Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [191]
Dutch art | Rembrandt |
The eighteenth century
Accompanying the Netherlands’s economic decline was a gradual deterioration in the quality and originality of Dutch painting. The subtle delicacies of the great seventeenth-century painters was replaced by finicky still lifes and minute studies of flowers, or overly finessed portraiture and religious scenes; the work of Adrian van der Werff (1659–1722) is typical. Of the era’s other big names, Gerard de Lairesse (1640–1711) spent most of his time decorating a rash of brand-new civic halls and mansions, but, like the buildings he worked on, his style and influences were French. Jacob de Wit (1695–1754) continued where Lairesse left off, painting burgher ceiling after ceiling in flashy style. He also benefited from a relaxation in the laws against Catholics, decorating several of their (newly legal) churches. The eighteenth century’s only painter of any real talent was Cornelis Troost (1697–1750) who, although he didn’t produce anything stunningly original, painted competent portraits and some neat, faintly satirical pieces that have since earned him the title of “The Dutch Hogarth”. Cosy interiors also continued to prove popular, and the Haarlem painter Wybrand Hendriks (1744–1831) satisfied demand with numerous proficient examples.
Dutch art |
The nineteenth century
Johann Barthold Jongkind (1819–91) was the first important artist to emerge in the nineteenth century, painting landscapes and seascapes that were to influence Monet and the early Impressionists. He spent most of his life in France and his work was exhibited in Paris with the Barbizon painters, though he owed less to them than to van Goyen and the seventeenth-century “tonal” artists of the United Provinces. Jongkind’s work was a logical precursor to the art of the Hague School. Based in and around Den Haag between 1870 and 1900, this prolific group of painters tried to re-establish a characteristically Dutch national school of painting. They produced atmospheric studies of the dunes and polders around Den Haag, nature pictures that are characterized by grey, rain-filled skies, windswept seas and silvery, flat beaches – pictures that, for some, verge on the sentimental. J.H. Weissenbruch (1824–1903) was a founding member, a specialist in low, flat beach scenes dotted with stranded boats. The banker-turned-artist H.W. Mesdag (1831–1915) did the same but with more skill than imagination, while Jacob Maris (1837–99), one of three artist brothers, was perhaps the most typical with his rural and sea scenes heavily covered by grey, chasing skies. His brother Matthijs (1839–1917) was less predictable, ultimately tiring of his colleagues’ interest in straight observation and going to London to design windows, while the youngest brother Willem (1844–1910) is best known for his small, unpretentious studies of nature.
Anton Mauve (1838–88) is better known, an exponent of soft, pastel landscapes and an early teacher of van Gogh. Profoundly influenced by the French Barbizon painters – Corot, Millet et al – he went to Hilversum near Amsterdam in 1885 to set up his own group, which became known as the “Dutch Barbizon”. Jozef Israëls (1826–1911) has often been likened to Millet, though it’s generally agreed that he had more in common with the Impressionists, and his best pictures are his melancholy portraits and interiors. Lastly, Johan Bosboom’s (1817–91) church interiors may be said to sum up the romanticized nostalgia of the Hague School; shadowy and populated by figures in seventeenth-century dress, they seem to yearn for the country’s Golden Age.
Very different, and slightly later, Jan Toorop (1858–1928) went through multiple artistic changes, radically adapting his technique from a fairly conventional pointillism through a tired Expressionism to Symbolism with an Art Nouveau feel. Roughly contemporary, George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) was a better painter, and one who refined his style rather than changed it. His snapshot-like impressions