is something else than National and Political conditions which favours or disfavours the growth of a great art, and the breeding of a great race of artists. There are an infinite number of subtle fadtors that are apt to get left out of the consideration, and of which we cannot weigh the force or gauge the chemical activities. First and foremost, in all probability, race and inheritance — Tuscan as against Roman, Venetian as against Sicilian — and then those thousand other lesser influences, climate, physical features, aims and modes of life, lines of thought, facilities or difficulties of material, all combining in mysterious complexity of proportion, and in a manner quite beyond our ken, to promote or to retard. We are, in faCt, very little in the secret — and the broader a man's outlook upon the history of the world's art the readier he will be to admit it — of the ingredients which Nature and Circumstance use, and of the proportions in which they mix them to form the blend out of which a great breed of artists is to be produced.
The negative evidence is of great volume. We may be content with one or two instances. What did the Spartan victories of Thermopylae and Platsea, certainly not less inspiring incidents than the Athenian deeds of Marathon and Salamis, do
RISE OF A NATIONAL ART for the art and literature of Sparta? At best as much as, perhaps a good deal less than, the Nile, Trafalgar and Waterloo did for the arts of England in the late years of the Georges and the early years of Victoria. Take again one most striking example, very little heeded indeed and almost forgotten already, out of the events of last century. The Greek war of independence, in 1829, in spite of its many barbarities and its many unworthinesses, may rank for its desperate heroism with any effort ever made by any nation for the defence or recovery of its freedom. Here, too, we have two added factors which should have made for a development according to the accepted theories. For Greece, when she had recovered her freedom early last century, after a struggle which should have revived, and indeed did revive, the best memories of her past, had before her eyes, still on her own soil, the visible triumphs of her arts to inspire her. She had more than that, — she had within herself some pure relics, and many mixed ones, of the ancient stock which had produced those very triumphs. And what traces are there of even a first awakening in these seventy years that have followed? There is no nation in Europe, except Turkey itself, in which the unwakened sleep of Art seems so like death.
The bearing of these various examples, positive and negative, upon the questions which lie before us, will be seen when we come to consider the condition of Holland at the moment when Frans Hals appeared as one of its artists.
Chapter II Holland And Its Art In The Seventeenth
CENTURY
IN the previous chapter we have spoken of the temptation to assign the phenomenon of any great art period in the world to the stimulus given to the human mind by great national events and influences. The temptation has not been resisted in the case of Holland. The rise and the achievement of that which we speak of as Dutch painting, by which we most of us mean the work of the Dutch masters who can be included within the limits of the seventeenth century, coincide with the last half of the great war of independence against Spain, and with the period immediately following it. That struggle may ' be considered to have commenced in 1568 and to have ended after eighty-four years. Frans Hals is born, probably, between 1580 and 1584, and is therefore twenty-five to twenty-nine years old at the date of the twelve years' truce in 1609, and the birth-dates ^ of nearly all those masters whom we reckon as representative of the true Dutch School (not embracing, save by chance exception, the Flemish masters) occur in the first half of the seventeenth century, that is to say, at the very time when the war against Spain — no longer a revolt of a subjedl-nation against its master, but the war of a united republic against a decaying monarchy — was still raging. Their youth, indeed, the inspiration period of life, fell for these men in the heat of a national struggle which no man, though his blood be not Dutch, can read of without that blood flowing faster. It is small wonder, therefore, if writers should be tempted to see cause and efled: in rather too dired: a connedlion with that
^ See an approximate table of dates given at the end of Chapter V.
Hayifstdiigl phofo?\
54. PORTRAIT OF HALS.
[Earl Spencer. )
HOLLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 7 great piece of history. It seems a very ungracious task to disprove so exhilarating a belief. But it is necessary to our true understanding of the course followed by the Dutch School of Painting to show that it developed itself just as if no Spanish war had ever happened ; and it supplied a demand, created by the growth of Dutch character and of Dutch life, which was strangely little affected by the Spanish war, except that, as we shall presently see, the religious hatreds engendered by that war had deprived the Dutch School of almost all outlet for its art in the religious subjedls and their treatment which had been the inspirations of the earlier painters.
Indeed, the condition of Holland during and dired:ly after that sanguinary struggle of eighty-four years is so wholly unique, so wholly unexped;ed, so wholly contrary to that which is often assumed by the hasty sympathizer, that it is absolutely necessary for us to look at it historically, if we are to understand the curiously domestic, unheroic, and placid character which the Dutch School presents us with. It is one of those cases where dry statistics presently become instind: with light for us.
When we remember that the Holland which was pitted against Spain was a little country of less than thirteen thousand square miles, and that the greater portion of it was a country only by virtue of the obstinate daily efforts of its inhabitants, being, as a fad:, a portion of sea-bottom kept dry by the incessant pumping of its owners. When we remember that the encounter lay between this apparently little people and the power which was reckoned as the most powerful, the most widely-extended, the richest in resources, the best provided with soldiery of any state of Europe; that already, when the truce of 1609 occurred, the war had lasted forty years, and had been carried on under the embittering conditions of race hatred and of religious hatred ; that many of the Dutch towns had been subjed;ed to disastrous sieges, their citizens given to the sword, their houses to the sack ; that dikes had been cut and sea-walls broken. When we remember all this, it is small wonder if the mind makes for itself a pidure of ruin and devastation and all the miseries of war spread far over the face of the devoted little provinces : small wonder that we seem to see lands given back to the sea that had been won from it in the past by patient obstinacy, the meadows bare of cattle, the fields of cultivators, the villages a desolation, commerce palsied, industry dead, the ploughshare beaten into swords, the quays of the harbours empty of their goods, the little fishing ports silent, the seas sailless and dreary. Surely all this time the voice of the minstrel was low, the mourners went about the streets, and Rachel was weeping for her children. Our imagination and our sympathies conspire to help out the inevitable pidture.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is indeed difficult to persuade oneself even with the aid of the severest statistics, and on the evidence of the most unquestionable history, and yet it is beyond controversy, that when, for a short breathing time after 1609, Holland was allowed to lay aside her weapons, she had become, during the forty years of her stress, the most prosperous, the best ordered, and perhaps the most powerful country in Europe. The war had not done this for her, it had only not prevented it. The growth of Dutch commerce, Dutch industry, Dutch production and of Dutch characT;er had gone steadily forward in its already self-appointed course just as if no war of independence had occurred. The Republic in 1609 had three thousand ships at sea or in its ports, and as merchant venture in those days required ships to go armed, it resulted that two thousand of these vessels could be ranked, in the warfare of those days in European waters and in the southern seas, as warships. No other country in the world could show numbers to be compared with this, and the testimony of the writers of other nations is unanimous that the Dutch sailors taken as a whole were the best in the world. She held the supremacy of all the seas, but above all, her power in the southern seas, which gave the key to the East Indian trade, was paramount. She had rivals, but as yet no equal. For the naval power of Spain was already decaying and the great day of England had not yet come. All along her sea-line the little ports were full of fishing vessels. Five hundred busses — a type of fishing craft nowextind;, though models may still be seen in the museums of Holland and in the churches — ranging from fifty to two hundred tons, went out annually to the North Sea fishing, with another fifteen hundred pinks and craft of smaller build and burden. And this takes no account of the
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