The Story of Dutch PaintingCaffin, Charles H. (Charles Henry)
History
The Story of Dutch Painting
Caffin, Charles H. (Charles Henry)
Painting, Dutch
To recapitulate, then, in this series of the Old Pinakothek we have a
striking example of Rembrandt’s motive in the treatment of Biblical
subjects, developed during the period from 1633 to 1646 of his greatest
popularity in Amsterdam. It involved, as we have seen, the translation
of the heroic and grandiloquent style of religious subjects, as
practised by the Italians, into the homelier poignancy and intimate
personal suggestiveness of meaning that commended themselves to the
simple directness and home-love of the Hollanders. It practically
converted the religious picture into one of genre; and its example led
to a similar treatment of these subjects by other painters, notably
Carel Fabritius, Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, and Gerbrandt van den
Eeckhout, while to the painters of domestic genre pure and simple it
also supplied the motive of sentiment and a new motive of technique.
It is true that sentiment plays a comparatively small part in Holland
genre. Dou has been mentioned as following the example of Rembrandt in
this respect, and the other prominent instance is Nicolaes Maes, who
entered the master’s studio in 1648, that is to say, two years after the
completion of _The Adoration of the Shepherds_, the latest of the Munich
series. How far Rembrandt had influenced the bias of Maes’s temperament
toward sentiment is conjectural, but that he supplied the younger man
with a technical principle for its expression is certain. Maes
discovered the possibilities of emotional suggestion that existed in the
device of heightening the luster of certain parts of the composition by
the contrast of veiled and shadowed color elsewhere. With him it does
not reach the dramatic force or depth of emotional appeal that the
master’s use of it involves, but nevertheless becomes the expression of
a sentiment that, as Bode remarks, is nearer to the sentiment of
Rembrandt than that of any other artist of the school.
On the other hand, by those genre artists of the period who were not
given to sentiment, the principle of Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro was adopted
for the sake of æsthetic considerations, founded upon the facts of
sight. It may or may not be true that Rembrandt himself derived it from
his observation of the light in the dim recesses of his father’s mill,
but at any rate the artists of genre interiors soon saw its application
to their subjects, and were led by it to study with more discrimination
the infinite variety of light value. The result was twofold. Their
color-schemes grow more subtle and refined, and the tonality becomes
impregnated with the suggestion of atmosphere. Thus the example of
Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro wedded to that of Hals’s facile craftsmanship
developed the inimitable perfection of technique which characterizes the
best works of Holland genre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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