UC-NRLF 
 
 u 
 
 
 
 m 
 
OF THE 
 
 Name of Book and Volume, 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/artinnetherlandsOOtainrich 
 
TAINE^S V^^ORKS, 
 
 /. A TOUR THROUGH THE PYRE- 
 NEES. 
 //. THE PHHOSOPHY OF ART. 
 HI. NOTES ON ENGLAND. 
 IV. ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 2 vols. 
 V. ON INTELLIGENCE. 
 VI. THE PHILOSOPHYOF GREEK ART. 
 VH. THE PHIL OS O PHY OF AR TIN THE 
 NE THERLANDS. 
 VIIL THE IDEAL IN ART. 
 IX. ITALY, ROME AND NAPLES. 
 X. ITALY, FLORENCE AND VENICE. 
 
 Henry Holt & Co., Publishers, 
 
 25 Bond Street, New York. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART. 
 
 ART 
 
 IN THE 
 
 NETHEELAKDS 
 
 BY 
 
 H. TAI^E 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 J. DURAND 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1874. 
 
rj4 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 
 
 LEYPOLDT & HOLT, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
 John F. Trow & Son, Printers, 
 205-213 East 12TH St., New York. 
 
TO 
 
 GUSTAVE FLAUBERT 
 
 7C.S\ 
 
PAET I. 
 PERMANENT CAUSES, 
 
Of ( '.nif r v.'V. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF APT IN 
 THE NETHEPLAJSTDS. 
 
 During the last three years I have explained to 
 you the history of painting in Italy ; this year I 
 propose to set before you the history of painting in 
 the Netherlands. 
 
 Two groups of mankind have been, and still are, 
 the principal factors of modern civilization ; on the 
 one hand, the Latin or Latinized people — the Italians, 
 French, Spanish and Portuguese, and on the other, 
 the Germanic people — the Belgians, Dutch, Germans, 
 Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, English, Scotch and 
 Americans. In the Latin group the Italians are unde- 
 niably the best artists ; in the Germanic group they 
 are indisputably the Flemings and the Dutch. In 
 studying, accordingly, the history of art along with 
 these two races, we are studying the history of mod- 
 ern art with its greatest and most opposite repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AUT 
 
 A product so vast and varied, an art enduring 
 nearly four hundred years, an art enumerating so 
 many masterpieces and imprinting on all its works 
 an original and common character, is a national prod- 
 uct; it is consequently intimately associated with 
 the national life, and is rooted in the national charac- 
 ter itself. It is a flowering long and deeply matured 
 through a development of vitality conformably to the 
 acquired structure and -primitive organization of the 
 plant. According to our method we shall first study 
 the innate and preliminary history which explains 
 the outward and final history. I shall first show you 
 the seed, that is to say the race, with its fundamental 
 and indelible qualities, those that persist through all 
 circumstances and in all climates ; and next the plant, 
 that is to say the people itself, with its original qual- 
 ities expanded or contracted, in any case grafted on 
 and transformed by its surroundings and its his- 
 tory ; and finally the flower, that is to say the art, 
 and especially painting, in which this development 
 culminates. 
 
/i\ THE NETHERLANDS. 13 
 
 I. 
 
 The men who inhabit the Xetherlands belong, for 
 the most part, to that race which invaded the Roman 
 empire in. the fifth century, and which then, for the 
 first time, claimed its place in broad sunshine along- 
 side of Latin nations. In certain countries, in Gaul, 
 Spain and Italy, it simply brought chiefs and a 
 supplement to the primitive population. In other 
 countries, as in England and the N^etherlands, it drove 
 out, destroyed and replaced the ancient inhabitants, 
 its blood, pure, or almost pure, still flowing in the 
 veins of the men now occupying the same soil. 
 Throughout the middle ages the ^Netherlands Avere 
 called Low Germany. The Belgic and Dutch lan- 
 guages are dialects of the German, and, except in 
 the Walloon district, where a corrupt French is 
 spoken, they form the popular idiom of the whole 
 country. 
 
 Let us consider the common characteristics of the 
 Germanic race, and the differences by which it is 
 opposed to the Latin race. Physically, we have 
 
 \ 
 
14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 a whiter and softer skin, generally speaking, blue 
 eyes, often of a porcelain or pale hue, paler as you 
 approach the north, and sometimes glassy in Hol- 
 land ; hair of a flaxy blonde, and, with children, al- 
 most white ; the ancient Romans early wondered at 
 it, and stated that infants in Germany had the hair 
 of old men. The complexion is of a charming rose, 
 infinitely delicate among young girls, and lively 
 and tinged w^ith vermilion among young men, and 
 sometimes even among the aged ; ordinarily, how- 
 ever, among the laboring classes and in advanced 
 life I have found it wan, turnip-hued, and in Hol- 
 land cheese-colored, and mouldy cheese at that. 
 The body is generally large, but thick-set or burly, 
 heavy and inelegant. In a similar manner the 
 features are apt to be irregular, especially in Hol- 
 land, where they are flabby, with projecting cheek- 
 bones and strongly-marked jaws. They lack, in 
 short, sculptural nobleness and delicacy. You will 
 rarely find the features regular" like the numerous 
 pretty faces of Toulouse and Bordeaux, or like the 
 spirited and handsome heads which abound in the 
 vicinity of Rome and Florence. You will much 
 
IX TIW NETHERLANDS. 15 
 
 ofLener find exaggerated features, incoherent combi- 
 nations of form and tones, curious fleshy protuberan- 
 ces, so many natural caricatures. Taking tliem foi' 
 works of art, living forms testify to a clumsy and 
 fantastic liand through their more incorrect and 
 weaker drawing. 
 
 Observe now this body in action, and you will 
 find its animal faculties and necessities of a grosser 
 khid than among the Latins ; matter and mass seem 
 to predominate over motion and spirit : it is voracious 
 and even carnivorous. Compare the appetite of an 
 Englishman, or even a Hollander, with that of a 
 Frenchman or an Italian ; those among you who 
 have visited the country can call to mind the public 
 dinner tables and the quantities of food, especially 
 meat, tranquilly swallow^ed several times a day by 
 a citizen of London, Rotterdam or Antwerp. Li 
 English novels people are always lunching — the most 
 sentimental heroine, at the end of the third volume, 
 having consumed an infinite number of buttered muf- 
 fins, cups of tea, bits of chicken, and sand\viches. 
 The climate contributes to this ; in the fogs of the 
 north, people could not sustain themselves, like a 
 
 \ 
 
16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ABT 
 
 peasant of the Latin race, on a bowl of soup or a 
 piece of bread flavored with garlic, or on a plate of 
 macaroni. For the same reason the German is fond 
 of potent beverages. Tacitus had already remarked 
 it, and Ludovico Guiccardini, an eye-witness in the 
 sixteenth century, whom I shall repeatedly quote, 
 says, in speaking of the Belgians and Hollanders : 
 " Almost all are addicted to drunkenness, which vice, 
 with them, is a passion. They fill themselves with 
 liquor every evening, and even at day-break." At 
 the present time, in America and in Europe, in most 
 of the German countries, intemperance is the national 
 bane ; half of the suicides and mental maladies flow 
 from it. Even among the reflective and those in 
 good circumstances the fondness for liquor is very 
 great : in Germany and in England it is not regarded 
 as disreputable for a well-educated man to rise from 
 the table partially intoxicated ; now and then he be- 
 comes completely drunk. With us, on the contrary, 
 it is a reproach, in Italy a disgrace, and in Spain, 
 during the last centur}^, the name of drunkard was an 
 insult which a duel could not wholly wipe out, provok- 
 ing, as it often did, the dagger. There is nothing of 
 
/A" THE NETUERLANDS. 17 
 
 this sort in German countries ; hence the great num- 
 ber and frequency of breweries and the innumerable 
 sliops for the retailhig of ardent spirits and different 
 kinds of beer, all bearing witness to the public taste. 
 Enter, in Amsterdam, one of these little shops, gar- 
 nished with polished casks, where glass after glass is 
 swallowed of wliite, yellow, green and brown brandy, 
 strengthened with jDepper and pimento. Place your- 
 self at nine o'clock in 'the evening in a Brussels 
 brewery, near a dark wooden table around which 
 the hawkers of crabs, salted rolls and hard-boiled 
 eggs circulate ; ol)serve the people quietly seated 
 there, each one intent on himself, sometimes in 
 couples, but generally silent, smoking, eating, and 
 drinking bumpers of beer which they now and then 
 warm up with a glass of spirits ; you can understand 
 sympathetically the strong sensation of heat and 
 animal plenitude which they feel in their sj^eechless 
 solitude, in proportion as superabundant solid and 
 liquid nourishment renews in them the living sub- 
 stance, and as the whole body partakes in the grati- 
 fication of the satisfied stomach. 
 
 One point more of their exterior remains to be 
 
18 . THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 shown wliich especially strikes people of southern 
 climes, and that is the sluggishness and torpidity of 
 their impressions and movements. An umbrella- 
 dealer of Amsterdam, a Toulousian, almost threw 
 himself into my arms on hearing me speak French, 
 and for a quarter of an hour I had to listen to the 
 story of his griefs. To a temperament as lively as 
 his, the people of tliis country were intolerable — 
 " stiff, frigid, with no sensibility or sentiment, dull 
 and insipid, perfect turnips, sir, perfect turnips ! " 
 And, truly, his cackling and expansiveness formed a 
 contrast. It seems, on addressing them, as if they 
 did not quite comprehend you, or that they required 
 time to set their expressional machinery agoing ; 
 the keeper of a gallery, a household servant, stands 
 gaping at you a minute before answering. In coffee- 
 houses and in public conveyances the phlegm and 
 passivity of their features are remarkable ; they do 
 not feel as we do the necessity of moving about 
 and talking — they remain stationary for hours, 
 absorbed with their own ideas or with their pipes. 
 At evening parties in Amsterdam, ladies, bedecked 
 like shrines, and motionless on their chairs, seem to 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 19 
 
 be statues. In Belgium, in Germany and in Eng- 
 land, the faces of the peasantry seem to us inani- 
 mate, devitalized or benumbed. A friend, return- 
 ing from Berlin, remarked to me, " those people all 
 have dead eyes." Even the young girls look simple 
 and drowsy. Many a time have I paused betbre a 
 shop-window to contemplate some rosy, placid and 
 candid face, a mediaeval madonna making up the 
 fashions. It is the very reverse of this in our land 
 and in Italy, where the grisette's eyes seem to be 
 gossiping with the chairs for lack of something 
 better, and where a thought, the moment it is born, 
 translates itself into gesture. In Germanic lands 
 the channels of sensation and expression seem to be 
 obstructed ; delicacy, impulsiveness, and readiness 
 of action appear impossible ; a southerner has to 
 exclaim at their awkwardness and lack of adroit- 
 uess, and this was the deliberate opinion of our 
 French in the wars of the Revolution and the 
 Empire. In this respect the toilette and deportment 
 afford us the best indications, especially if we take 
 the middle and lower classes of society. Compare 
 the grisettes of Rome, Bologna, Paris and Toulouse 
 
20 THE PHILOSOPHT OF ART 
 
 with the huge mechanical dolls to be seen at Hamp- 
 ton Court on Sundays, starched and stiff in their 
 blue scarfs, staring silks and gilded belts, and other 
 details of a pompous extravagance. I remember at 
 this moment two fetes — one at Amsterdam to which 
 the rich peasant women of Friesland flocked, their 
 heads decked with a fluted cap and a hat like a cab- 
 riolet rearing itself convulsively, whilst on the tem- 
 ples and brow were two gold plates, a gold pediment 
 and gold corkscrews surrounding a wan and dis- 
 torted countenance ; the other at Fribourg, in Bris- 
 gau, where, planted on their solid feet, the village 
 women stood vaguely staring at us and exhibiting 
 themselves in their national costume — so many black, 
 red, purple and green skirts, Avith stiff folds like 
 those of gothic statues, a swollen corsage front and 
 rear, massive sleeves puffed out like legs of mutton, 
 forms girded close under the armpits, dull, yellow 
 hair twisted into a knot and drawn towards the top 
 of the head, chignons in a net of gold and silver 
 embroidery, and above this a man's hat, like an 
 orange-colored pipe, the heteroclite crown of a body 
 seemingly hewn out with a cleaver, and vaguely 
 
ZiY THE NErHERLAI{D8. 21 
 
 suggesting a painted sign-post. In brief, the human 
 animal of this race is more passive and more gross 
 than the other. One is tempted to regard him as 
 inferior on comparing him witli the Italian or south- 
 ern Frenchman, so temperate, so quick intellectually, 
 who is naturally apt in expression, in chatting and 
 in pantomine, possessing taste and attaining to 
 elegance, and who, without effort, like the Proven- 
 9als of the twelfth, and the Florentines of the four- 
 teenth century, become cultivated, civilized and 
 accomplished at the first effort. 
 
 We must not confine ourselves to this first glance 
 which presents only one phase of things ; there is 
 another associated with it, as liglit accompanies 
 dark. This finesse, and this precocity, natural to 
 the Latin families, leads to many bad results. It 
 is the som'ce of their craving for agreeable sensa- 
 tions; they are exacting in their comforts; tliey 
 demand many and varied pleasures, whether coarse 
 or refined, an entertaining conversation, tlie ameni- 
 ties of politeness, the satisfactions of vanity, the 
 sensualities of love, the delights of novelty and of 
 accident, the harmonious symmetries of form and 
 
22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 of plirase ; they readily develope into rhetoricians, 
 dilettanti, epicureans, voluptuaries, libertines, gal- 
 lants and worldliiiixs. It is indeed throug;!! these 
 vices that their civilization becomes corrupt or ends ; 
 you encounter them in the decline of ancient Greece 
 and Kome, in Provenye of the twelfth, in Italy of 
 the sixteenth, in Spain of the seventeenth, and in 
 France of the eighteenth centuries. Tlieir more 
 quickly cultivated temperament bears them more 
 speedily on to subtleties. Coveting keen emotions, 
 they cannot be happy with moderate ones : they 
 are like people wdio, accustomed to eating oranges, 
 throw away carrots and turnips ; and yet it is 
 carrots and turnips, and other equally insipid vege- 
 tables, which make up our ordinary diet. It is in 
 Italy that a noble lady exclaims, on partaking of a 
 delicious ice-cream, " What a pity there is no sin in 
 it ! " In France a noble lord remarks, speaking of 
 a diplomatic roue, "Who wouldn't admire him, he is 
 so wicked ! " In other directions their vivacity of 
 impression and promptness of action render them 
 improvisators; they are so quickly and so deeply 
 excited by a crisis as to forget duty and reason, 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 23 
 
 resorting to daggers in Italy and Spain, and to pis- 
 tols in France ; showing by tkis that they are only 
 moderately capable of biding their time, of self-sub- 
 ordination, and of maintaining order. Success in 
 life depends on knowing how to be patient, how to 
 endure drudgery, how to unmake and remake, how 
 to recommence and continue without allowing the 
 tide of anger or the flight of the imagination to 
 arrest or divert the daily effort. In fine, if we com- 
 pare their faculties with the world as it runs, it is 
 too mechanical, too rude, and too monotonous for 
 them, and they too lively, too delicate, and too 
 brilliant for it. Always after the lapse of centuries 
 this discord shows itself in their civilization; they 
 demand too much of things, and, through their mis- 
 conduct, fail even to reach that which things might 
 confer on them. 
 
 Suppress, now, these fortunate endow^ments, and, 
 on the dark side, these mischievous tendencies, — im- 
 agine on the slow and substantial body of the Ger- 
 man a well-organized brain, a sound mind, and trace 
 the effects. With less lively impressions a man thus 
 fashioned will be more collected and more thought- 
 
24: THE PHIL080PRT OF ART 
 
 fill ; less solicitous of agreeable emotions, he can, mth- 
 out weariness, do disagreeable things. His senses 
 being blunter, he prefers depth to form, and truth 
 within to show without. As he is less impulsive he 
 is less subject to impatience and to unreasonable out- 
 bursts ; he has an idea of sequence, and can persist 
 in enterprises the issue of which is of long achieve- 
 ment. Finally, with him the understanding is the 
 better master, because outward temptations are 
 weaker and inward explosions rarer; reason governs 
 better where there is less inward rebellion and less 
 outw^ard attack. Consider, in effect, the Germanic 
 people of the present day and throughout history. 
 They are, primarily, the great laborers of the world ; 
 in matters of intellect none equal them ; in erudition, 
 in philosophy, in the most crabbed linguistic studies, 
 in voluminous editions, dictionaries and other compi- 
 lations, in researches of the laboratory, in all science, 
 in short, whatever stern and hard, but necessary and 
 preparatory work there is to be done, that is their 
 province; patiently, and with most commendable 
 self-sacrifice they hew out every stone that enters into 
 the edifice of modern times. In material matters the 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 25 
 
 English, Americans and Dutch perform the same ser- 
 vice. I should like to show you an English spinner 
 or cloth-dresser at work ; he is a perfect automaton, 
 occupied day in and day out without a moment's 
 relaxation, and the tenth hour as well as the first. 
 If he is in a workshop with French workmen, these 
 form a striking contrast; they are unable to adapt 
 themselves to the same mechanical regularity ; they 
 are sooner tired and inattentive, and thus produce 
 less at the end of the day ; instead of eighteen hun- 
 dred spools, they only turn out twelve hundred. 
 The farther south you go the less the capacity. A 
 Proven9al or Italian must gossip, sing and dance ; 
 he is a willing lounger, and lives as he can, and in 
 this way easily contents himself with a threadbare 
 coat. Indolence there seems natural and honorable. 
 A 7iohle life, the laziness of the man who, to save his 
 honor, lives on expedients, and sometimes fasts, has 
 been the curse of Spain and Italy for the last two 
 hundred years. On the other hand, in the same 
 epoch, the Fleming, the Hollander, the Englishman 
 and the German have gloried in providing themselves 
 with all useful things ; the instinctive repugnance 
 
26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 which leads an ordinary man to shun trouble, the 
 puerile vanity which leads the cultivated man to dis- 
 tinguish himself from the artizan, disappear alongside 
 of their good sense and reason. 
 
 This same reason and this same good sense estab- 
 lish and maintain amongst them diverse descriptioi.s 
 of social engagements, and first, the conjugal bond. 
 You are aware that among the Latin families tins is 
 not over respected; in Italy, Spain and France 
 adultery is always the principal subject of the play 
 and the romance ; at all events, literature in these 
 lands always in(;arnates passion in the hero, and is 
 prodigal of sympathy for him by granting him all 
 privileges. In England, on the contrary, the novel 
 is a picture of loyal affection and the laudation of 
 wedlock; in Germany, gallantry is not honorable, 
 even among students. In Latin countries it is 
 excused or accepted, and even sometimes approved 
 of. The matrimonial yoke, and the monotony of the 
 household, there seem galling. Sensational allure- 
 ments penetrate too deeply ; the caprices of the 
 imagination there are too brusque; the mind creates 
 for itself visions of transports and of ecstatic 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS, 27 
 
 delight, or at least a romance of exciting and 
 varied sensuality, and at the first opportunity tlio 
 suppressed flood bursts forth, carrying with it every 
 barrier of duty and of law. Consider Spain, Italy 
 and France in tlie sixteenth century ; read the tales 
 of Bandello, the comedies of Lope de Vega, the nar- 
 ratives of Brantome, and listen for a moment to the 
 comment of Guiccardini, a contemporary, on the 
 social habits of the Netherlands. "They hold 
 adultery in horror . . . Their women are extremely 
 circumspect, and are consequently allowed much 
 freedom. They go out alone to make visits, and 
 even journeys without evil report; they are able to 
 take care of themselves. Moreover they are house- 
 keepers, and love their households." Only very 
 lately, again, a wealthy and noble Hollander named 
 to me several young ladies belonging to his family 
 who had no desire to see the Great Exposition, and 
 who remained at home whilst their husbands and 
 brothers visited Paris. A disposition so calm and 
 so sedentary diffuses much happiness throughout 
 domestic life ; in the repose of curiosity and of de- 
 sire the ascendancy of pure ideas is much greater ; 
 
28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 the constant presence of the same person not being 
 wearisome, the memory of plighted faith, the senti- 
 ment of duty and of self-respect easily prevails 
 agahist temptations which elsewhere triumph be- 
 cause they are elsewhere more powerful. I can say 
 as much of other descriptions of association, and es- 
 pecially of the free assemblage. This, practically, is 
 a very difficult thing. To make the machine Y>^ork 
 regularly, without obstruction, those who compose 
 it must have calm nerves and be governed by the 
 end in view. One is expected to be patient in a 
 'meeting,' to allow himself to be contradicted and 
 even vilified, await his turn for speaking, reply 
 with moderation, and submit twenty times in suc- 
 cession to the same arojument enlivened with ii inures 
 and documentary facts. It will not answer to fling 
 aside the newspaper the moment its political interest 
 flags, nor take up politics for the pleasure of discus- 
 sion and speech-making, nor excite insurrections 
 against officials the moment they become distasteful, 
 which is the fashion in Spain and elsewhere. You 
 yourselves have some knowledge of a country where 
 the government has been overthrown because in 
 
/lY THE NETHERLANDS^. 29 
 
 active and because the nation felt ennui. Anion 
 
 o 
 
 Germanic populations, people meet together not to 
 talk but to act ; politics is a matter lo be Avisely 
 managed, they bring to bear on it the spirit of busi- 
 ness ; speech is simply a means, while the effect, 
 however remote, is the end in view. They subor- 
 dinate themselves to this end, and are full of defer- 
 ence for the persons who represent it. How unique! 
 Here the governed respect the governing; if the 
 latter prove objectionable they are resisted, but 
 legally and patiently; if institutions prove defective, 
 they are gradually reformed without being dis- 
 rupted. Germanic countries are the patrimony of 
 free parliamentary rule. You see it established to- 
 d.-v)^ in Sweden, in Norway, in England, in Belgium, 
 in Holland, in Prussia, and even in Austria; the 
 colonists engaged in clearing Australia and the 
 West of America, plant it in their soil, and, how- 
 ever rude the new-comers may be, it prospers at 
 once, and is maintained without difficulty. We find 
 it at the outset in Belgium and Holland ; the old 
 cities of the Netherlands were republics, and so 
 maintained themselves throuochout the middle ages 
 
30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 in spite of their feudal suzerains. Free communities 
 arose, and maintained themselves without effort, at 
 once, the small as well as the great, and in the great 
 whole. In the sixteenth century we find in each 
 city, and even in small towns, companies of arquebu- 
 siers and rhetoricians, of which more than two hun- 
 dred have been enumerated. In Belgium to-day 
 there still flourish an infinity of similar corporations, 
 societies of archers, of musicians, of pigeon fanciers, 
 and for singing birds. In Holland volunteer asso- 
 ciations of private individuals minister to every 
 requirement of public charity. To act in a body, no 
 one person oppressing another, is a wholly Germanic 
 talent, and one which gives them such an empire 
 over matter ; through patience and reflection they 
 conform to the laws of physical and human nature, 
 and instead of opposing them profit by them. 
 
 If, now, from action we turn to speculation, that 
 is to say to the mode of conceiving and figuring 
 the world, we shall find the same imprint of this 
 thoughtful and slightly sensualistic genius. The 
 Latins show a decided taste for the external and 
 decorative aspect of things, for a pompous display 
 
m THE NETUERLANDS. 31 
 
 feeding the senses and vanity, for logical order, out- 
 ward symmetry and pleasing arrangement, in short, 
 for form. The Germanic people, on the contrary, 
 have rather inclined to the inward order of things, 
 to truth itself, in fact, to the fundamental. Their 
 instinct leads them to avoid being seduced by 
 appearances, to remove mystery, to seize the hidden, 
 even when repugnant and sorrowful, and not to 
 eliminate or withhold any detail, even when vulgar 
 and unsightly. Among the many products of this 
 instinct there are two which place it in full light 
 through the strongly marked contrast in each of 
 form and substance, and these are literature and 
 religion. The literatures of Latin populations are 
 classic and nearly or remotely allied to Greek poesy, 
 Roman eloquence, the Italian renaissance, and the 
 age of Louis XIV. ; they refine and ennoble, they 
 embellish and prune, they systematize and give pro- 
 portion. Their latest masterpiece is the drama of 
 Racine, who is the painter of princely ways, court 
 proprieties, social paragons, and cultivated natures; 
 the master of an oratorical style, skilful composi- 
 tion and literary elegance. The Germanic litera- 
 
32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 tni'es, on tlie contrary, are romantic; their primitive 
 source is the Edda and the ancient sagas of the 
 north; their greatest masterpiece is the drama of 
 Shakespeare, that is to say the crude and complete 
 representation of actual life, with all its atrocious, 
 ignoble and common-place details, its sublime and 
 brutal instincts, the entire outgrowth of human 
 character displayed before us, now in a familiar 
 style bordering on the trivial, and now poetic even 
 to lyricism, always independent of rule, incolierent, 
 excessive, but of an incomparable force, and filling 
 our souls with the warm and palpitating passion of 
 which it is the outcry. In a similar manner take 
 religion, and view it at the critical moment when the 
 people of Europe had to choose their faith, that is to 
 say in the sixteenth century; those who have 
 studied original documents know what this at that 
 time meant ; what secret preferences kept some in 
 the ancient faith and led others to take the new one. 
 All Latin populations, up to the last, remained 
 Catholic; they were not willing to renounce their 
 intellectual habits ; they remained faithful to tradi- 
 tion ; they continued subject to authority; they 
 
AY THE NETHERLANDS. 33 
 
 were aifecled througli sensuous externalities — the 
 pomp of worsliip, the imposing system of the Catho- 
 lic hierarchy, the majestic conception of Catliolic 
 unity and Catholic perpetuity ; they attached abso- 
 lute importance to the rites, outward works and visi- 
 ble acts through which piety is manifested. Almost 
 all the Germanic nations, on the contrary, became 
 Protestants. If Belgium, which inclined to the 
 Reformation, escaped, it was owing to force througli 
 tlie successes of Farnese, the destruction and flight 
 of so many Protestant families, and to a special 
 moral crisis which you will find in the history of 
 Rubens. All other Germanic peoples subordinated 
 outward to inward worship. They made salvation 
 to consist of a renewal of the heart and of religious 
 sentiment ; they made the formal authority of the 
 Church yield to personal convictions; through this 
 predominance of the fundamental form became acces- 
 sory, worship, daily life and rites being modified in 
 the same degree. We shall soon see that in the 
 arts the same opposition of instincts produced an 
 analogous contrast of taste and style. Meanwhile 
 let it suffice for us to seize the cardinal points which 
 2* 
 
34 THE PEILOSOPHT OF ART 
 
 distinguish the two races. If the latter, compared 
 with the former, presents a less sculpturesque form, 
 grosser appetites and a more torpid temperament, 
 it furnishes through tranquillity of nerve and cool- 
 ness of blood a stronger hold on pure reason ; its 
 mind, less diverted from the right road by delight 
 in sensuous attractions, the impetuosities of impulse 
 and the illusions of external beauty, is better able to 
 accommodate itself now to comprehend things and 
 now to direct them. 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 35 
 
 11. 
 
 This race, thus endowed, has received various im- 
 prints, according to the various conditions of its 
 abiding-place. Sow a number of seeds of the same 
 vegetable species in different soils, under various 
 temperatures, and let them germinate, grow, bear 
 fruit and reproduce themselves indefinitely, each on 
 its own soil, and each will adapt itself to its soil, 
 producing several varieties of the same species so 
 much the more distinct as the contrast is greater 
 between the diverse climates. Such is the experience 
 of the Germanic race in the Netherlands. Ten cen- 
 turies of habitation have done their work ; the end 
 of the middle ages shows us that, in addition to its 
 innate character, there is an acquired character. 
 
 It becomes necessary, therefore, to study the soil 
 and the sky; in default of travel take the next best 
 thing, a map. Excepting the mountainous district 
 to the south-east, the Netherlands consist of a watery 
 plain, formed out of the deposits of three large rivers 
 — the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt, besides sev- 
 
36 THE PIIILOSOPIIT OF ART 
 
 eral smaller streams. Add to this numerous inlets, 
 ponds and marshes. The country is an outflow of 
 mighty waters, Avdiicli, as tliey reach it, become slug- 
 gish and remain stagnant for want of a fall. Dig a 
 liole anywhere and water comes. Examine the land- 
 scapes of Van der Neer and you will obtain some idea 
 of the vast sluggish streams which, on approaching 
 the sea, become a league wide, and lie asleep, wal- 
 lowing in their beds like some huge, flat, slimy fish, 
 turbid and feebly glimmering with scaly reflections. 
 The plain is oftentimes below their level, and is only 
 protected by levees of earth. You feel as if some of 
 them were going to give way ; a mist is constantly 
 rising from their surfaces, and at night a dense fog 
 envelopes all things in a bluish humidity. Follow 
 them down to the sea, and here a second and more 
 violent inundation, arising from the daily tides, com- 
 pletes the work of the flrst. The northern ocean is 
 hostile to man. Look at the " Estacade" of Ruysdael, 
 and imagine the frequent tempests casting up ruddy 
 waves and monstrous foaming billows on the low, flat 
 band of earth already half submerged by the enlarge- 
 ment of the rivers. A belt of islands, some of them 
 
/.Y THE NETHERLAJsDS. 37 
 
 equal to the half of a department, hidicates, along 
 tlie coast, this choking up of inland currents and the 
 assaults of the sea — Walcheren, North and South 
 Be veland, Tholen, Schouwen, Yoorn, Beierland, Texel, 
 Vlieland and others. Sometimes the ocean runs up 
 and forms inner seus like that of Harlem, or deep 
 gulfs like the Zuyder Zee. If Belgium is an alluvial 
 expanse, formed by the rivers, Holland is simply a 
 deposit of mud surrounded by water. Add to all 
 tliis an unpropitious soil and a rigorous climate, 
 and you are tempted to conclude that the coun- 
 try was not made for man but for storks and 
 beavers. 
 
 When the first Germanic tribes came to encamp 
 here it was still worse. In the time of Ca3sar and 
 Strabo there was nothing but a swampy forest ; 
 travellers narrate that one could pass from tree to 
 tree over all Holland without touching the ground. 
 The uprooted oaks falling into the streams formed 
 rafts, as nowadays on the Mississippi, and barred 
 the way to the Roman flotillas. The Waal, the 
 Meuse and the Scheldt annually overflowed their 
 banks, the water covering the flat country around to 
 
38 THE PHILOSOPHT OF ART 
 
 a great distance. Autumnal tempests every year 
 submerged the island of Batavia, while in Holland 
 the line of the coast changed constantly. Rain fell 
 incessantly, and the fog was as impenetrable as in 
 Russian America ; daylight lasted only three or four 
 hours. A solid coating of ice annually covered the 
 Rhine. Civilization, meanwhile, as the soil became 
 cleared, tempered the climate ; the rude Holland of 
 that day possessed the climate of Norway. Flanders, 
 four centuries after the invasion, was still called " the 
 interminable and merciless forest." In 1197 the 
 country about Waes, now a garden, remained untilled, 
 the monks on it being besieged by wolves. In the four- 
 teenth century droves of wild horses roamed through 
 the forests of Holland. The sea encroached on the 
 land. Ghent was a seaport in the ninth century, 
 Thorout, St. Omer and Bruges in the twelfth century, 
 Damme in the thirteenth, and Ecloo in the fourteenth. 
 On looking at the Holland of old maps we no 
 longer recognize it.* Still, at the present day its 
 inhabitants are obliged to guard the soil against the 
 
 ♦Michiels, "Histoire de la Peintare Flamaude," Vol. I., p. 230; and 
 Schayes' " Les Pays-Bas-avantet pendant la domination Romaine." 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 39 
 
 rivers and the sea. In Belgium tlie margin of the 
 sea is below the level of the water at high tide, the 
 polders or low spots thus reclaimed displaying vast 
 argillaceous flats, with a slimy soil tinged with purple 
 reflections, between dykes, which, even in our days, 
 sometimes break away. The danger in Holland is 
 still greater, life there seeming to be very precarious. 
 For thirteen centuries a great inundation has taken 
 place, on an average, every seven years, besides 
 smaller ones ; one hundred thousand persons were 
 drowned in 1230, eighty thousand in 1287, twenty 
 thousand in 1470, thirty thousand in 1570, and twelve 
 thousand in 1717. Similar disasters occurred in 1770, 
 in 1808, and still later in 1825. Dollart Bay, about 
 seven miles wide by twenty deep, and the Zuyder 
 Zee, forty-four leagues square, are invasions of the 
 sea in the thirteenth century. In order to protect 
 Friesland it was necessary to drive three rows of 
 piles a distance of twenty-two leagues, each pile cost- 
 ing seven florins. To protect the coast of Harlem 
 they had to build a dyke of Norway granite five 
 miles long by forty feet in height, and which is 
 buried two hundred feet beneath the waves. Am- 
 
40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 sterJam, wliicli has two liuiidred and sixty thousand 
 inliabitaiits, is entirely built on piles, frequently 
 thirty feet long. The foundations of every town and 
 village in Friesland are artificial constructions. It 
 is estimated that seven and a half billions of francs 
 have been expended on protective works between the 
 Scheldt and the Dollart. Life has to be purchased 
 in Holland. And when from Harlem or Amsterdam 
 you see the enormous yellow surf beating against 
 that narrow strip of mud, and enclosing it as far as 
 the eye can reach, it is evident tliat man, in casting 
 this sop to the monster, obtains safety at a low rate.* 
 Imagine, now, on this quagmire, the ancient Ger- 
 manic tribes, so many fishers and hunters roaming 
 about in hide boats and clad in seal-skin tunics, and 
 estimate if you can the effort those barbarians were 
 forced to make in order to create a habitable soil 
 and transform themselves into a civilized people. 
 Men of another stamp would not have succeeded ; 
 the inilleu was too unfavorable. In analogous con- 
 ditions the inferior races of Canada and Russian 
 
 ♦See Alphonse Esquiros'. "La Neerlande et la Vie Neerlandaise. " 
 2 vols. 
 
AV THE NETHERLANDS. 41 
 
 AniLTicn, liave remained savage ; other well-endowed 
 races, the Celts of Ireland and tlie Highland Scotch, 
 attained only to a chivalric standard of society and 
 poetic legends. Here there had to be good, sound 
 heads, a capacity to subject sensation to thought, to 
 patiently endure ennui and fatigue, to accept priva- 
 tion and labor in view of a remote end, in short a 
 Germanic race, meaning by this men organized to 
 co-operate together, to toil, to struggle, to begin 
 over and over again and ameliorate unceasingly, to 
 dike streams, to oppose tides, to drain the soil, to 
 turn wind, water, flats, and argillaceous mud to 
 account, to build canals, ships and mills, to make 
 brick, raise cattle, and organize various manufac- 
 turing and commercial enterprises. The difficulty 
 being very great the mind was absorbed in over- 
 coming it, and, turned wholly in this direction, 
 was diverted from other things. To subsist, to 
 obtain shelter, food and raiment, to protect them- 
 selves against cold and damp, to accumulate stores 
 and lay up wealth left the settlers no time to think 
 of other matters ; the mind got to be wholly positive 
 and practical. It is impossible in such a country to 
 
42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 indulge in re very, to philosophize German fashion, 
 10 stray off amidst chimeras of tlie fancy and 
 through the world of metaphysical systems.* One 
 is immediately brought back to the earth. The 
 necessity of action is too universal, too urgent, too 
 constant ; if people think at all, it is to act. Under 
 this steady pressure the character forms ; that which 
 was habit becomes instinct ; the form acquired by 
 the parent is found hereditary in the child ; laborer, 
 artisan, trader, factor, householder, man of common 
 sense and nothing more, he is by birth and without 
 effort what his ancestors got to be through necessity 
 and constraint.! 
 
 This positive spirit, moreover, is found to be tran- 
 quillized. Compared with other nations of the same 
 stock and with a genius no less practical, the denizen 
 of the Netherlands appears better balanced and more 
 capable of being content. We do not see in him the 
 violent passions, the militant disposition, the over- 
 strained will, the bull-dog instincts, the sombre and 
 
 ♦Alfred Michiels' "Histoire de la Peintiire," Vol. I., p. 233. This 
 volume contains a namber of general views all deservinor of attention. 
 t Prosper Lucas' " De THer^dit^," and Darwin's " Origin of Species.* 
 
rV THE NETHERLANDS. 43 
 
 grandiose pride -which three permanent conquests and 
 the secular establishment of political strife have im- 
 planted in the English ; nor that restless and exag- 
 gerated desire for action which a dry atmosphere, 
 sudden changes from heat to cold, a surplus elec- 
 tricity, have implanted in the Americans of the 
 United States. He lives in a moist and equable 
 climate, one which relaxes the nerves and developes 
 the lymphatic temperament, which moderates the 
 insurrections, explosions and impetuosity of the spirit, 
 soothing the asperities of passion and diverting the 
 oharactor to the side of sensuality and good humor. 
 You have already observed this effect of climate in 
 our comparisons of the genius and the art of the 
 Venetians with those of the Florentines. Here, 
 moreover, events come to the aid of climate, histoiy 
 laborinsj in the same direction as phvsiolosfv. The 
 natives of these countries have not undergone, like 
 their neighbors over the channel, two or three inva- 
 sions, the overrunning of an entire people, Saxons, 
 Danes and Xormans installed on their premises ; 
 they have not garnered a heritage of hatred which 
 oppression, resistance, rancor, prolonged struggle, 
 
44: THE PHILOSOPHY OF APT 
 
 warfare — at first open and violent, and afterwards 
 subdued and legal — transmit from one generation to 
 another. From the earliest times down we find them 
 engaged, as in the age of Pliny, in making salt, 
 *' combined together, according to ancient usage, in 
 bringing under cultivation marshy grounds,"* free in 
 their guilds, asserting their independence, claiming 
 their rights and immemorial privileges, devoted to 
 whaling, trade and manufacturing, calling their towns 
 2yorts, in brief, as Guiccardini describes them in the 
 sixteenth century, " very desirous of gain and watch- 
 ful of profit, but without anything feverish or irra- 
 tional in their desire to provide for themselves. 
 They are by nature cool and self-possessed. They 
 delight in wealth and other worldly things prudently 
 and as occasion offers, and are not easily disturbed, 
 which is at once aj^parent both in their discourse and 
 in their physiognomies. They are not prone to anger 
 or to pride, but live together on good terms, and are 
 especially of a gay and lively humor." According to 
 bim they entertain no vast and overweening ambi- 
 
 * Moke's "Mceurs etUeages des Beiges," pp. Ill, 113. A capitulary 
 of the ninth century. 
 
ZiY THE NETHERLANDS. 45 
 
 tion ; many of them. retire from business early, amus- 
 ing themselves with building, and taking life easily 
 and pleasantly. All circumstances, moral and phys- 
 ical, tlieir geographical and political state, the past 
 and the present, combine to one end, namely, the 
 development of one faculty and one tendency at the 
 expense of the rest, shrewd management and tem- 
 perate emotions, a practical understanding and lim- 
 ited desires ; they comjorehend the amelioration of 
 outward things, and, this accomplished, they crave 
 no more. 
 
 Consider, in eiFect, their work ; its perfection and 
 iacunoe indicate at once the limits and the power of 
 their intellect. Tiie profound philosophy Avhich is so 
 natural in Germany, and tlie elevated poetry which 
 flourishes in England, they lack. They fail to over- 
 look material things and positive interests in order 
 to yield to pure speculation, to follow the temerities 
 of logic, to attenuate the delicacy of analysis, and 
 bury themselves in the depths of abstraction. They 
 ignore that spiritual turmoil, those eruptions of 
 suppressed feeling which give to style a tragic 
 accent, and that vagabond fancy, those exquisite 
 
46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 and sublime reveries which outside of life's vulgari- 
 ties reveal a new universe. They can boast of no 
 great philosopher; their Spinoza is a Jew, a pupil 
 of Descartes and the rabbis, an isolated recluse of a 
 different genius and a different race. None of their 
 books have become European like those of Burns 
 and Camoens, who, nevertheless, were born out of 
 nations equally small. One only of their authors 
 has been read by every man of his epoch, Erasmus, 
 a refined writer but who wrote in Latin, and who, 
 in education, taste, style and ideas belongs to the 
 erudites and humanists of Italy. The old Dutch 
 poets, as for example, Jacob Cats, are grave, sensi- 
 ble, somewhat tedious moralists, who laud home en- 
 joyments and the life of the family. The Flemish 
 poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries tell 
 their auditors that they do not recount chivalric 
 fables — but veritable histories, their poesy ending in 
 practical maxims and contemporary events. In vain 
 do their belle-lettre academies cultivate and make 
 poetry prominent, there being no talent to produce 
 out of such resources any great or beautiful perfor- 
 mance. Chroniclers arise like Chatelain, and pam- 
 
JZV" THE NETHERLANDS. 4.7 
 
 plileteers like Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde, tut tlieir 
 luictuoiis narratives are inflated ; their overcharged 
 eloquence, coarse and crude, recalls, without equal- 
 ling it, the rude color and vigorous grossness of their 
 national art. They have scarcely any literature at 
 the present day. Tlieir only novelist, Conscience, 
 seems to us, although a tolerable observer, dull and 
 unrefined. If we visit their country and read their 
 journals, those at least not got up in Paris, we seem 
 to have fallen upon the provinces, and even lower. 
 Polemical discussions are gross, the flowers of rheto- 
 yic stale, humor rudely indulged, and wit pointless; 
 a coarse joviality and a coarse anger supply the 
 material ; their very caricatures seem to us stupid. 
 If we attempt to ascertain their contributions to 
 the great edifice of modern thought we find that 
 patiently and methodically, like honest and faithful 
 workmen, they have hewn out a few blocks. They 
 can point to a learned school of philologists at 
 Leyden, to jurisprudential authorities like Grotius, 
 to naturalists and physicians like Leeuvenhoeck, 
 Swamraerdam and Boerhaave, to physicists like 
 Huyghens, and to cosmographers like Ortelius and 
 
48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 Mercator, in short, to a contingent of specialist 
 and useful men, but to no creative intellect dis- 
 closing to the world grand original ideas or enshrin- 
 ing orio-inal conceptions in beautiful forms capable 
 of universal ascendancy. They have left to neigh- 
 boring nations the part filled by the contemplative 
 Mary at the feet of Jesus, choosing for themselves 
 that of Martha ; in the seventeenth century they 
 provided pulpits for the Protestant erudites exiled 
 from France, a country for free thought persecuted 
 throughout Europe, and editors for all books of 
 science and polemics; at a later period they fur- 
 nished printers for the whole of our eighteenth 
 century philosophy, and finally booksellers, brokers 
 and counterfeiters for the entire literature of mod- 
 ern times. All this is of service to them for they 
 are versed in languages, and read and are in- 
 structed, instruction being an acquisition and some- 
 thing which it is good to lay up like other things. 
 But there they stop, and neither their ancient nor 
 tkeir modern works show any need of or faculty for 
 contemplating the abstract beyond the apparent 
 \Vorld and tlie imaginary world outside of reality. 
 
Ij^ the NETnERLANDS. 40 
 
 On the contrary they have always excelled and 
 they still excel in the arts called useful. "First 
 among transalpine people," says Gniecardini, " they 
 invented woolen fabrics." Up to 1404 tliey alone 
 were capable of weaving and manufacturing tliem. 
 England supplied tliem with the raw material, tlie 
 English doing no more than raise and shear the 
 sheep. At the end of the sixteenth century, an 
 unique thing in Europe, " almost everybody, even 
 the peasantry, could read and write ; a great many 
 even acquired the principles of grammar." "\Ye 
 find, accordingly, belle-lettre academies, that is to 
 say associations for oratory and dramatic representa- 
 tions, even in the small towns. This indicates the 
 degree of perfection to which they brought their 
 civilization. " They have," says Guiccardini, " a 
 special and happy talent for the ready invention of 
 all sorts of machines, ingenious and suitable for 
 facilitating, shortening and dispatching everything 
 they do, even in the matter of cooking." They, 
 indeed, with the Italians, are the first in Europe to 
 attain to prosperity, wealth, security, liberty, com 
 fort, and all other benefits which seem to us the 
 
50 THE PIULOSOPHT OF ART 
 
 paraphernalia of modern times. In the thirteenth 
 century Bruges was equal to Venice; in the six- 
 teenth century Antwerp was the industiial and com- 
 mercial capital of the Xorth. Guiccardini never 
 wearies in praising it, and lie only saw it when it 
 was in full decline, reconquered hy the Duke of 
 Parma after the terrible siege of 1585. In the sev- 
 enteenth century Holland, remaining free, occupies 
 for a century the place which England now holds in 
 the world of to-day. It is in vain for Flanders to 
 fall back into Spanish hands, to be ravaged by the 
 wars of Louis XIV., to be surrendered to Austria, to 
 serve as a battle-ground for the wars of the Revo- 
 lution ; she never descends to the level of Spain or 
 Italy ; the partial prosperity she maintains through- 
 out the miseries of repeated invasion and under a 
 bungling despotism shows the energy of her inspir- 
 ing good sense and the fecundity of her assiduous 
 labor. 
 
 Of all the countries of Europe at the present day 
 Belgium is the one which with an equal area su}> 
 ports the most inhabitants; she feeds twice as many 
 as France; the most populous of our departments, 
 
IN THE NETREBLAND8. 51 
 
 that of the Xorth, is a portion wliich Louis XIV 
 dutaclied from her. Towards Lille and Douai you 
 already see spread out in an indefinable circle, ex 
 tending up to the horizon, this great kitchen garden, 
 a deep and fertile soil diapered with pale grain 
 sheaves, poppy-fields, and the large-leaved beet, and 
 richly stimulated by a low, warm sky swimming with 
 vapor. Between Brussels and Malines begins the 
 broad prairie, here and there striped with rows of 
 poplars, intersected with w^ater-courses and fences, 
 where cattle browse throughout the year, an inex- 
 haustible storehouse of hay, milk, cheese and meat. 
 In the environs of Ghent and Bruges, the land of 
 Waes, " the classic soil of agriculture," is nourished 
 by fertilizers gathered in all countries, and by barn- 
 yard manure brought from Zealand. Holland, in like 
 manner, is simply a pasturage, a natural tillage, 
 wdiich, instead of exhausting the soil, renews it, pro- 
 viding its cultivators with the amplest crops, and 
 afibrding to the consumer the most strengthening 
 aliments. In Holland, at Buicksloot, there are mil- 
 lionaire cow-herds, the Netherlands ever seeming 
 to the stranger to be a land of feasting and good 
 
52 THE PHILOSOrUY OF ABT 
 
 cheer. If you turn from agricultural to industrial 
 results, you will everywhere encounter the same art 
 of utilizing and making the best of things. Obsta- 
 cles with tliem are transformed into aids. The soil 
 was flat and soaked with water ; they took advan- 
 tage of it to cover it with canals and railroads, no 
 place in Europe presenting so many channels of com- 
 munication and of transport. They were in want of 
 fuel ; they dug down into the bowels of the earth, 
 the coal-pits of Belgium being as rich as those of 
 England. The rivers annoyed them with their inun- 
 dations and inland pools deprived them of a portion 
 of their territory ; they drained the pools, diked the 
 streams, and profited by the rich alluvions and the 
 slow deposits of vegetable mould with which the 
 surplus or stagnant waters overspread their land. 
 Their canals freeze up ; they take skates and travel 
 in w^inter five leagues an hour. The sea threatened 
 them ; after forcing it back, they avail themselves of 
 it to traffic witli all nations. Tiie winds sweep unim- 
 peded across their flat country and over the turbu- 
 lent ocean; they make them swell the sails of their 
 vessels and move the wings of their windmills. lu 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 53 
 
 Holland you ^vill observe at every turn of the road 
 one of these enormous structures, a hundred feet 
 higli, furnished with machinery and pumps, busy in 
 emptying the overflow of water, sawing ship-timber 
 and manufacturing oil. From the steamer, in front 
 of Amsterdam, you see, stretching off as far as the 
 eye can reach, an infinite spider's web, a light, indis- 
 tinct and complex fringe of masts and arms of wind- 
 mills encircling the horizon with their innumerable 
 fibres. The impression you carry away is that of a 
 country transformed from end to end by the hand 
 and the art of man, and sometimes entirely created 
 until it becomes a comfortable and productive ter- 
 ritory. 
 
 Let us go further; let us take a near view of man, 
 and appreciate the most important object belonging 
 to him — his habitation. There is no stone in this 
 country — nothing but an adhesive clay, suitable for 
 men and horses to mire their feet in. It occurred to 
 the people, however, to bake it, and in this way 
 brick and tile, which are the best of defences against 
 humidity, came into their hands. You see well con- 
 trived buildings of an agreeable aspect, with red,. 
 
54: TUE PIIILOSOPUY OF ART 
 
 brown and rosy walls covered with a bright stucco 
 white fayades varnished and sometimes decorated 
 with sculj^tured flowers, animals, medallions and 
 small columns. In the older cities the house often 
 stands with its gable to the street, festooned with 
 arcades, branchings and leafage, which terminate in 
 a bird, an apple or a bust ; it is not, as in our 
 cities, a continuation of its neighbor — an abstract 
 compartment of vast barracks, but an object aj^art, 
 endowed with a sj^ecial and private character, at 
 once interesting and picturesque. Nothing could 
 be better kept and cleaner. At Douai the poorest 
 have their domicile whitewashed once a year, out- 
 side and in, it being necessary to engage the white- 
 washer six months in advance. At Antwerp, in 
 Ghent and in Bruges, and especially in the small 
 towns, most of the fayades seem to be newly painted 
 or freshened the day before. Washing and sweep- 
 ing are going on on all sides. When you reach 
 Holland there is extra care even to exaggera- 
 tion. You see domestics at five o'clock in the 
 morning scrubbing the sidewalks. In the envi- 
 rons of Amsterdam the villages seem to be scenery 
 
IN THE KErilERLANDS. 55 
 
 from the Opera -Comique, so tidy and so well, 
 dusted are they. There are stables for cows, the 
 flooring of which is cabinet work; you can enter 
 them only in slij^pers or sabots placed at the 
 entrance for that purpose ; a spot of dirt would be 
 scandalous, and still more so any odor ; the cows' 
 tails are lield np by a small cord to prevent thera 
 from soiling themselves. Vehicles are prohibited 
 from entering the village ; the sidewalks of brick 
 and blue porcelain are more irreproacliable than a 
 vestibule with us. In autumn children come and 
 gather up the fallen leaves in the streets to deposit 
 them in a pit. Everywhere, in the small rooms, 
 seemingly the state-rooms of a ship, the order and 
 arrangement are the same as on a ship. In Broeck, 
 it is said, there is in each house a particular room 
 which is entered only once a week in order to clean 
 and rub the furniture, and then carefully closed ; in 
 a country so damp, dirt immediately becomes a 
 deleterious mould; man, compelled to scrupulous 
 cleanliness, contracts the habit, experiences its neces- 
 sity, and at last falls under its tyranny. You would 
 be pleased, however, to see the humblest shop of 
 
56 THE PUILO SOPHY OF ART 
 
 the smallest street in Amsterdam, with its brown 
 casks, its immaculate counter, its scoured benches, 
 everything in its place, the economy of small quar- 
 ters, the intelligent and handy arrangement of all 
 utensils. Guiccardini already remarks " that tlieir 
 houses and clothes are clean, handsome and well- 
 arranged, that they have much furniture, utensils 
 and domestic objects, kept in better order and with 
 a finer lustre than in any other country." It is 
 necessary to see the comfort of their apartments, 
 especially the houses of the middle classes — carpets, 
 waxed cloths for the floors, w\arm and heat-saving 
 chimneys of iron and porcelain, triple curtains at the 
 windows, clear, dark and highly polished window- 
 panes, vases of flowers and green plants, innumera- 
 ble knick-knacks indicative of sedentary habits and 
 which render home life pleasant, mirrors placed so as 
 to reflect the people passing in the street together 
 with its changing aspects ; — every detail shows some 
 inconvenience remedied, some want satisfied, some 
 pleasant contrivance, some thoughtful provision, in 
 short, the universal reign of a sagacious activity and 
 the extreme of comfort. 
 
I]^ Tim NETHERLANDS. 57 
 
 Man, in effect, is tliat which his work indicates. 
 Thus endowed and thus situated, he enjoys and knows 
 how to enjoy. The bountiful soil furnishes liim with 
 abundant nutriment — meat, fish, vegetables, beer 
 and brandy ; he eats and drinks copiously, wliile in 
 Belgium tlie Germanic appetite, as it grows in fas- 
 tidiousness without decreasing, becomes gastronomic 
 sensuality. Cooking there is scientific and perfect, 
 even to the hotel tables ; I believe that they are tlie 
 best in Europe. There is a certain hotel in Mons to 
 which visitors from tlie small neighboring towns 
 come to dine every Saturday, especially to enjoy a 
 delicate meal. They lack wine, but they import it 
 from Germany and France, and boast the possession 
 of the best vintages : we do not, in their opinion, 
 treat our wines with the respect they deserve ; it is 
 necessary to be a Belgian to care for and relish them 
 in a proper manner. There is no important hotel 
 which is not supplied with a varied and select stock ; 
 its reputation and custom are made by the selection ; 
 in the railroad cars the conversation tends sponta- 
 neously to the merits of two rival cellars. A prudent 
 merchant will have twelve thousand bottles in hii 
 3* 
 
58 THE PHILOSOPHT OF ART 
 
 sfinded cellars, duly classified; it constitutes his 
 library. The burgomaster of a petty Dutch town 
 possesses a cask of genuine Johannisberger, made in 
 the best year, and this cask adds to the consideration 
 of its owner. A man there, who gives a dinner party, 
 knows how to make his wines succeed each other in 
 such a way as not to impair the taste and have as 
 many as possible consumed. As to the pleasures of 
 the ear and the eye, they understand them as well 
 as those of the palate and the stomach. They in- 
 stinctively love the music which we only appreciate 
 through culture. In the sixteenth century they are 
 first in this art ; Guiccardini states that their vocalists 
 and instrumentalists are esteemed in all the courts 
 of Christendom ; abroad, their professors found 
 schooTs, and their compositions are standards of au- 
 thority. Even nowadays the great musical endow- 
 ment of being able to sing in parts is encountered 
 even amongst the populace ; the coal-miners organ- 
 ize choral societies ; I have heard laborers in Brussels 
 and Antwerp, and the ship caulkers and sailors of 
 Amsterdam sing in chorus, and in true time, while at 
 work and in the street on returning home at night. 
 
IJV THE NETHERLANDS. 59 
 
 Tlicre is no large Belgian tovrn in wliieli a chime of 
 bells, perched in the belfry, does not every quarter 
 of an hour amuse the artizan in his shop and the 
 trader at liis counter with the peculiar harmonies of 
 their sonorous metal. In like manner their city halls, 
 their house-fronts, even their old drinking-cups are, 
 through their complex ornamentation, their intricate 
 lines and their original, and often fantastic design, 
 agreeable to the eye. Add to this the free or well- 
 composed tones of the bricks forming the walls, and 
 the richness of the brown and red tints relieving on 
 white displayed on the roofs and fa9ades — assuredly 
 the towns of the ISTetherlands are as picturesque of 
 their kind as any in Italy. In all times they have 
 delighted in kermesses slu^ fetes de Gaycint, in corpor- 
 ation processions, and in the parade and glitter of 
 costumes and materials. I shall show you the com- 
 pletely Italian pomp of the civic entries and other 
 ceremonies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 
 They are epicureans as well as gourmands in the 
 matter of comfortable living ; regularly, calmly, 
 without heat or enthusiasm they glean up every 
 pleasing harmony of savor, sound, color and form 
 
60 TEE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 that arises out of their prosperity and abundance, 
 like tulips on a heap of compost. All this produces 
 good sense somewhat limited, and happiness some- 
 Avhat gross. A Frenchman would soon yawn ever 
 it, but he would make a mistake, for this civiliza- 
 tion, which seems to him unctuous and vulgar, pos- 
 sesses one sterling merit — it is healthy; the men 
 living here have a gift we lack the most — wisdom, 
 and a compensation we are equally undeserving of — 
 contentment. 
 
/JV' rUE NETHERLANDS. 61 
 
 III. 
 
 Sach, in this country, is the human plant; wg 
 liave now to examine its art, which is the flower. 
 Among all the brandies of the Germanic trunk, 
 this plant alone has produced a complete flower* 
 the art which developes so happily and so naturally 
 in the Netherlands proves abortive with tlie othei 
 Germanic nations for tlie reason that this glorious 
 privilege emanates from the national character as 
 we have just set it forth. 
 
 To comprehend and love painting requires an eye 
 iSensitive to forms and to colors, and, without edu- 
 cation or apprenticeship, one which takes pleasure 
 in the juxtaposition of tones and is delicate in the 
 matter of optical sensations ; the man who would be 
 a painter must be capable of losing himself in view- 
 ing the rich consonance of red and green, in watch- 
 in 2: the diminution of lio-ht as it is transformed into 
 darkness, and in detecting the subtle hues of silks 
 and satins, which according to their breaks, recesses 
 and depths of fold, assume opaline tints, vague 
 
62 THE FRILO SOPHY OF ART 
 
 luminous gleams and imperceptible shades of blue. 
 The eye is epicurean like the palate, and j^ainting is 
 an exquisite feast served up to it. For this reason 
 it is that Germany and England have had no 
 great pictorial art. In Germany the too great dom- 
 ination of abstract ideas has left no room for the 
 sensuousness of the eye. Its early school, that of 
 Cologne, instead of representing bodies, represented 
 mystic, pious and tender souls. In vain did the 
 great German artist of the sixteenth century, Albert 
 Diirer, familiarize himself with the Italian masters; 
 he retains his graceless forms, his angular folds, 
 his ugly nudities, his dull color, his barbarous, 
 gloomy and saddened faces ; the wild imagination, 
 the deep religious sentiment and the vague philoso- 
 phic divinations which shine through his works, 
 show an intellect to which form is inadequate. 
 Examine the infant Christ in the Louvre, by Wohl- 
 gemuth, his master, and an Eve, by Lucas Cranach, 
 a contemporary ; you will realize that the men who 
 executed such groups and such bodies were born 
 for theology and not for painting. Again at the 
 present day they esteem and eniov the inward 
 
I^^ THE NErUERLANBS. 63 
 
 rather than the outward ; Cornelius and the Mu- 
 nich masters regard tlie idea as principal, and exe 
 cution as secondary ; the master conceives and the 
 pupil paints ; the aim of their wholly philosophic 
 and symbolic work is to excite the spectator to 
 reflect on some great moral or social verity. In 
 like manner Overbeck aims at edification and 
 preaches sentimental asceticism ; and even Knauss, 
 again, who is such an able psychologist that his 
 pictures form idyls and comedies. f^As to the Eng- 
 lish, up to the eighteenth century, they do but 
 little more than import pictures and artists from 
 abroad. Temperament in this country is too mil- 
 itant, the will too stern, the mind too utilitarian, 
 man too case-hardened, too absorbed and too over- 
 tasked to linger over and revel in the beautiful 
 and delicate gradations of contours and colors. 
 Their national painter, Hogarth, simply produced 
 moral caricatures. Others, like Wilkie, use their 
 pencil to render sentiments and characteristic traits 
 visible ; even in landscape they depict the spiritual 
 element, corporeal objects serving them simply as 
 an index or suggestion ; it is even apparent in their 
 
(54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 two great laiulscnpists, Constable and Turner, and 
 in their two great portrait painters, Gainsborough 
 and Reynolds. Their coloring of to-day, finally, is 
 shockingly crude, and their drawing literal minu- 
 tiae. The Flemings and Hollanders alone have 
 prized forms and colors for their own sake. This 
 sentiment still persists. Proof of this is to be 
 found in the picturesqueness of their towns and in 
 the agreeable aspect of their homes ; last year at 
 the Universal Exposition (1867) you could see for 
 yourselves that genuine art — painting exempt from 
 philosophic motive and literary deviation, capable of 
 manipulating form without servility and color with- 
 out barbarisms — scarcely exists anywhere but with 
 them and with ourselves. 
 
 Thanks to this national endowment, in the fif- 
 teenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when 
 circumstances became favorable, they were able to 
 maintain in the face of Italy a great school of paint- 
 ing. But as they were Germans their school fol 
 lowed the German track. What distinguishes their 
 race from classic races is, as you have seen, a pref 
 rence for substance over form, of actual verity to 
 
7.Y THE NETHERLANDS. 05 
 
 biaiuiful externals, of the real, complex, irregiilai 
 and natural object to the well-ordered, pruned, 
 "efined and transformed object. This instinct, of 
 which you remark the ascendancy in their religion 
 and literature, has likewise controlled their art and 
 notably their painting. "The prime significance of 
 the Flemish school," says M. Wiiagen, " proceeds 
 from its having, through its freedom from foreign 
 influences, revealed to us the contrast of sentiments 
 of the Greek and the German races, the two columnar 
 capitals of ancient and modern civilization. Whilst 
 the Greeks sought to idealize not merely concep- 
 tions taken from the ideal world, but even portraits, 
 oy simplifying the forms and accentuating the most 
 important features, the early Flemings on the con 
 trary translated into portraiture the ideal personifi- 
 cations of the Virgin, the apostles, the prophets and 
 the martyrs, ever striving to represent in an exact 
 manner the petty details of nature. Whilst the 
 Greeks expressed the details of landscaj)e, rivers, 
 fountains and trees under abstract forms, the Flem- 
 ings strove to render them precisely as they saw 
 them. In relation to the ideal and the tendency of 
 
QQ THE PUILOSOPIIY OF ART 
 
 the Greeks to personify everything, the Flemifjgs 
 created a realistic school, a school of landscape. In 
 tliis respect the Germans first and the English after- 
 wards have j)ui'sued the same course." * Rua over 
 a collection of engravings containing the works of 
 German origin from Albert Diirer, Martin Schon- 
 gauer, the Van Eycks, Holbein and Lucas of Leyden, 
 down to Rubens, Rembrandt, Paul Potter, Jan Steen 
 and Hogarth ; if your imagination is filled with noble 
 Italian or with elegant French forms, your eyes will 
 be ofi'ended ; you will experience some difficulty in 
 taking the proper standpoint ; you will often fancy 
 that the artist purposely studied the ugly. The 
 truth is he is not repelled by the trivialities and 
 deformities of life. He does not naturally enter into 
 the symmetrical composition, the tranquil and easy 
 action, the beautiful proportions, the healthiness and 
 asfility of the naked figure. When the Flemings in 
 the sixteenth century resorted to the Italian school, 
 they only succeeded in spoiling their original style. 
 During seventy years of patient imitation they 
 brought forth nothing but hybrid abortions. This 
 
 ♦ "Manuel de rhistorie de la Peinture," Vol. 1, p. 79. 
 
AV THE NETllEliLANDS. 67 
 
 long period of fjiiliire, placed between two long peri- 
 ods of superiority, shows the limits and the power 
 of their original aptitudes. They were incapable of 
 simplifying nature ; they aimed to reproduce her en- 
 tire. They did not concentrate her in the nude body ; 
 they assigned equal importance to all her appear- 
 ances — landscajjes, edifices, animals, costumes and 
 accessories.* They are not qualified to comprehend 
 and prize the ideal body*, they are constituted to 
 paint and enforce the actual body. 
 
 Allowing this, we easily discern in what particu- 
 lars they differ from other masters of the same race. 
 I have described to you their national genius, so 
 sensible and so well-balanced, exempt from lofty 
 aspiration, limited to the present and disposed to 
 enjoyment. Such artists will not create the melan- 
 
 * In this respect the verdict of Michael Angelo is very instructive. 
 "Ill Flanders," he says, " they prefer to paint what are called landscapes 
 
 and many fiijures scattered here and there There is neither art nor 
 
 reason in this, no proportion, no symmetry, no careful selection, no 
 
 grandeur If I speak so ill of Flemish piinting it is not because it 
 
 is wholly bad, but because it seeks to render in perfection so many 
 objects of which one alone, through its importance, would sufllce, and 
 none is produced in a satisfactory manner," We here recognize th« 
 classic and simplifying trait of Italian genius. 
 
68 TUE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 choly beings in painful abstraction, weighed down 
 with the burden of life and obstinately resigned, of 
 Albert Diirer. They will not devote themselves 
 like the mystic painters of Cologne, or the moralist 
 painters of England, to the representation of spirit- 
 ual traits and characters ; little will they concern 
 themselves with the disproportion between mind 
 and matter. In a fertile and luxurious country, 
 amidst jovial customs, in the presence of placid, 
 honest and blooming faces they are to obtain the 
 models suited to their genius. They almost always 
 paint man in a well-to-do condition and content 
 with his lot. When they exalt him it is without 
 raising him above his terrestrial condition. The 
 Flemish school of the seventeenth century does no 
 more than expand his appetite, his lusts, his energy 
 and his gayety. Generally they leave liim as he 
 is. The Dutch school confines itself to reproduc- 
 ing the repose of the bourgeois interior, the com- 
 forts of shop and farm, out-door sports and tavern 
 enjoyments, all the petty satisfactions of an orderly 
 and tranquil existence. Nothing could be better 
 adapted to painting; too much thought and em> 
 
IN THE KfJTIiEIiLAyBS. G9 
 
 tion is detrimental to it. Subjects of this order eon 
 ceived in such a spirit, furnish works of a rare bar 
 mony ; the Greeks alone, and a few great Italian 
 artists have set us the example ; the painters of the 
 Netherlands on a lower stage do as they did, they 
 represent man to us complete of his type, adapted 
 to things around him and therefore happy without 
 effort. 
 
 One point remains to be considered. One of the 
 Jeading merits of this art is the excellence and deli- 
 cacy of its coloring. This is owing to«the education 
 of the eye, which in Flanders and in Holland is pecu- 
 liar. The country is a saturated delta like that of 
 the Po, w^hile Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Amsterdam, 
 Rotterdam, Hague and Utrecht, through their rivers, 
 canals, sea and atmosphere resemble Venice. Here, 
 as at Venice, nature has made man colorist. Ob- 
 serve the different aspect of things according as you 
 are in a dry country like Provenye and the neighbor- 
 hood of Florence, or on a wet plain like the Nether- 
 lands. In the dry country the line predominates, 
 and at once attracts attention ; the mountains cut 
 sharp against the sky, with their stories of architeo 
 
70 THE philosoi;hy of art 
 
 ture of a grand and noble style, all objects projecting 
 upward in the limpid air in varied prominence. 
 Here the low horizon is without interest, and tho 
 contours of objects are softened, blended and blurred 
 out by the imperceptible vapor with which the at 
 mosphere is always filled ; that which predominates 
 is the spot. A cow pasturing, a roof in the centre 
 of a field, a man leaning on a parapet appear as one 
 tone among other tones. The object emerges; it 
 does not start suddenly out of its surroundings as if 
 punched out ;*yoti are struck by its modelling, that 
 is to say by the different degrees of advancing lumin- 
 ousness and the diverse gradations of melting color 
 which transforms its general tint into a relief and 
 give« to the eye a sensation of thickness.* You 
 
 * W. Burger's " Musej3S de la Hollande," p. 206 : " Modelling, and not 
 ihiee, is what always impresses you in the beauty of the North. Form, 
 Jn the North, does not declare itself by contour, but by relief. Nature, 
 in expressing herself, does not avail herself of drawing, properly so 
 called. Walk about an Italian town for an hour, and you will encpimter 
 vomen accurately defined, whose general structure brings to mind Greek 
 Btatuary, and whose profile recalls Greek cameos. You might pass a 
 jear in Antwerp without finding a single form suggesting the Idea of 
 ^'■anslatiiig it by a contour, but simply I)y salieiicies, wliich color only < an 
 
 inodel Objects never present themselves as silhouettes, but, so to 
 
 say in full shape." 
 
II{ THE NETIIEBLANDS. 71 
 
 would have to pass many days in tins country in 
 order to appreciate this subordination of the line to 
 the spot. A bluish or gray vapor is constantly ris- 
 ing from the canals, the rivers, the sea, and from the 
 saturated soil ; a universal haze forms a soft gauze 
 over objects, even in the finest weatlier. Flying 
 scuds, like thin, half-torn white draper}^, float over 
 the meadows night and morning. I have repeatedly 
 stood on the quays of the Scheldt contemplating the 
 broad, pallid and slightly rippled water, on which 
 float the dark hulks. The river shines, and on its 
 flat surface the hazy light reflects here and there 
 unsteady scintillations. Clouds ascend constantly 
 around the horizon, their pale, leaden hue and their 
 motionless files suggesting an army of spectres, the 
 spectres of the humid soil, like so many phantoms, 
 always revived and bringing back the eternal show 
 ers. Towards the setting sun they become ruddy, 
 while their corpulent masses, trellissed all over with 
 gold, remind one of the damascene copes, the bro- 
 caded simarres and the embroidered silks with which 
 Jordaens and Rubens envelope their bleeding mar- 
 tyrs >nd their sorrowful madonnas. Quite low down 
 
Y2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 oil the sky the sun seems an enormous blaze subsiding 
 into smoke. On reaching Amsterdam or Ostend tlie 
 impression again deepens ; both sea and sky have no 
 form ; the fog and interposed showers leave nothing 
 to remember but colors. The water changes in hue 
 every half hour — now of a pale wine tinge, now of a 
 chalky whiteness, now yellow like softened mortar, 
 now black like liquid soot, and sometimes of a som- 
 bre purple striped with dashes of green. After a 
 few days' experience you find that, in such a nature 
 only gradations, contrasts and harmonies, in short, 
 the value of tones is of any importance. 
 
 These tones, moreover, are full and rich. A dry 
 country is of a dull aspect; southern France and 
 the whole of the mountainous portion of Italy leave 
 on the eye no sensation but that of a gray and 
 yellow checker-board. Besides this, all the tones 
 of the soil and of buildings are lost in the prepon- 
 derating splendor of the sky and the all-pervading 
 luminousness of the atmosphere. In truth, a south- 
 ern city, and a Provenge or Tuscan landscape ai;e 
 simply drawings; with white paper, charcoal, and 
 the feeble tints of colored crayons you can express' 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 73 
 
 the whole thing. On the contrary, in a country of 
 humidity like the jSTetherlancls, the earth is green, a 
 quantity of lively spots diversifying the uniforin- 
 ity of the wide prairie — sometimes it is the dark or 
 brown color of the wet mould, again the deep red 
 of tiles and bricks, again the white or rosy coating 
 of the fa9ades, again the ruddy spots of reclining 
 cattle, again the flickering sheen of canals and 
 streams. And these spots are not subdued by the 
 too powerful light of the sky. Contrary to the dry 
 country it is not the sky but the earth which has 
 a preponderating influence. In Holland especially, 
 for several months, " there is no transparency of at- 
 mosphere; a kind of opaque vail hovering between 
 sky and ground intercepts all radiance. In winter 
 darkness seems to come from above." * The rich 
 colors, accordingly, with which all terrestrial objects 
 are clothed, remain unrivalled. To their strength 
 must be added their gradation and their mobility. 
 In Italy a tone remains fixed; the steady light of the 
 sky maintains it so for many hours, and as it was 
 yesterday so it will be to-morrow. Return to it and 
 
 * W. Burger's " Mutiees cle la Hollande," p. 213. 
 4 
 
74: TUE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 you will find it the same as you placed it on youi 
 palette a month before. In Flanders it varies inces- 
 santly along with the variations of liglit and the am- 
 bient vapor. Here again, I should like to take you 
 into the country and let you appreciate yourselves 
 the original beauty of the towns and the landscape. 
 The red of the bricks, the lustrous white of the 
 fa9ades are agreeable to the eye because they are 
 softened by the grayish atmosphere ; against the neu- 
 tral background of the sky extend rows of peaked, 
 shell-like roofs, all of deep brown, here and there a 
 gothic gutter, or some gigantic belfry covered with 
 elaborate finials and heraldic animals. Frequently 
 the crenelated cornice of cliimney and of ridge is 
 reflected as it glows in a canal or in an arm of the 
 sea. Outside the cities, as within them, all is 
 material for pictures — you have nothing to do but 
 to copy. The universal green of the country is nei- 
 ther crude nor monotonous ; it is tinted by diverse 
 degrees of maturity of foliage and herbage and by 
 the various densities and perpetual changes of hazi- 
 ness and clouds. It has for complement or for relief 
 the blackness of clouds whicli suddenly melt away 
 
IJV THE NETnERLANDS. 75 
 
 in transient showers, the grayness of scattered and 
 ragged banks of fog, the vague, bluish network 
 envelo^Ding distances, the sparkling of flickering 
 light arrested in flying scuds — sometimes the daz- 
 zling satin of a motionless cloud, or some abrupt 
 opening through which the azure 2')enetrates. A sky 
 which is thus filled up, thus mobile, thus adapted 
 to harmonizing, varying and emphasizing the tones 
 of the earth, affords a colorist school. Here, as at 
 Venice, art has followed nature, the hand having 
 been forcibly guided by optical sensations. 
 
 If, however, the analogies of climate have endowed 
 the Venetian eye and tliat of the inhabitant of the 
 Netherlands with an analogous education, differences 
 of climate have given them a different education. 
 The Netherlands are situated three hundred leagues 
 to the north of Venice. The atmosphere there is 
 colder, rains more frequent, and the sun the oftenest 
 concealed. Hence a natural gamut of colors, which 
 has provoked a corresponding artificial gamut. A 
 full light being rare, objects do not reflect the im- 
 print of the sun. You do not meet with those golden 
 tones, that magnificent ruddiness so frequent in the 
 
76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 monuments of Italy. The water is not of that deep 
 Bea-green resembling silkiness, as in the lagoons of 
 Venice. The fields and trees have not that solid and 
 vigorous tone visible in the verdure of Yerona and 
 Padua. The herbage is pale and softened, the water 
 dull or dark, the flesh white, now pink like a flower 
 grown in the shade, now rubicund after exposure to 
 the weather and rendered coarse by food, generally 
 yellow and flabby, sometimes, in Holland, pallid and 
 inanimate and of a waxy tone. The tissues of the 
 living organism, whether man, animal or plant, im 
 bibe too much fluid, and lack the ripening power of 
 sunshine. This is why, if we compare the two schools 
 of painting, we find a diflerence in the general tone. 
 Examine, in any gallery, the Venetian school, and 
 afterwards the Flemish school ; pass from Canaletto 
 and Guardi to Ruysdael, Paul Potter, Hobbema, 
 Adrian Van der Velde, Teniers and Ostade ; from 
 Titian and Veronese to Rubens, Van Dyck and Rem- 
 brandt, and consult your optical impressions. On 
 going from the former to the latter, color loses a por- 
 tion of its warmth. Shadowed, ruddy and autumnal 
 tones disappear; you see the fiery furnace envelop* 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 77 
 
 ing the Assumptions going out ; flesh becomes of the 
 whiteness of milk or snow, the deep purple of dra- 
 peries grows lighter, and paler silks have cooler re- 
 flections. The intense brown which faintly impreg- 
 nates foliage, the powerful reds gilding sunlit dis- 
 tances, the tones of veined marble, ametliyst and 
 sapphire with which watei' is resplendent, all decline, 
 in order to give place to the deadened whiteness of 
 expanded vapor, the bluish glow of misty twilight, 
 the slaty reflections of the ocean, the turbid hue of 
 rivers, the pallid verdure of the fields, and the gray- 
 ish atmosphere of household interiors. 
 
 Between these new tones there is established a 
 new harmony. Sometimes a full light falls upon 
 objects, and to which they are not accustomed ; the 
 green campagna, the red roofs, the polished fa9ades 
 and the satiny flesh flushed with blood show extra- 
 ordinary brilliancy. They are adapted to the sub- 
 dued light of a northerly and humid country ; they 
 have not been transformed as at Venice by the slow 
 scorching of the sun ; beneath this irruption of lumi- 
 nousness their tones become too vivid, almost crude ; 
 they vibrate together like the blasts of trumpets, 
 
78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 leaving on the mind and senses an impression of 
 energetic and boisterous joyousness. Such is the 
 coloring of the Flemish painters who love the full 
 light of day. Rubens furnishes us with the best 
 example; if his restored canvasses in the Louvre 
 represent his work to us as it left his hands, it is cer- 
 tain that he did not discipline his eyes ; in any event 
 liis color lacks the rich and mellow harmony of the 
 Venetian ; the greatest extremes meet ; the snowy 
 <vhiteness of flesh, the sanguine red of the draperies, 
 the dazzling lustre of silks have their full force and 
 are not united, tempered and enveloped, as at Yen- 
 ice, in that amber tint which prevents contrasts from 
 being discordant and efiects from being too startling. 
 Sometimes, on the contrary, the light is feeble or 
 nearly gone, which is commonly the case, and espe- 
 cially in Holland. Objects issue painfully out of 
 shadow; they are almost lost in their surroundings ; 
 at evening, in a cellar, beneath a lamp, in an apart- 
 ment into which a dying ray from a window glides, 
 they are effaced and seem to be only more intense 
 darks in a universal duskiness. The eye is led to 
 noticing these gradations of obscurity, this vague 
 
/lY THE NETHERLANDS. 79 
 
 train of light mingling with shadow, the remains of 
 brightness clinging to the lingering lustre of the fur- 
 niture, a reflection from a greenish window-sash, a 
 piece of embroidery, a pearl, some golden spark 
 astray upon a necklace. Having become sensitive to 
 these delicacies, the painter, instead of uniting the 
 extremes of the gamut, simply selects the beginning 
 of it ; his entire picture, except in one point, is in 
 shadow; tlie concert lie offers us is a continuous sor- 
 dine in which now and then occurs some brilliant 
 passage. He thus discloses unknown harmonies, 
 those of chiaroscuro, those of modeling, those of 
 emotion, all of them infinite and penetrating ; using 
 a daub of dirty yellow, or of wine lees, or a mixed 
 gray, or vague darks, here and there accentuated by 
 a vivid spot, he succeeds in stirring the very depths 
 of our nature. Herein consists the last great pic- 
 turesque creation ; it is through this that painting 
 nowadays most powerfully addresses the modern 
 mind, and this is the coloring with which the light 
 of Holland supplied the genius of Rembrandt. 
 
 You have seen the seed, the plant and the flower. 
 A race with a genius totally opposed to that of the 
 
80 ART IN THE NETHERLANDS. 
 
 Latin peoples makes for itself, after and alongside of 
 them its place in the world. Among the numerous 
 nations of this race, one there is in which a special 
 territory and climate develope a particular character 
 predisposing it to art and to a certain phase of art. 
 Painting is born with it, lasts, becomes complete, 
 and the physical Tnilleu surrounding it, like the 
 national genius which founds it, give to and im- 
 pose upon it its subjects, its types and its coloring. 
 Such are the remote preparatives, the profound 
 causes, the general conditions which have nourished 
 this sap, directed this vegetation, and produced the 
 final efflorescence. It only remains to us now to 
 expose historical events, the diversity and succession 
 of which have brought about the successive and 
 diverse phases of the great flowering epoch. 
 
PAET II. 
 HISTOEIO EPOCHS. 
 
AST m THE NETHERLANDS. 83 
 
 I. 
 
 We find four distinct periods in the pictorial art of 
 the Netherlands, and, through a remarkable coinci- 
 dence, each corresponds to a distinct historic period. 
 Here, as everywhere, art translates life; the talent 
 and taste of the painter change at the same time and 
 in the same sense as the habits and sentiments of the 
 public. Just as each profound geological revolution 
 brings with it its own fauna and flora, so does each 
 great transformation of society and intellect bring 
 with it its ideal figures. In this respect our galleries 
 of art resemble museums, the imaginary creations 
 they contain being, like living organisms, both the 
 fruit and the index of their surroundings. 
 
 The first period of art lasts about a century and a 
 half, and extends from Hubert Van Eyck to Quintin 
 Matsys (1400-1530). It issues from a renaissance, 
 that is to say, from a great development of pros- 
 perity, wealth and intellect. Here, as in Italy, the 
 cities at an early period are flourishing, and almost 
 free. I have already stated to you that in the thir- 
 
8-1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 teenth century serfdom was abolished in Flanders, 
 and that the guilds to manufacture salt "for the pur- 
 pose of bringing under cultivation marshy grounds," 
 ascend to the Roman epoch. From the seventh and 
 ninth centuries, Bruges, Antwerp and Ghent are 
 " ports," or privileged markets ; they carry on com- 
 merce on a large scale ; they fit out cruisers for the 
 whale fishery ; they serve as the entrepots of the 
 North and the South. Prosperous people, well sup- 
 plied with arms and provisions, accustomed through 
 association and activity to foresight and enterprise, 
 are better qualified to protect themselves than mis- 
 erable serfs scattered about in defenceless villao^es. 
 Their great populous cities with narrow streets, and 
 a saturated soil intersected with deep canals, are not 
 a suitable ground for the cavalry of barons.* Hence 
 it is that the feudal net, so close and so tightly 
 drawn over all Europe, had, in Flanders, to enlarge 
 its meshes. In vain did the Count appeal for aid to 
 his suzerain, the French king, and urge his Burgun 
 dian chivalry against the cities ; overcome at Mons- 
 en-Puelle, at Cassel, at Rosebecque, at Othee, at 
 
 * Battle of Courtenay, 1302. 
 
AY THE KETUERLANDS. 85 
 
 Gavre, at Brustliem, at Liege, they always recover 
 themselves, and from revolt to revolt preserve the 
 best portion of their liberties, even under the prin- 
 ces of the house of Austria. The fourteenth century 
 is the heroic and tragic epoch of Flanders. She pos- 
 sesses brewers like Arteveldt, who are tribunes, dic- 
 tators and captains, and who end life on the field of 
 battle or are assassinated ; civil war is mixed up with 
 foreign war ; people fight from city to city, trade 
 against trade, and man to man ; there are fourteen 
 hundred murders in Ghent in one year ; the stores 
 of energy are so great that she survives all ills and 
 sustains all efforts. Men seek death twenty thousand 
 at a time, and fall in heaps before lances without 
 giving an inch. " Banish all hope of returning with- 
 out honor," said the citizens of Ghent to the five 
 thousand volunteers under Philip Van Arteveldt, for 
 " so soon that we hear that you are dead or discom- 
 fited we shall fire the city and destroy ourselves with 
 our own hands."* In 1384, in the country of the 
 Faur Trades, prisoners refused their lives, declar- 
 ing that after death their bones would rise up against 
 
 * Froissart. 
 
86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 the French. Fifty years later, around rebellious 
 Ghent, the peasantry " chose death rather than ask 
 quarter, declaring that they would perish as martyrs 
 in a fair fight." In these swarming hives an abun 
 dance of food and habits of personal activity main- 
 tain courage, turbulence, audacity and even inso- 
 lence, all excesses of brutal and boundless energy ; 
 these weavers were men, and when we encounter 
 man we may expect soon to encounter the arts. 
 
 An interval of pros])erity at this time was suffi- 
 cient; under this ray of sunshine the flowering thus 
 maturing is perfected. At the end of the fourteenth 
 century Flanders, with Italy, is the most industri- 
 ous, the wealthiest and most flourishing country in 
 Europe.* In 1370 there are thirty-two hundred 
 woollen factories at Malines and on its territory. 
 One of its merchants carries on an immense trade 
 with Damascus and Alexandria. Another, of Valen- 
 ciennes, being at Paris during the fair, monopolizes 
 all provisions exposed for sale with a view to dis- 
 play his ojiulence. Ghent in 1389 has one hundred 
 and eighty-nine thousand men bearing arras ; the 
 
 * Michiei's " Historic de la Peinture Flamande," Vol. II. p. 3. 
 
AY THE NETHERLANDS. 87 
 
 drapers alone furnish eighteen thousand men in a 
 revolt ; the weavers form twenty-seven sections, and 
 at the sound of the great bell, fifty-two corporations 
 under their own banners rush to the market-place. 
 In 1380 tlie goldsmiths of Bruges are numerous 
 enough to form in war time an entire division of the 
 army. A little later (Enius Sylvius states that she is 
 one of the three most beautiful cities in the world; 
 a canal four leagues and a half in length joins her to 
 the sea; a hundred vessels a day pass through it. 
 Bruges was then what London is at the present 
 time. Political matters at this period attain to a 
 sort of equilibrium. The Duke of Burgundy finds 
 himself by inheritance, in 1 384, sovereign of Flan- 
 ders. The grandeur of his possessions and the mul- 
 tiplication of civil wars during the minority and 
 madness of Charles VI. divorce him from France ; 
 he is no longer, like the ancient counts, a dependart 
 of the king, domiciliated in Paris and soliciting 
 aid to reduce and tax his Flemish merchants. His 
 power and the misfortunes of France render him 
 independent. Although a prince he belongs, in 
 Paris, to the popular party, and the butchers shout 
 
88 TUB PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 for bim. Although a Frenchman his politics are 
 Flemish, and when not in alliance with the English 
 he negotiates Avith them. In the matter of money 
 he certainly quarrels with his Flemings more than 
 once, and is obliged to kill a good many of them. 
 But to one who is familiar with the disturbances and 
 violence of the middle ages, the order and harmony 
 which is then established seem sufficient; at all 
 events they are greater than ever before. Hence- 
 forth, as at Florence about the year 1400, authority 
 becomes recognized and society organized; hence- 
 forth, as in Italy about the year 1400, man aban- 
 dons the ascetic and ecclesiastic regime that he may 
 interest himself in nature and enjoy life. The ancient 
 compression is relaxed ; he begins to prize strength, 
 health, beauty and pleasure. On all sides we see the 
 mediaeval spirit undergoing change and disintegra- 
 tion. An elegant and refined architecture converts 
 stone into lace, festooning churches with pinnacles, 
 trefoils and intricate mullions, and in such a fashion 
 that the honey-combed, gilded and flowering edifice 
 becomes a vast and romantic casket, a product of 
 fancy rather than of faith, less calculated to excite 
 
Z.Y THE NETHERLANDS. 89 
 
 piety than wonder. In like manner chivalry become8 
 a mere parade. The nobles frequent the Valois 
 court, devote themselves to pleasure, to " pretty con- 
 ceits " and especially to the " conceits of love." In 
 Chaucer and in Froissart we are spectators of their 
 pomp — their tourneys, their processions and their 
 banquets, of the new reign of frivolity and fashion, 
 of the creations of an infatuated and licentious ima- 
 gination, of their extravagant and overcharged cos- 
 tumes — robes twelve ells long, tight hose and Bohe- 
 mian jackets with sleeves falling to the ground, shoes 
 terminating in the claws, horns and tail of the scor- 
 pion, suits embroidered with letters, animals, and 
 with musical notes enabling one to read and sing 
 a song on the owner's back, hoods adorned with 
 golden garlands and with animals, robes covered 
 with sapphires, rubies and jewelled swallows, each 
 holding in its beak a golden cup ; one costume has 
 fourteen hundred of these cups, and we find nine hun- 
 dred and sixty pearls used in embroidering a song on 
 a coat. Women in magnificently ornamented veils, 
 the breast nude, the head crowned with huge cones 
 and crescents, and dressed in gaudy robes covered 
 
00 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 with the figures of unicorns, lions and savages, place 
 tliemselves on seats representing small sculptured 
 and gilded cathedrals. The life of the court and 
 of princes seems a carnival. When Charles VI. 
 is knighted a hall is prepared in the abbey of St. 
 Denis, thirty-two toises (about two hundred feet) 
 long, hung in white and green, with a lofty pavilion 
 of tapestry : here, after three days of feasting and 
 jousting, a nocturnal masked ball ends in an orgie. 
 "Many a damsel forgot herself, many were the^ 
 husbands who suffered," and, in contrast to this, 
 showing the sentiments of the age, they cele- 
 brate the funeral of Duguesclin at the end of it. 
 In the accounts and chronicles of the period we 
 follow the course of a broad, golden stream, flowing, 
 glistening, ostentatious and interminable, that is to 
 say, the domestic history of the king and queen and 
 the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy; there is noth- 
 ing but entries into cities, cavalcades, masks, dances, 
 voluptuous caprices, and the prodigality of the newly 
 enriched. The Burgundian and French chevaliers 
 wlio go to contend with Bagazet at Nicopolis equip 
 themselves as if for a party of pleasure ; their ban- 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 01 
 
 ners and the trappings of their horses are loaded 
 witli gold and silver, their dishes are all of sji"er 
 plate and their tents are of green satin ; exquisite 
 wines follow them in boats on the Danube, and t'.eir 
 camps are filled with courtesans. This excess of 
 animal spirits, which, in France, is mingled with 
 morbid curiosity and lugubrious fancies, breaks out 
 in Burgundy into a grand and jolly kermesse. Philip 
 the Good has three legitimate wives, twenty-four 
 mistresses, and sixteen bastards; he attends to all, 
 feasting, making merry and admitting the towns- 
 women to his court ; seeming at the outset to be 
 one of Jordaens' characters. A Count of Cloves has 
 sixty-three bastards; the chroniclers in their narra- 
 tion of ceremonies constantly and gravely mention 
 those of both sexes; the institution appears to be 
 official : seeing them swarming in this manner, we 
 are reminded of the buxom nurses of Rubens and 
 the Gangamelles of Rabelais. " It was," says a con- 
 temporary, "a great pity, this sin of luxury which 
 prevailed far and wide, and especially amongst prin- 
 ces and the wedded. . . lie was the gentlest com- 
 panion who was able to deceive and possess p>t the 
 
92 THE PIlILOSOniT OF ART ^ 
 
 same time more than one woman . . . and even there 
 prevailed likewise the sin of luxury among the prel- 
 ates of the Church and among all Church people."* 
 Jacques de Croy, archbishop of Cambray, officiated 
 pontifically Avith his thirty-six bastards and bas- 
 tards' sons, and kept in reserve a sum of money for 
 those to come. At the third marriage of Philip the 
 Good the gala seems to be a Gamache's wedding 
 commanded by Gargantua ; the streets of Bruges 
 were hung with tapestry ; for eight days and eight 
 niglits a stone lion spurted Khine wine, while a stone 
 stag discharged Beaune Burgundy ; at meal times 
 an unicorn poured forth rosewater or malvoisie. On 
 tlie entry of the Dauphin into the city, eight hun- 
 dred merchants of divers nations advanced to meet 
 him, all in garments of silk and velvet. At another 
 ceremonial the duke appears with a saddle and bri- 
 dle covered with precious stones ; " nine pages cov- 
 ered with plumes of jewels " followed behind him, 
 
 * " C'etait grand' pitie que le peclie de luxare qui regnait moult et 
 fort, et par especial esprinces et gens maries. Et etait le plus gentil 
 compagnon qui i)lus d'uue femme eavait trompor et avoir au moment . . . 
 et meme regnait iceliii peclie de luxure es prelats de I'Eglise et en toua 
 gens d'Eglise." 
 
m THE NETHERLANDS. 93 
 
 and " one of tlie said pages bore a salad which was 
 stated to be of the value of one hundred thousand 
 gold crowns." Another time the jewels worn by 
 the duke are estimated at a million. I wish to 
 describe one of these fetes to you ; like those of 
 Florence at the same epoch they bear witness to tho 
 picturesque and decorative tastes which here as in 
 Florence produced pictorial art. One of them took 
 place at Lille under Philip the Good, the Festival o^ 
 the Pheasant, which may be compared with the tri- 
 umph of Lorenzo de Medici; you will observe here 
 in a hundred naiv^e details the resemblances and the 
 difterences of the two societies, and accordingly of 
 their culture, their taste and their art. 
 
 The Duke of Cleves had given a " superb banquet" 
 at Lille, at which were present " Monseigneur," (of 
 Burgundy) " together with the lords, ladies and dam- 
 sels of his house." At this banquet there was seen 
 on the table an " entremets," that is to say, a decora- 
 tion representing " a ship with lifted sails, in which 
 was a knight erect and armed .... and before it a 
 silver swan, bearing on his neck a gold collar, to 
 which hung a long chain, with which the said swan 
 
^i THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 ^»ppeared to draw the vessel, and on the back of the 
 said vessel stood a castle most skilfully contrived." 
 On this allegorical macliine the Duke of Cloves, 
 Knight of the Swan, and " slave of the fair," caused 
 proclamation to be made that he might be encoun- 
 tered in the lists, " armed in jousting harness and in 
 war saddle, and that he ^vho should do the best would 
 gain a rich golden swan, chained with a chain of gold, 
 and on the end of this chain a magnificent ruby." 
 
 Ten days after this the Count d'Etampes gave the 
 second act of the fairy spectacle. Bear in mind that 
 the second as well as the first act with all the others 
 began with a feast. In this court life is gross, and 
 people never tire of bumpers. " When the * entre- 
 mets' were removed there issued from an apartment a 
 multitude of torches, and after these there appeared 
 an armed attendant clad in liis coat of mail, and 
 after him two knights clad in long velvet robes 
 furred with sable, with no covering to the head, each 
 one bearing in his hand a gay hood of flowers ; " after 
 them, on a palfrey caparisoned in blue silk, " a most 
 beautiful lady appeared, young, of the age of twelve 
 years, attired in a robe of violet silk, richly embroi- 
 
^ IN THE NETUERLANDS. 95 
 
 dered and j^added with gold," she is " the princess 
 of joy." Three squires clothed in vermilion silk lead 
 her up to the duke, singing a song as they intro- 
 duce her. She descends, and kneeling on the table 
 she places on his brow a crown of flowers. At this 
 moment the joust is proclaimed, the drums beat, a 
 pursuivant-at-arms appears in a mailed suit covered 
 with swans, and then enters the Duke of Cleves, 
 Knight of the Swan, richly armed, seated on a horse 
 caparisoned in white damask and fringed with gold ; 
 he leads by a gold cliain a large swan accompanied 
 by two mounted archers; behind him march children 
 on horseback, grooms, knights armed with lances, 
 all, like himself, in white damask fringed with gold. 
 Toison d'Or, the herald, presents them to the duch- 
 ess. The other knights then defile before her on 
 their horses, decked with gray and crimson cloth of 
 gold, cloth decked Avith small golden bells, crimson 
 velvet trimn^ed with sable, violet velvet fringed with 
 gold and silk, and black velvet studded with golden 
 tear-drops. Suppose that the great personages of 
 state of the present day should amuse themselves 
 with dressing up like actors at the opera and in 
 
96 THE PUILOSOPHY OF AIIT 
 
 making passes like circus-riders ! The oddity of 
 such a supposition enables you to appreciate the 
 liveliness of the picturesque instinct at that day, as 
 well as the taste for outward display and the feeble- 
 ness of both at present. 
 
 These, however, were only preludes. Eight days 
 after the tourney the Duke of Burgundy gave his fes- 
 tival, which surpassed all the others. A vast hall, 
 liung with tapestry representing the career of Her- 
 cules, had five doors, guarded by archers dressed in 
 robes of gray and black cloth. Around the sides 
 extended five platforms or galleries, occupied by for- 
 eign spectators, noble personages and ladies, most 
 of these being disguised. In their midst arose "a 
 lofty buffet, loaded with vessels of gold and silver, 
 and crystal vases garnished with gold and precious 
 stones." And erect, in the centre of the hall, stood 
 a great pillar, bearing " a female image with hair 
 falling to her loins, her head covered with a very ricli 
 hat, and her breast spouting hypocras so long as the 
 supper lasted." Three gigantic tables were arranged, 
 each one being adorned with several " entremets," 
 f,o many huge machines reminding one, on a gvand 
 
.71V THE NETHERLANDS. 07 
 
 scale, of the toy presents given nowadaj^s to the 
 cliihlren of the wealthy. The men of this time, in- 
 -""eed, in curiosity and in flights of the imagination 
 are nothing but children ; their strongest desire is 
 to amuse the eye ; they sport with life as with a 
 magic lantern. The two principal "entremets" con- 
 sist of a monstrous pie, containing twenty-eight per- 
 sons, " alive," playing on musical instruments, also a 
 *' church with windows and glass, provided with four 
 choristers and a ringing bell." Besides these there 
 were twenty more, — a great castle, its fosses filled 
 with orange-water, and on a tower the fairy Melu- 
 sina ; a windmill with archers and cross-bowmen fir- 
 ing at mark; a cask in a vineyard with two fluids, 
 one bitter and the other sweet ; a vast desert with a 
 lion and serpent contending; a savage on a camel; a 
 clown prancing on a bear amidst rocks and glacie»'s; 
 a lake surrounded by cities and castles ; a carrack at 
 anchor, bearing rigging, masts and seamen ; a beau- 
 tiful fountain of earth and lead, with small trees of 
 glass in leaf and blooming, and a St. Andrew with 
 his cross; a fountain of rose-water, representing a 
 naked infant in the attitude of the " Mannekenpiss '* 
 
98 THE PHILOSOPUY OF ART 
 
 of Brussels. You would imagine yourself in a var- 
 iety store at New Year time. Tliis pele-mele of mo- 
 tionless decoration did not suffice ; over and above 
 this an active parade was necessary ; we see defiling 
 in turn a dozen of interludes, and in the intervals the 
 church and the pie keep busy the ears at the same 
 time as the eyes of the guests ; the bell rings with 
 all its might ; a shepherd plays on a bag-pipe ; little 
 children sing a song ; organs, German cornets, trum- 
 pets, glees, flutes, a lute with voices, drums, hunting 
 horns and the yelping of hounds succeed each other. 
 Meanwhile a rearing horse appears, richly covered 
 with vermilion silk, monnted by two trumpeters 
 " seated backward and without saddle," led by six- 
 teen knights in long robes ; then a hobgoblin, half 
 man, half griffon, who, mounted on a boar and car- 
 rying a man, advances with a target and two darts ; 
 then a large white mechanical stag, harnessed in 
 silk, with golden horns, and bearing on his back a 
 child in a short dress of crimson velvet, who sino:s 
 while the stag performs tlie bass. All these figures 
 make the circuit of the table, while the last invention 
 especially delights the company. A flying dragon 
 
JiV" THE NETHERLANDS. 99 
 
 passes tlirough the air, liis fiery scales liglitir.g up 
 the recesses of the gothic ceiling. A heron and 
 two falcons are loosed, and the vanquished bird is 
 presented to the Duke. Trumpets sound a blast 
 behind a curtain, which curtain being withdrawn 
 discloses Jason reading a letter from Medea, then 
 combating the bulls, then killing the serpent, then 
 ploughing the ground and sowing the monster's teeth 
 fi-om which arises a crop of armed men. At this 
 jDoint the interest of the fete deepens. It becomes 
 a romance of chivalry, a scene from Amadis, or one 
 of Don Quixote's dreams in action. A giant arrives 
 bearing a pike and turban and leading an elephant 
 caparisoned in silk with a castle on his back, 
 and in this castle a lady attired as a nun and repre- 
 senting the Holy Church; she orders a halt, pro- 
 claims her name, and summons the company to the 
 crusade. Thereupon Toison d'Or, with his officers 
 of arms, fetches a live pheasant wearing a golden 
 collar decked with precious stones; the Duke swears 
 npon the pheasant to succor Christendom against 
 the Turk, and all the knights do likewise, each in 
 a document of the style of Galaor, and this is the 
 
100 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 pheasant's vow. The fete terminates with a mystic 
 and moral ball. At the sound of instruments and 
 by the light of torches a lady in white, bearing the 
 name of the " Grace of God " on her shoulder, ap- 
 proaches the Duke, recites a stanza and, on retir- 
 ing, leaves with him the twelve virtues — Faith, 
 Charity, Justice, Reason, Temperance, Strength, 
 Truth, Liberality, Diligence, Hope and Yalor — each 
 led by a knight in a crimson pourpoint, the sleeves 
 of which are of satin embroidered with foliage and 
 jewelry. They betake themselves to dancing with 
 their knights, crowning the Count of Charolais the 
 victor in the lists, and, upon the announcement of 
 a new tourney, the ball ends at three o'clock in the 
 morning. Really there is too much of it ; the mind 
 and the senses both flag ; these people in the 
 way of diversions are gluttons and not epicureans. 
 This uproar and this profusion of quaint conceits 
 shows us a rude society, a race of the North, an 
 incipient civilization still infantile and barbarous ; 
 the grandeur and simplicity of Italian taste is 
 wanting in these contemporaries of the Medicis. 
 And yet the groundwork of their habits and imag 
 
Ili THE NETHERLANDS. IQl 
 
 matioii is the same; here, as with the chariots and 
 joomp of tlie Florentine carnival, the legends, his- 
 tory and philosophy of the middle ages take shape; 
 moral abstractions assume visible form ; the vir- 
 tues become actual women; they are accordingly 
 tempted to paint and sculpture them ; all decoration, 
 in effect, consists of reliefs and paintings. The 
 symbolic age gives way to the picturesque age ; 
 the intellect is no longer content with a scholastic 
 entity ; it seeks to contemplate a living form, the 
 human mind finding it necessary for its complete- 
 ness to be translated to the eye by a work of art. 
 
 But this work of art bears no resemblance to that 
 of Italy for the reason that the culture and direction 
 of the intellect are different ; this is evident in read- 
 ing the simple and dull verses recited by the "Holy 
 Cliurch " and the '' Virtues," an empty, senile poetry, 
 the worn-out babble of the trouveres, a rattle of 
 rhymed phrases in which the rythm is as flimsy as 
 the idea. The Netherlands never had a Dante, a 
 Petrarch, a Boccaccio, a Yillani. The mind, less 
 precocious and further removed from Latin tradi- 
 tions, remained a longer time subject to mediaeval 
 
102 THE PHILOSOFHT OF ART 
 
 discipline and inertia. There were no sceptical 
 Averrhoeists and physicians like those described by 
 Petrarch; there were no humanist restorers of 
 ancient literature, almost pagans, like those who sur- 
 rounded Lorenzo de Medici. Christian faith and 
 sentiment are much more active and tenacious here 
 than in Venice or in Florence. They continue to 
 subsist under the sensual pomp of the Burgundian 
 court. If there are epicureans in social matters there 
 are none in theory; the most gallant serve religion, 
 as the ladies, through a principle of honor. In 1398 
 seven hundred seigniors of Burgundy and France 
 enlist in the crusade ; all, save twenty-seven die at 
 Nicopolis, and Boucicaut calls them " blessed and 
 happy martyrs." You have just witnessed the buf- 
 foonery of Lille which ended in a solemn vow to war 
 with the infidels. Here and there scattered traits 
 show the persistency of the primitive devotion. In 
 1477, in the neighboring town of ISTuremburg, Mar- 
 tin Koetzel, a pilgrim in Palestine, counts the steps 
 between Golgotha and the house of Pilate, that he 
 may, on his return, build seven stations and a cal- 
 vary between his own house and the cemetery of hia 
 
ZZV^ THE NETHERLANDS. 103. 
 
 native town ; losing his measure he repeats the jour' 
 ney, and this time has the work executed by the 
 sculptor, Adam Kraft. In the Low Countries, as in 
 Germany, the middle class, a sedate and somewhat 
 dull people, restricted to their own narrow circle and 
 attached to ancient usages, preserve much better 
 than court-seigniors the faith and the fervor of the 
 middle ages; Their literature bears witness to this. 
 The moment it takes an original turn, that is to say 
 from the end of the thirteenth century, it furnishes 
 ample testimony to the practical, civic and bourgeois 
 spirit, with abundant evidences of pious fervor ; on 
 the one hand appear moral maxims, pictures of do- 
 mestic life, and historic and political poems relating 
 to recent and true occurences ; on the other, lyric 
 laudation of the Virgin, and mystic and tender poetic 
 effusions.* In fine, the national genius, which is 
 Germanic, inclines much more to faith than to incre- 
 dulity. Through the Lollards and the mystics of 
 the middle ages, also through the iconoclasts and 
 the innumerable martyrs of the sixteenth century, it 
 turns in the direction of Protestant ideas. Left to 
 * Uorse Belgicae. 
 
104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 itself it would have developed not, as in Italy, into 
 a pagan renaissance, but, as in Germany, into a 
 recrudescence of Christianity. The art, moreover, 
 which, of all the others, best reveals the cravings 
 of the popular imagination, architecture, remains 
 gothic and Christian up to the end of the sixteenth 
 century; Italian and classic importations do not 
 affect it ; the style gets to be complicated and effem- 
 inate, but the art does not change. It prevails not 
 only in the churches but in laic edifices ; the town- 
 halls of Bruges, Louvain, Brussels, Liege and Au- 
 denarde show to what extent it was cherished not 
 only by the priesthood but by the nation ; the 
 people remained faithful to it to the end : the town- 
 hall of Audenarde was begun seven years after the 
 death of Raphael. In 1536, in the hands of a Flem- 
 ish woman, Margaret of Austria, the church of 
 Brou, the latest and prettiest flower of gothic art, 
 bloomed out in its perfection. Sum up all these 
 indications and consider, in the protraiture of the 
 day, the personages themselves,* the donors, abbes> 
 
 * See in the Musees of Antwerp, Brussels and Bruges, the triptycha 
 •whose doors present entire families of the period. 
 
IN THE NErilERLANDS. 105 
 
 burgomasters, townspeople and matrons, so grave 
 and so simple in their Sunday clothes and spotless 
 linen, with their rigid air and their expression of 
 deep and settled faith, and you will recognize that 
 here the sixteentli century renaissance took place 
 within religious limits, that man in making the pres- 
 ent life more attractive never lost sight of that to 
 come, and that his picturesque invention is the man- 
 ifestation of a vivacious Christianity instead of ex- 
 pressing, as in Italy, a restored paganism. 
 
 A Flemish renaissance underneath Christian ideas, 
 such, in eflect, is the t\vo-f«ld nature of art under 
 Hubert and John Yan Eyck, Roger Van der Weyde, 
 Hemling and Quintin Matsys ; and from these two 
 characteristics proceed all the others. On the one 
 hand, artists take interest in actual life; their figures 
 are no longer symbols like the illuminations of 
 ancient missals, nor purified spirits like the Madon- 
 nas of the school of Cologne, but living beings and 
 bodies. They attend to anatomy, the perspective is 
 exact, the minutest details are rendered of stuiFs, of 
 architecture, of accessories and of landscape; the 
 
 relief is strong, and the entire scene stamps itself on 
 5* 
 
100 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 the eye and on the mind with extraordinary force 
 and sense of stability ; the greatest masters of com- 
 ing times are not to surpass them in all this, nor 
 even go so far. Nature evidently is now discovered 
 by them. The scales fall from their eyes ; they have 
 just mastered, almost in a flash, the proportions, the 
 structure and the coloring of visible realities; and 
 moreover, they delight in them. Consider the superb 
 copes wrought in gold and decked with diamonds, 
 the embroidered silks, the flowered and dazzling 
 diadems with which they ornament their saints and 
 divine personages,* all of which represents the pomp 
 of the Burgundian court. Look at the calm and 
 transparent water, the bright meadows, the red and 
 white flowers, the blooming trees, the sunny distan- 
 ces of their admirable landscapes.f Observe their 
 colorinir — the stronsrest and richest ever seen, the 
 pure and full tones side by side as in a Persian car- 
 pet, and united solely through their harmony, the 
 
 * " God the Father, and the Virgin," by Hubert van Eyck. " The Vir- 
 gin, St. Barbara and St. Catherine," by Memling, and " The Entomb- 
 ment," by Quintin Matsys. 
 
 t " St. Christopher," " The Baptism of Jesus," by Memling and hia 
 school. " The Adoration of the Lamb," by the Van Eycks. 
 
ly Tim NETHERLANDS. 107 
 
 superb breaks in the foldj of purple mantles, the 
 azure recesses of long falling robes, the green dra- 
 peries like a summer field permeated with sunshine, 
 the display of gold skirts trimmed with black, the 
 strong light which warms and enlivens the whole 
 scene ; you have a concert in wliich each instrument 
 sounds its proper note, and the more true because 
 the more sonorous. They see the world on the 
 bright side and make a holiday of it, a genuine fete, 
 similar to those of this day, glowing under a more 
 bounteous sunlight and not a heavenly Jerusalem 
 suffused with supernatural radiance such as Fra 
 Angelico painted. They are Flemings, and they 
 stick to the earth. They copy the real with scrupu- 
 lous accuracy, and, all that is real — the ornaments of 
 armor, the polished glass of a window, the scrolls of 
 a carpet, the hairs of fur,* the undraped body of an 
 Adam and an Eve, a canon's massive, wrinkled and 
 obese features, a burgomaster's or soldier's broad 
 shoulders, projecting chin and prominent nose, the 
 
 * See " The Madonna and St. George," by Jan Van Eyck, the An- 
 twerp triptych of Qui n tin Matsys, etc. The " Adam and Eve," of JIube»*. 
 Van Eyck at Brussels, and "The Adoration of the Lamb," 
 
iOS THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 spindling shanks of a hangman, the over large head 
 and diminntive limbs of a child, the costumes and 
 furniture of the age; their entire work being a glori- 
 fication of this present life. But, on the other hand, 
 it is a glorification of Christian belief. Not only are 
 their subjects almost all of a religious order, but 
 again they are imbued with a religious sentiment 
 which, in the following age, is not to be found in the 
 same scenes. Their best pictures represent no actual 
 event in sacred history but a verity of faith, a sum- 
 mary of doctrine. Hubert Yaii Eyck regards paint- 
 ing in the same light as Simone Memmi, or Taddeo 
 Gaddi, that is to say, as an exposition of higher the- 
 ology; his figures and his accessories may be realis- 
 tic, but they are likewise symbolic. The cathedral 
 in which Roger Van der Weyde portrays the seven 
 sacraments is at once a material church and a spir- 
 itual church ; Christ appears bleeding on his cross, 
 while at the same time the priest is performing mass 
 at the altar. The chamber or portico in which John 
 Van Eyck and Memling place their kneeling saints 
 is an illusion in its detail and finish, but the Virgin 
 on her throne and the ano-els who crown her show 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 100 
 
 the believer that he is in a superior reahu. A hie- 
 rarchical symmetry groups personages and stiffens 
 attilucles. With Hubert Van Eyck the eye is fixed 
 and tlie face impassible ; it is the eternal immobility 
 of divine life ; in heaven all is fulfilled and time is 
 no more. In other instances, as with Memling, there 
 is the quietude of absolute faith, the peace of mind 
 preserved in the cloister as in a sleeping forest, the 
 immaculate purity, mournful sweetness, the infinite 
 trust of the truly pious nun absorbed with her own 
 reveries, and whose large open eyes look out upon 
 vacancy. These paintings, in turn, are subjects for 
 the altar or private chapel ; they do not appeal like 
 those of later ages to grand seigniors whose church- 
 going consists of mere routine, and who crave, even 
 in religious history, pagan pomp and the torsos of 
 wrestlers ; they appeal to the faithful, in order to 
 suggest to them the form of the supernatural world 
 or the emotions of fervid piety, to show them the im- 
 mutable serenity of beatified saints and the tender 
 humility of the elect; Ruysbroeck, Eckart, Tauler 
 and Henry de Suzo, the theological mystics of Ger~ 
 many antecedent to Luther, might here resort. It is 
 
110 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 a strange siglit, and one which does not seem to 
 accord with the sensuous j^arade of the court and the 
 sumptuous entries of the cities. We find a similar 
 contrast between the profound religious sentiment 
 of the Madonnas of Albert Durer and the worldly 
 splendor of his " House of Maximilian." The reason 
 is, we are in a Germanic country ; the renaissance 
 of general prosperity and the emancipation of the 
 intellect which results from it here revive Christian- 
 ity instead of destroying it as in a Latin country. 
 
IN THE SBTHEBLANB3. HI 
 
 II- 
 
 When a great change is effected in hnraan affairs 
 it brings on by degrees a corresponding change in 
 human conceptions. After the discovery of the In- 
 dies and of America, after the invention of printing 
 and the multiplication of books, after the restoration 
 of classic antiquity and the Reformation of Luther^ 
 any conception of the world then formed could nc 
 longer remain monastic and mystic. The tender and 
 melancholy aspiration of a soul sighing for the celes- 
 tial kingdom and humbly subjecting its conduct to the 
 authority of an undisputed Church gave way to free 
 inquiry nourished on so many fresh conceptions, and 
 disappeared at the admirable spectacle of this real 
 world which man now began to comprehend and to 
 conquer. The rhetorical academies which, at first, 
 were composed of a clerical body passed into the 
 hands of the laityf they had preached the payment of 
 tithes and submission to the Church ; they now ridi- 
 culed the clergy and combated ecclesiastical abuses. 
 
112 TUE rilTLOSOPJIY OF ART 
 
 In 1533 nine citizens of Amsterdam were condemned 
 to a pilgrimage to Home for having represented one 
 of these satirical pieces. In 1539, at Ghent, the 
 question having been proposed of : Who are the 
 greatest fools in the world ? eleven out of nineteen 
 academies reply : The monks. " A few poor monks 
 and nuns," says a contemporary, " always appear in 
 the comedies ; it seems as if people could not enjoy 
 tliemselves without making sport of God and tlie 
 Church." Pliilip II. had decreed the punishment of 
 death against authors and actors whose pieces were 
 not authorized or were impious. But they were per- 
 formed, nevertheless, even in tlie vilUiges. " Tlie 
 word of God," says the same author, "first found its 
 way into these countries through plays, and for this 
 reason tliey are forbidden much more rigidly than 
 tlie writings of Martin Luther." * It is evident that 
 the mind had become emancipated from ancient 
 tutelage, and that people and burgliers, artizans and 
 
 * In 1539 Louvain proposes this qncption : "What is the fp'oatest con- 
 eolation to a dyin;:: man ?" The responses all have a Lutheran cast. The 
 Academy of St. Wynockbcri^e, bearing? ofl" the second prize, answers, 
 accordinc: to the doctrine of pure grace : ." The faith that Christ and his 
 Spirit have been jjiven to us." 
 
J.Y THE NETHERLANDS. 113 
 
 merchants began to tliink for themselves on matters 
 of salvation and morality. 
 
 The extraordinary wealth and prosperity of the 
 country lead to picturesque and sensuous customs ; 
 here, as in England at the same epoch, a renais- 
 sance pomp overlays a silent Protestant fermenta- 
 tion. When Charles V., in 1520, made his entry 
 into the city of Antwerp, Albert Durer saw four 
 hundred triumphal arches, two stories liigh and forty 
 feet long, decorated with paintings on which alle- 
 gorical representations were given. The performers 
 consisted of young girls belonging to the best bour- 
 geois class, clothed simply in thin gauze, " almost 
 naked," says the honest German artist, — "I have 
 rarely seen more beautiful. I gazed at them very 
 attentively, and even passionately, inasmuch as I am 
 a painter." The festivals of the belle-lettre acade- 
 mies become magnificent; cities and communities 
 rival each other in luxurious allegorical creations. At 
 the invitation of the violinists of Antwerp fourteen 
 academies, in 1562, send their "triumphs," and the 
 academy called the Gubiande de 3farie^ at Brussels, 
 obtains the prize. " For," says Van Meteren, " thero 
 
114: THE rniLOSOPEY OF ART 
 
 were full three hundred and forty men on horseback, 
 all dressed in velvet and in dark purple silk, with 
 long Polish cassocks embroidered with silver lace, 
 and wearing red hats fashioned like antique hel- 
 mets ; their pourpoints, plumes and bootees were 
 white. They wore belts of silver tocque, very in- 
 geniously woven with yellow, red, blue and white. 
 They had seven chariots made after the antique 
 pattern, with divers personages borne thereon. 
 They had, beside, seventy-eight ordinary chariots 
 with torches ; the said chariots were covered with 
 red cloth bordered with white. The charioteers all 
 wore red mantles, and on these chariots were divers 
 personages representing a number of beautiful an- 
 tique figures, all of which goes to show how people 
 will assemble in friendship to share in amity." La 
 Plone de 3faUnes provides a parade almost equal to 
 this consisting of three hundred and twenty men on 
 horseback, attired in a flesh-colored material em- 
 broidered with gold, seven antique chariots embla- 
 zoned and flaming with all sorts of lights. Add to 
 this the entry of twelve other processions, and then 
 enumerate the plays, pantomines, fireworks and ban- 
 
IJ^ THE NETHERLANDS. II5 
 
 qiu'ts n-liicli follow after, " There were several simi- 
 lar games given during the peace in other cities, , . . . 
 I have deemed it proper to narrate all this," says Yan 
 JMeteren, "for the purpose of showing the happy 
 union and prosperity of those countries in those 
 days." After the departure of Philip II., " instead of 
 one court there seemed to be a hundred and fifty," 
 The nobles vied with each other in magnificence, 
 maintaining free tables and spending without stint. 
 On one occasion the Prince of Orange, wishing to 
 diminish his train, discharged in a body twenty- 
 eight head cooks. Lordly mansions swarmed with 
 pages and gentlemen and superb liveries; the full 
 tide of the renaissance overflowed in folly and 
 extravagance, as under Elizabeth in England, in 
 pompous array, cavalcades, games and good cheer. 
 The Count of Brederode drank so much at one of 
 St. Martin's feasts that he came near dying ; the 
 rhinegrave's brother did actually die at the table 
 through too great fondness of Malvoisie wine. Xever 
 did life seem more bright or beautiful. Like Flor- 
 ence under the Medicis in the preceding century, it 
 ceased to be tragic ; man had expanded ; murderous 
 
116 THE PHILOSOrHY OF ART 
 
 revolts and sanguinary wars between city and city 
 and corporation and corporation quietly subsided; 
 only one sedition takes place in Ghent in 1536 wliich 
 is easily quelled without much bloodshed, the last 
 and a feeble convulsion, not to be compared with 
 the formidable insurrections of the fifteenth century. 
 Margaret of Austria, Mary of Hungary, and Mar- 
 garet of Parma, the three rulers, are popular ; 
 Charles Y. is a national prince, speaking Flemish, 
 boasting of his nativity in Ghent, and protecting, by 
 treaties, the manufactures and trade of the country. 
 He fosters and nourishes it ; Flanders, in return, 
 supplies liim with the half of his entire revenue ; ^ 
 in his herd of states she is the fat milch cow which 
 is milked constantly without being dried up. Thus, 
 while the mind is expanding, the temperature around 
 it becomes modified and establishes the conditions 
 of a new growth ; we see the dawn of it in the festi- 
 vals of the belle-lettre academies, which are classic 
 representations precisely like those of the Florence 
 carnival and quite different from the quaint conceits 
 accumulated at the banquets of the Dukes of Bur 
 
 * Two million of crowns of gold out of five million. 
 
ly- THE NETIIERLA^'J)S. 1 1 7 
 
 gundy. "The 'Violet,' 'Olive' aiul 'Tliougla' 
 academies of Antwerp," says Giiiccardini, "give 
 public performances of comedies, tragedies and other 
 histories in imitation of the Greeks and Romans.' 
 Society, ideas and tastes have undergone a transfor- 
 mation, and there is room for a new art. 
 
 Already in the preceding epoch we see premon- 
 itory symptoms of the coming change. From 
 Hubert Van Eyck to Quintin Matsys the grandeur 
 and gravity of religious conceptions have dimin- 
 ished. Nobody now dreams of portraying the 
 whole of Christian faith and doctrine in a single 
 picture; scenes are selected from the Gospel and 
 from history — annunciations, shepherd adorations, 
 last judgments, martyrdoms and moral legends. 
 Painting, which is epic in the hands of Hubert Van 
 Eyck, becomes idyllic in those of Ilemling and 
 almost w^orldly in those of Quintin Matsys. It 
 gets to be pathetic, interesting and pleasing. The 
 charming saints, the beautiful Herodias and the 
 lithe Salome of Quintin Matsys are richly attired 
 noble dames and already laic; the artist loves the 
 world as it is and for itself, and does not subordinate 
 
118 THE rillLO SOPHY OF ART 
 
 it to the representation of the supernatural world 
 lie does not employ it as a means but as an end. 
 Scenes of profane life multiply; he paints towns- 
 peoj^le in their shops; money-changers, amorous 
 couples, and the attenuated features and stealthy 
 smiles of a miser. Lucas of Leyden, his contempo- 
 rary, is an ancestor of the painters whom we call 
 the lesser Flemings; his "Presentation of Christ" 
 and "The Magdalen's Dance" have nothing relig- 
 ious about them but their titles; the evangelical 
 subject is lost in the accessories ; that which the 
 picture truly presents is a rural Flemish festival, or 
 a gathering of Flemings on an open field. Jerome 
 Bosch, of the same period, paints grotesque, infernal 
 scenes. Art, it is clear, falls from heaven to earth, 
 and is no longer to treat divine but human incidents. 
 Artists, in other respects, lack no process and no 
 preparation ; they understand perspective, they 
 know the use of oil, and are masters of modelling 
 and relief; they have studied actual types; they 
 know how to paint dresses, accessories, architecture 
 and landscaj^e with wonderful accuracy and finish ; 
 their manipulative skill is admirable. One defect 
 
m THE NETHERLANDS. 119 
 
 only still chains them to hieratic art, which is the 
 immobility of their faces and the rigid folds of theii 
 stuffs. They have but to observe the rapid play of 
 pliysiognomies and tlie easy movement of loose dra- 
 pery, and the renaissance is complete ; the breeze 
 of tlie age is behind them and already fills their 
 sails. On looking at their portraits, their interiors, 
 and even their sacred j)ersonages, as in the "En- 
 tombment" of Quintin Matsys, one is tempted to 
 address them thus : " You are alive — one effort 
 more ! Come, bestir yourselves ! Shake off the 
 middle age entirely ! Depict the modern man for 
 us as you find him within you and outside of you. 
 Paint him vigorous, healthy and content with exis- 
 tence. Forget the meagre, ascetic and pensive 
 spirit, dreaming in the chapels of Hemling. If 'you 
 choose a religious scene for the motive of your pic- 
 ture, compose it, like the Italians, of active and 
 healthy figures, only let these figures proceed from 
 your national and personal taste. You have a soul 
 of your own, which is Flemish and not Italian ; let 
 the flower bloom ; judging by the bud it will be a 
 beautiful one." And, indeed, when we regard the 
 
1 L^O THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 sculptures of the time, such as the chimney of the 
 Palais de Justice and the tomb of Charles the Bold 
 at Bruges, the church and monuments of Brou, 
 Ave see the promise of an original and complete art, 
 less sculptural and less refined than the Italian, but 
 more varied, more expressive and closer to nature, 
 less subject to rule but nearer to the real, more 
 capable of manifesting spirit and personality, the 
 impulses, the unpremeditated, the diversities, the 
 lights and darks of education, temperament and 
 age of the individual ; in short, a Germanic art 
 which indicates remote successors to the Van Eycks 
 and remote predecessors of Rubens. 
 
 They never appeared, or at all events, they imper- 
 fectly fulfilled their task. No nation, it must be 
 noted, lives alone in the world; alongside of the 
 Flemish renaissance there existed the Italian renais- 
 sance, and the large tree stifled the small plant. It 
 flourished and grew for a century ; the literature, 
 the ideas and the masterpieces of precocious Italy 
 imposed themselves on sluggish Europe, and the 
 Flemish cities, through their commerce, and the Aus- 
 trian dynasty, through its possessions and its Italian 
 
Ilf THE NETHE11LAND8. 12j 
 
 affairs, introduced into the North the tastes and mod 
 els of the new civilization. Towards 1520 the Flem 
 ish painters began to borrow from tlie artists of 
 Florence and Rome. John of Mabuse is the first one 
 who, in 1513, on returning from Italy, introduced 
 the Italian into the old style, and the rest followed. 
 It is so natural in advancing into an unexplored 
 country to take the path already marked out ! This 
 path, however, is not made for those who follow it ; 
 the long line of Flemish carts is to be delayed and 
 stuck fast iu the disproportionate ruts which another 
 set of wheels have worn. There are two traits char- 
 acteristic of Italian art, both of whicli run counter to 
 the Flemish imagination. On the one hand Italian 
 art centres on the natural body, healthy, active and 
 vigorous, endowed with every athletic aptitude, that 
 is to say, naked or semi-draped, frankly pagan, en- 
 joying freely and nobly in full sunshine every limb, 
 instinct and animal faculty, the same as an ancient 
 Greek in his city or palestrum, or, as at this very 
 epoch, a Cellini on the Italian streets and highways. 
 Now a Fleming does not easily enter into this con- 
 ception. He belongs to a cold and humid climate ; a 
 
122 THE PHILOSOPHY OB' ART 
 
 mail tliere in a state of nudity shivers. Tlie human 
 form here does not display the fine proportions nov 
 the easy attitudes required by chissic art ; it is often 
 dumpy or too gross; the white, soft, yielding flesli, 
 easily flushed, requires to be clothed. When the 
 painter returns from Rome and strives to pursue Ital- 
 ian art, his surroundings oppose his education ; his 
 sentiment being no longer renewed through his con- 
 tact with living nature, he-is reduced to his souvenirs. 
 Moreover, he is of Germanic race ; in other terms he 
 is organically a morally good-natured maji, and even 
 modest ; he has difficulty in appreciating the pagan 
 idea of nudity, and still greater difficulty in compre- 
 hending the fatal and magnificent idea* which gov- 
 erns civilization and stimulates the arts beyond the 
 Alps, namely, that of the complete and sovereign 
 individual, emancipated from every law, subordina- 
 ting the rest, men and things, to the development of 
 his own nature and the growth of his own faculties. 
 Our painter is related, although distantly, to Martin 
 
 * Burckbardfs " IMe Cultur der Renaissance in Italien," an admirable 
 work, the most complete and most philosophic yet written on theltaliaE 
 Keuaissance. 
 
JZV^ THE NETHERLANDS. 123 
 
 Schoen and Albert Diircr; he is a bourgeois, abnost 
 docile and staid, a lover of the comfortable and the 
 decent, and adapted to family and domestic life. His 
 biographer, Karl Van Mander, at the beginning of 
 his book, furnishes him. with moral precepts. Read 
 this patriarchal treatise, and imagine the distance 
 between a Rosso, a Giulio Romano, a Titian and a 
 Giorgione, and their pupils of Leyden or Antwerp. 
 " All vices," says the good Fleming, " bring their 
 own punishment. Distrust the maxim that the best 
 painter is he who is the most dissipated. Unworthy 
 of the name of artist is he who leads an evil life. 
 Painters should never dispute or enter into strife with 
 each other. To squander one's property is not a mer- 
 itorious art. Avoid paying court to women in your 
 youthful days. Shun the society of frivolous women, 
 who corrupt so many painters. Reflect before you 
 depart for Rome, for the opportunities to spend 
 money there are great, and none are there for earn- 
 ing it. Ever be thankful to God for His bounties." 
 Special recommendations follow concerning Italian 
 inns, bed linen and fleas. It is evident that pupils 
 of this class, even with great labor, will produce but 
 
124 THE PHILOISOPHY OF ART 
 
 little more than academic figures ; man, according 
 to their conceptions, is a draped body; when, fol- 
 lowing the example of the Italian masters, they at- 
 tempt the nude, they render it without freedom, 
 without spirit, without vivacity of invention ; theii 
 pictures, in fact, are simply cold and meagre imita- 
 tion ; their motive is pedantic; they execute ser- 
 vilely and badly that which, in Italy, is done nat- 
 urally and well. On the other hand, Italian art, like 
 Greek art, and, in general, all classic art, simplifies 
 in order to embellish ; it eliminates, effaces, and re- 
 duces detail ; by this means it gives greater value to 
 grander features. Michael Angelo and the admira- 
 ble Florentine school subordinate or suppress acces- 
 sories, landscape, fabrics and costume ; with them 
 the essential consists of the noble and the grandiose 
 type, the anatomical and muscular structure, the 
 nude or lightly draped form taken by itself, ab- 
 stractly, through the retrenchment of particulars con- 
 stituting the individual and denoting his profession, 
 education and condition ; you have man in general 
 represented, and not a special man. Tlioir person- 
 ages are in a superior world, because they are of a 
 
IN THE NETIIhmLANDS. 125 
 
 world which is not ; the peculiar feature of the scene 
 they depict is the nullity of time and space. Noth- 
 ing is more opposed to Germanic and Flemish genius, 
 which sees things as they are in their entirety and 
 complexity ; which, in man, takes in, besides man in 
 general, the contemporary, the citizen, the peasant, 
 the laborer, this citizen, that laborer, that peasant ; 
 which attaches as much importance to the accesso- 
 ries of a man as to the man himself; which loves 
 not merely human nature but all nature, animate and 
 inanimate — cattle, horses, plants, landscape, sky, and 
 even the atmosphere — its broader sympathies fore- 
 stalling any neglect of objects, and its more minute 
 observation requiring the fullest expression. You can 
 comprehend how, in subjecting itself to a discipline 
 so contrary, it loses tlie qualities it had without ac- 
 quiring those it had not; how, in order that it may 
 arrogate the ideal, it reduces color, loses the senti- 
 ment of light and atmosphere, obliterates the true 
 details of costume and of interiors, deprives figures 
 of original diversities peculiar to portrait and person, 
 and is led to moderate the suddenness of motion 
 constituting the impulsiveness of nature's activity, 
 
126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF APT 
 
 and thereby impairing ideal symmetry. It finds 
 difficulty, however, in making all these sacrifices ; 
 its instinct only partially yields to its education. 
 Flemish reminiscences may be traced underneath 
 Italian velleity ; both in turn predominate in the 
 same picture ; each prevents the other from having 
 their full efiect; their painting, consequently, uncer- 
 tain, imperfect and diverted by two tendencies, fur- 
 nishing us with historical documents and not beauti- 
 ful works of art. 
 
 Such is the spectacle presented in Flanders dur- 
 ing the last three quarters of the sixteenth century. 
 Like a small river receiving a large stream, the min- 
 gled waters of which are disturbed until the foreign 
 afiluent imposes its more powerful tint on the entire 
 current, so do we find the national style, invaded by 
 the Italian, dappled irregularly and in places, gradu- 
 ally disappearing, only rarely rising to the surface, 
 and at last sinking into obscure depths, whilst the 
 other disj^lays itself in the light and attracts univer- 
 sal attention. It is interesting to trace in the public 
 galleries this conflict of the two currents and the 
 peculiar efi*ects of their commingling. The first Itab 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 127 
 
 ian influx takes place with Jolin de Mabuse, Ber- 
 nard Yan Orley, Lambert Lombard, John Mostaert, 
 John Schorel, and Launcelot Blondel. They import 
 in their pictures classic architecture, veined marble 
 pilasters, medallions, shell niches, sometimes trium- 
 phal arches and cariatides, sometimes also noble and 
 vigorous female figures in antique drapery, a sound 
 nude form, well proportioned and vitalized, of the 
 fine pagan stock, and healthy; their imitation re- 
 duces itself to this, while in other respects they follow 
 national traditions. They still paint small pictures, 
 suitable for genre subjects; they almost always pre- 
 serve the strong and rich coloring of the preceding 
 age, the mountains and blue distances of John Van 
 Eyck, the clear skies vaguely tinged with emerald 
 on the horizon, the magnificent stuffs covered with 
 gold and jewels, the powerful relief, the minute pre- 
 cision of detail, and the solid honest heads of the 
 bourgeoisie. But as they are no longer restrained by 
 hieratic gravity they fall, in attempting to emanci- 
 pate themselves, into simple awkwardness and ridic- 
 ulous inconsistencies. The children of Job, crushed 
 by their falling palace, sprawl about grimacing and 
 
128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 writhing as if possessed ; on the other panel of tho 
 triptych is the devil in the air mounting upward like 
 a bat towards the petty Christ of a missal. Long 
 feet and lean ascetic hands form the odd appurte- 
 nances of a shapely body. A "Last Supper" by 
 Lambert Lombard mingles together Flemish clumsi- 
 ness and vulgarity with the composition of Da Vinci. 
 A " Last Judgment " by Bernard Van Orley intro- 
 duces demons by Martin Schcen amidst the academic 
 figures of Raphael. In tlie next generation the ris- 
 ing flood begins to engulph all ; Michael Van Cox- 
 cyen, Heemskerk, Franz Floris, Martin de Vos, the 
 Franckens, Van Mander, Spranger, Pourbus the elder, 
 and later, Goltzius, besides many others, resemble 
 people ambitious of speaking Italian but who do so 
 laboriously, with an accent and some barbarisms. 
 The canvas is enlarged and approaches the usual 
 dimensions of an historical subject; the manner of 
 painting is less simple ; Karl Van Mander reproaches 
 his contemporaries with "overloading their brushes," 
 Avhich was not formerly done, and with carrying im- 
 jiasto to excess. Coloring dies out ; it becomes more 
 and more white, chalky and pallid. Painters enter 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 129 
 
 passionately into tlie study of anatomy, foresliorten- 
 ings and muscular development ; their drawing be- 
 •omes dry and hard, reminding one at once of the 
 goldsmiths contemporary with Pollaiolo and the ex- 
 aggerating disciples of Michael Angelo ; they lay 
 great or violent stress on their science, they insist on 
 proving their ability to manij^ulate the skeleton and 
 produce action ; you will find Adams and Eves, 
 Saint Sebastians, Massacres of the Innocents, and 
 Iloratii resembling grotesque forms of living and 
 bare muscles ; their personages look as if casting 
 their skins. When they show more moderation, and 
 the painter, like Franz Floris in his " Fall of the An- 
 gels," discreetly copies good classic models, his nudi- 
 ties are scarcely any better; realistic sentiment and 
 tlie quaint Germanic imagination peer out among 
 ideal forms; demons with the heads of cats, fishes 
 and swine, and with horns, claws and humps, and 
 blowing fire from their jaws, introduce bestial com- 
 edy and a fantastic sabbat into the midst of the noble 
 Olympus ; we have one of Teniers' bufiboneries in- 
 serted in a poem by Raphael. Others, like Martin 
 Vos, strain themselves to produce the great sacred 
 6* 
 
130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 picture, figures imitated from the antique, cuirasses, 
 draperies and tunics, studied correctness in composi- 
 tion, gestures indicative of noble action and stage 
 heads and head gear, Avhile they are substantially 
 genre painters and lovers of reality and accessories. 
 They constantly fall back to their Flemish types and 
 their domestic details; their pictures seem to be 
 enlarged colored engravings ; they would be much 
 better were they of small size. We feel in the artist 
 a perverted talent, a natural disposition thwarted, 
 an instinct working against the grain, a prose-writer 
 born for narrating social incidents of whom the pub- 
 lic commands epics in sounding Alexandrines.* Still 
 another wave, and the remains of national genius seem 
 wholly submerged. A painter of noble family, well 
 brought up, instructed by an erudite, a man of the 
 world and a courtier, a favorite of the great Italian 
 and Spanish leaders who manage matters in the 
 Netherlands, Otto Yenius, after passing seven years 
 in Italy, brings from that country noble and pure 
 
 * This period of Flemish art is analogous to that of English li( erature 
 after the Restoration. In both cases a Germanic art attempts to be clas- 
 tic ; in both cases the contrast between education and nature produces 
 hybrid worlcs and multiplied failures. 
 
ly THE NETHERLANDS. \Z\ 
 
 antique types, beautiful Venetian color, melting and 
 subtly graduated tones, shadows jDenneated witli 
 light, and the vague purples of flesh and of ruddy 
 foliage. Excepting his native stimulus he is Italian, 
 and no longer belongs to his race; scarcely more 
 than a fragment of costume or the simple attitude of 
 a stooping old man connects him with his countrj^ 
 Nothing remains to the painter but to abandon it 
 entirely. Denis Calvaert establishes himself at Bo- 
 logna, enters into competition with the Caraccis, and 
 is the master of Guido. Flemish art accordingly 
 seems, through its own course, to suppress itself for 
 the advantage of another. 
 
 And yet it still subsists underneath the other. In 
 vain does the genius of a peojile yield to foreign in- 
 fluences. It always recovers. These are temporary, 
 while that is eternal ; it belongs to the flesh and the 
 blood, the atmosphere and the soil, the structure and 
 degree of activity of brain and senses ; all are ani- 
 mating forces incessantly renewed and everyN\here 
 present, and which the transient applause of a supe- 
 rior civilization neither undermines nor destroys. 
 This is apparent in the preservation of two styles 
 
132 THE PIIILOSjPUY OF ART 
 
 wljich continue pure amidst the growing transtbrma 
 tion of the others. Mabuse, Morstaert, Van Orley, 
 the two Pourbus, John Van Cleve, Antonis Moor, the 
 two Mierevelts and Paul Moreelze produce excellent 
 portraits ; often, in the triptyclis, the faces of the 
 donataires, arranged in rows on the shutters, form a 
 contrast in their homely sincerity, calm gravity and 
 profound simplicity of expression with the frigidity 
 and artificial composition of the principal subject ; 
 the spectator feels himself quite re-animated ; instead 
 of manikins he finds men. On the other hand there 
 arises the painting of genre subjects, landscapes and 
 interiors. After Quintin Matsys, and Lucas of Ley- 
 den, we see it developing with John Matsys, Van 
 Hemessen, the Breughels, Vinckenbooms, the three 
 Valkenburgs, Peter Neefs and Paul Bril, and espe- 
 cially in the multitude of engravers and illustrators 
 Avlio reproduce, on scattered sheets or in books, the 
 moralities, social incidents, professions, conditions 
 and events of the day. They are, undoubtedly, to 
 remain for a long time fantastic and humorous. 
 This art mixes up nature promiscuously, according 
 to its own disordered fancies; it is unconscious of the 
 
IX THE XETIIEllLANDS. 133 
 
 true forms and the true tint of trees and mountains: 
 it makes its figures howling, and introduces amidst 
 the costumes of the period grotesque monsters sim 
 ilar to those promenading through the kerniesses. 
 But all these intermediary objects are natural, and 
 insensibly lead on to its final state, which is the 
 knowledge and love of actual life, as the eye con- 
 templates it. Here, as in the painting of portraits, 
 the chain is complete ; the metal of all its links is 
 national ; through Breughel, Paul Bril and Peter 
 Xeefs, through Antonis Moor, the Pourbus and the 
 Mierevelts, it joins on to the Flemish and Dutch 
 masters of the seventeenth century. The rigidity of 
 ancient figures is relaxed ; a mystic landscape be- 
 comes real ; the transition from the divine to the 
 iiuman age is accomplished. This spontaneous and 
 regidar development shows that national instincts 
 are maintained under the empire of foreign fashions; 
 let a crisis intervene to arouse them, and they re- 
 cover their ascendancy, while art is transformed ac- 
 cording to the public taste. This crisis is the great 
 revolution commencing in 1572, the long and terrible 
 \Yar of Independence, as grand in its events and as 
 
134 THE PHILOSOPIIT OF ART 
 
 fecund of results as our French Kevolution. Ilercv 
 as with us, the renewal of the moral world is the 
 renewal of the ideal world ; the Flemisli and Dutch 
 art of the seventeenth century, like the French art 
 and literature of the nineteenth century, is the reac- 
 tion of a vast tragedy performed for thirty years at 
 the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Here, 
 however, the scaffolds and battles, having divided the 
 nation, form two peoples; one Catholic and legiti- 
 mist in Belgium, and the other Protestant and rejDub- 
 lican in Holland. While both were combined there 
 was but one spirit ; divided and opposed there were 
 two. Antwerp and Amsterdam held different con- 
 ceptions of life, and, accordingly, display different 
 schools of painting ; the same political crisis which 
 divided their country divided their art. 
 
/-V THE NETUERLAXDS. I35 
 
 III. 
 
 We must look closely into the formation of Bel- 
 gium* in order to comprehend the rise of the school 
 which bears tlie name of Rubens. Previous to the 
 War of Independence the Southern provinces seemed 
 to tend to the Reformation as well as the provinces 
 of the North. In 1566 bands of iconocLasts had 
 devastated the cathedrals of Antwerp, Ghent and 
 Tournay, and broken everywhere, in the cliurches 
 and the abbeys, all images and ornaments deemed 
 idolatrous. In the environs of Ghent thousands of 
 armed Calvinists flocked to the preachings of Her- 
 mann Strieker. Crowds gathered around the stake, 
 sang psalms, sometimes stoned the executioners and 
 set the condemned free. Death penalties had to be 
 enacted in order to suppress the satires of the belle- 
 lettre academies, and when the Duke of Alba began 
 
 * All are aware that this name dates from the French Revohition. I 
 employ it here as tlie most convenient term. The historic desii,niatioii 
 of Belgium is "The Spanish Low Countries," and of Holland "The 
 United Provinces." 
 
136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 liis massacres tlie whole country rushed to arms. 
 The resistance, however, was not the same in the 
 Soutli as in the North; in the South the Germanic 
 race, the independent and Protestant race, was not 
 pure ; the Walloons, a mixed population speaking 
 French, constituted one half of the inhabitants. 
 The soil, moreover, being richer, and living easier, 
 there was less energy and greater sensuality ; man 
 was less resolved to suffer and more inclined to 
 enjoy. Finally, almost all the Walloons, besides tlie 
 families of the great, being attached to court senti- 
 ment through a court life, were Catholic. Hence it 
 is that the Southern provinces did not contend with 
 the indomitable stubbornness of the Northern prov- 
 inces. There is nothing in them like the sieges of 
 Maestricht, Harlem, Alkmaar and Leyden, where 
 women enlisted, fought, and were slaughtered in 
 the breach. After the taking of Antwerp by the 
 Duke of Parma the ten provinces returned to their 
 allegiance, and began apart a new existence. The 
 most spirited citizens and the most fervent Calvin- 
 ists had perished in battle and on the scaffold, or had 
 fled to the North in the seven free provinces. The 
 
ly TUB NETHERLANDS. 137 
 
 bcUe-lc'ttre academies exiled themselves there in a 
 body. On the termination of the Duke of Alva's 
 administration it was estimated that sixty thousand 
 families had emigrated ; after the capture of Ghent 
 eleven thousand more departed, and after the capit- 
 ulation of Antwerp four thousand, weavers betook 
 themselves to London. Antwerp lost the half of 
 its inhabitants, and Ghent and Bruges two-thirds ; 
 whole streets were empty ; in the principal street of 
 Ghent a couple of horses cropped the grass. A 
 mighty surgical operation had relieved the nation 
 of what the Spaniards called its bad blood ; at all 
 events that which remained was the most quiescent. 
 There is a great substratum of docility in the 
 Germanic races ; think of the German regiments 
 exported to America and sold there to die by their 
 petty absolute princes : the sovereign once accej^ted, 
 tliey are faithful to him; with guaranteed rights 
 he seems legitimate; they are inclined to respect 
 the established order of things. The continued con- 
 straint, moreover, of irremediable necessity produces 
 its effect ; man accommodates himself to things 
 Avhen he is satisfied that he cannot change them 
 
138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 certain portions of his character which cannot be 
 developed hiiiguish, and others expand the more. 
 There are moments in the history of a nation when 
 it bears some resemblance to Christ taken to the 
 top of a high mountain by Satan, and there bid 
 to choose between a heroic and a common life ; 
 here the tempter is Philip IL, with his armies and 
 executioners ; the people of the North and the 
 South, both subject to the same trial, decide dif- 
 ferently according to the petty diversities of their 
 composition and character. The choice made these 
 diversities grow, and are exaggerated by the effects 
 of the situation they themselves have produced. 
 Both people being two almost indeterminate varie- 
 ties of one species become two distinct species. It 
 is with moral types as with organic types ; they 
 issue at the beginning from a common origin, but as 
 they complete their development they grow wider 
 apart and are thus formed through their divergen- 
 cies. The Southern provinces henceforth become 
 Bel2:ium. The dominant trait is the cravinoj for 
 peace and comfort, the disposition to take life on the 
 jovial and pleasant side, in brief, the sentiment of 
 
IX THE yETHEllLAyDS. 139 
 
 reiiiers. In fact, even in a dilapidated cabin or in 
 a bare tavern on a wooden bench a man may laugli, 
 >ing, smoke a good pipe and swallow deep draughts 
 of beer; it is not disagreeable to attend mass as 
 a fine ceremony, uor to recount one's sins to an 
 accommodating Jesuit. After the capture of An- 
 twerp, Pliilip II. is delighted to hear that commu- 
 nions have become more and more frequent. Con- 
 vents are founded twenty at a time. " It is a mat- 
 ter worthy of remark," says a contemporary, " that 
 since the happy advent of the archdukes more new 
 establishments have arisen than in two hundred 
 years and before that " — Franciscans, reformed Car- 
 melites, friars of St Francis de I*aule, Carmelites, 
 annunciada, and especially the Jesuits ; the latter in 
 fact bring with them a new Christianity, the most 
 appropriate to the state of the country, and Avhich 
 «:eems manufactured purposely to contrast with that 
 of the Protestants. Be docile in mind and in heart, 
 and all the rest is tolerance and indulgence ; in this 
 connection see the portraits of the day, and among 
 others, the gay fellow who was confessor to Rubens. 
 Casuistry is shaped to and serves for difficult cases ; 
 
140 THE rUILOSOPIIY OF ART 
 
 under its empire there is scope enough for all cur- 
 rent peccadilloes. Worship, moreover, is exempt 
 from prudery, and winds up by being amusing. To 
 this epoch belongs the worldly and sensualistic 
 internal decoration of the grave and venerable 
 cathedral, the multiplied and contorted ornaments — 
 flames, lyres, trinkets and scrolls, the veneerings of 
 veined marbles, altars resembling theatre fayadcs, 
 and the quaint diverting pulpits overlaid with a men- 
 agerie of carved birds and brutes. As respects the 
 new churches, the outside suits the inside. Tliat 
 of the Jesuits, built in Antwerp at the beginning of 
 the seventeenth century, is instructive, it being a 
 saloon filled with etaghres. Its thirty-six ceilings 
 were executed by Rubens, and it is curious to see 
 here as elsewhere an ascetic and mystic faith accept 
 as edifying subjects the most blooming and the 
 most exposed nudities, buxom Magdalens, plump St. 
 Sebastians and Madonnas whom the negro magi are 
 devouring with all the lust of their eyes, a display 
 of flesh and fabrics unequalled by the Florentine 
 carnival in luxurious temptation and in triumphant 
 sensuality. 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 14] 
 
 Meanwhile the altered political situation contrib- 
 utes to the transformation of the intellectual world. 
 The old despotism becomes relaxed ; to the rigors 
 of the Duke of Alva succeeds the liberal policy of 
 the Duke of Parma. After an amputation, a man 
 who has bled profusely must be restored by soothing 
 and strengthening treatment ; hence it is that, after 
 the pacification of Ghent, the Spaniards let their ter- 
 rible edicts against heresy lie dormant. Executions 
 are at an end. The latest martyr is a poor sewing 
 woman, buried alive in 1597. In the following cen- 
 tury Jordaens, with his wife and her family, become 
 Protestants without being annoyed, and even with- 
 out losing any of his commissions. The archdukes 
 permit towns and corporations to govern themselves 
 according to ancient usages, to collect imposts and 
 attend to their own business ; when they desire 
 to have Breughel de Velours relieved of military 
 duty or of exactions, they make their appeal to the 
 commune. The government becomes regular, semi- 
 liberal, and almost national ; Spanish extortions, raz- 
 zias, and brutalities disappear. At length, in order 
 to keep possession of the country, Philip II. is com- 
 
142 TEE PEILOSOPEY OF ART 
 
 pelled to let it remain Flemisli, and exist as a separate 
 state. In 1599 he detaches it from Spain, and cedes: 
 it in full possession to Albert and Isabella. " The 
 Spaniards never did a better thing," writes the 
 French ambassador; " it would be impossible to keep 
 the conntry without giving it this new system, as it 
 was ripe for revolution." The States-General meet 
 in 1000, and decide for reforms. ^Ye see in Guic- 
 cardini, and other travellers, that the old constitu- 
 tion arises almost intact out of the rubbish under 
 which it had been buried by military violence. "At 
 Bruges," 31. de Monconys writes in 1653, "each trade 
 fias a house in common, where those of the profes- 
 sion meet to transact the business of the community, 
 or for recreation ; and all the trades are distributed 
 into four divisions, under the control of four burgo- 
 masters, who have charge of the keys of the city, 
 the Governor exercising no jurisdiction or power 
 over any but tlie military force." The archdukes 
 are wise and solicitous of the public welfare. In 
 1609 they make peace with Holland; in 1611 their 
 perpetual edict completes tlie restoration of the coun- 
 try. They either are or render themselves power- 
 
m THE NETHERLANDS. 143 
 
 fill ; Isabella, with lier own hand, strikes down, on 
 ibe Place de Sablon, the bird which sanctifies tlio 
 cross-bowman's pledge ; Albert attends at Louvain 
 the lectures of Justus Lepsius. They love, cherish, 
 and attach themselves to famous artists — Otto Ye- 
 niiis, Rubens, Teniers, and Breughel de Velours. 
 The belle-lettre institutions flourish again, and the 
 universities are favored ; in the Catholic w^orld, un- 
 der the Jesuits and often by their side, is a kind of 
 intellectual renaissance ; a number of theologians, 
 controversialists, casuists, erudites, geographers, phy- 
 sicians, and even historians, arise — Mercator, Orte- 
 lius, Van Helmont, Jansenius, Lepsius, all of whom 
 are Flemings of this epoch. The " Description of 
 Flanders," by Sander, a vast work completed after 
 so many trials, is a monument of national zeal and 
 patriotic pride. If, in turn, we wnsh to form an idea 
 of the state of the country, take one of the tranquil 
 and fallen cities to-day like Bruges. Sir Dudley 
 Carleton, passing through Antwerp in 1616, finds it 
 a handsome place, although nearly empty ; he may 
 liave seen no more than " forty persons in the entire 
 Street," not a carriage, not a horseman, not a cus 
 
U4 THE PIIJLOSOPIIY OF ART 
 
 tomer in the shops ; but the houses are well main- 
 tained, everything being clean and cared for : the 
 peasant has rebuilt his burnt cabin and is at work 
 in the field ; the liousewife is attending to her duties ; 
 security has returned, and is about to be followed 
 by plenty ; there are shooting matches, processions, 
 fairs and magnificent entries of princes ; people are 
 getting back to old comforts beyond which they do 
 not aspire ; religion is left to the Church, and gov- 
 ernment to the princes : here, as at Venice, the 
 course of events has brought man down to the quest 
 of enjoyment — the effort to obtain it being the more 
 strenuous in proportion to the strong contrast with 
 their previous misery. 
 
 And, in truth, what a contrast ! It is necessary 
 to have read the details of the war in order to ap- 
 preciate it. Fifty thousand martys had perished 
 Under Charles V., eighteen thousand persons had 
 been executed by the Duke of Alva, and the re- 
 volted country had maintained the war for thirteen 
 years. The Spaniards had reconquered the large 
 cities only by famine after protracted sieges. In 
 the beginning Antwerp was sacked for three days ; 
 
J.V TUB NETUERLANBS. I45 
 
 Be veil thousand of her citizens were slain, and live 
 hundred houses were burnt. The soldier lived on 
 the country, and we see him in the engravings of 
 the day plundering and robbing dwellings, torturing 
 the husband, violating the wife, and bearing away 
 chests and furniture in carts. When his pay was 
 "withheld too long he took up his quarters in a town, 
 and this led to a republic of brigands; under an 
 eletto of their own choice they rp.vaged the environs 
 at their convenience. Karl Van Mander, the his- 
 torian of the painters, on returning one day to his 
 village, found his house pillaged along with the 
 rest ; the soldiers had even taken the bed and bed- 
 clothes of his old sick father. Karl was driven out 
 naked, and they were already fixing a rope to his 
 neck to hang him when he was saved by a cavalier 
 whom he had known in Italy. Another time, as he 
 was on the road with his wife and an infant child, 
 they took his money, baggage and clothes, his wife's 
 and those of the infant ; the mother could only 
 secure a small petticoat, the infant a tattered net, 
 and Karl an old worn-out piece of cloth in which 
 he wrapped himself up, and in which guise he 
 7 
 
146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 readied Bruges. Under this regime a country 
 ceases to exist ; soldiers themselves finally die of 
 starvation ; the Duke of Parma writes to Philip IL 
 that if he fails to send relief the army is lost, " for 
 nobody can live without eating." On emerging 
 from such calamities, peace seems a paradise ; it is 
 not merely the good at which man rejoices, but the 
 • hetter^ and here the better is stupendous. A man 
 can now sleep in his own bed, store up provisions, 
 enjoy the fruits of his labor, travel about and as- 
 semble and converse with his fellows without fear ; 
 he has a home, a country and a future. All the 
 ordinary occurrences of life get to be interesting 
 and attractive; he revives, and for the first time 
 seems to live. It is circumstances like these out of 
 which always springs a spontaneous literature and 
 an original art. The great crisis through which the 
 nation has passed serves to remove the monotonous 
 varnish with which tradition and custom have over- 
 spread things. We find out what man is ; we seize 
 on the fundamental points of his renewed and trans- 
 formed nature; we see its deptli, its secret instincts, 
 the master forces which denote his race and are 
 
ZJ^ TUB NETHERLANDS. 147 
 
 about to control his liistorv; lialf a cciitni-}' later 
 and we see them no raoi'e, because during a halt' 
 century they have been constantly visible. In the 
 meantime, however, the new order of things be- 
 comes complete; the mind confronts it like Adam 
 on his first awakening; it is only later that con- 
 ceptions get to be over-refined aiid weakened ; they 
 are now broad and simple. Man is qualified for this 
 through his birth in a crumbling society and an 
 education in the midst of veritable tragedies; like 
 Victor Hugo and George Sand, the child Rubens, in 
 exile, alongside of his imprisoned father, hears, in 
 his home and all around him, the roar of tempest 
 and of wreck. After an active generation which 
 has sufiercd and created, comes the poetic gener- 
 ation which writes, paints or models. It expresses 
 and amplifies the energies and desires of a society 
 founded by its fathers. Hence it is that Flemish 
 art proceeds to glorify in heroic types the sensual 
 instincts, the grand and gross joyousness, the rude 
 energy of surrounding mortals, and to find in the 
 alehouse of Teniers the Olympus of Rubens. 
 
 Among these painters there is one who seems to 
 
148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 ettace the rest ; indeed no name in the history of art 
 is greater, and there are only three or four as great. 
 But Kuhens is not an isolated genius, the number 
 as Avell as the resemblance of surrounding talents 
 showing that the efflorescence of which he is the 
 most beautiful emanation is the product of his 
 time and people. Before him there was Adam Van 
 Noort, his master,* and the master of Jordaens ; 
 around him are his contemporaries, educated in otlier 
 studios, and whose invention is as spontaneous as his 
 own — Jordaens, Crayer, Gerard Zeghers, Rombouts, 
 Abraham Janssens, and Van Roose ; after him come 
 his pupils — Van Thulden, Diepenbecke, Van den 
 Hoeck, Corneille Schut, Boyermans, Van Dyck, the 
 greatest of all, and Van Oost of Bruges ; alongside 
 of him are the great animal, flower and still-life 
 painters — Snyders, John Fyt, the Jesuit Seghers, and 
 an entire school of famous engravers — Soutman, Vor- 
 sterman, Bolswert, Pontius and Vischer; the same 
 sap fructifies all these branches, the lesser as well as 
 the greaterj while we must add, again, the perva- 
 
 * See the admirable " Miraculous Draft," by Van Noort, in St. James» 
 at Antwerp. 
 
ZzY THE NETHERLANDS. 140 
 
 ding sympathies and the national admiration. It is 
 plain that an art like tliis is not the effect of one acci- 
 dental cause but of a general development, and of 
 this we have full assurance when, considering the 
 work itself, Ave remark the concordances whicli 
 assimilate it with its milieu. 
 
 On the one side it resumes or follows tlie tradi- 
 tions of Italy, and is seen at a glance to be pagan 
 and Catholic. It is supported by churches and con- 
 vents ; it represents Biblical and evangelical scenes : 
 jhe subject is edifying ; and the engraver deliber- 
 ately places at the bottom of his engravings pious 
 maxims and moral problems. And yet, in fact, 
 there is nothing Christian about it but its name ; all 
 mystic or ascetic sentiment is banished ; its Madon- 
 nas, marten's and confessors, its Christs and apostles 
 are superb florid bodies restricted to the life of 
 the flesh; its paradise is an Olympus of well-fed 
 Flemish deities revelling in muscular activity ; they 
 are large, vigorous, plump and content, and make a 
 jovial and magnificent display as in a national festi 
 val or at a princely entry. The Church, it is true, 
 Daptizes this last flower of the old mythology with 
 
150 THE PHILOSOPIIY OF ART 
 
 becoming forms, but it is only baptism, and this 
 is frequently wanting. ApoUos, Jupiters, Castors, 
 Pollux and Venus, all the ancient divinities, revive 
 under their veritable names in the palaces of the 
 kings and the great which they decorate. This is 
 owing to religion, here as in Italy, consisting of 
 rites. Rubens goes to mass every morning, and pre- 
 sents a picture in order to obtain indulgences ; after 
 which he falls back upon his own poetic feeling fof 
 natural life and, in the same style, paints a lusty 
 Magdalen and a plump Siren ; under the Catholic 
 varnish the heart and the intellect, all social ways 
 and observances are pagan. On the other side, tliis 
 art is truly Flemish ; everything issues from and 
 centres on a mother idea which is new and national ; 
 it is harmonious, spontaneous and original ; in this 
 respect it contrasts with the foregoing which is only 
 a discordant imitation'. From Greece to Florence, 
 from Florence to Venice, from Venice to AntAverp, 
 every step of the passage can be traced. The con- 
 ception of man and of life goes on decreasing in 
 nobleness and increasing in breadth. Kubens is to 
 Titian what Titian was to Raphael, and Raphael to 
 
m THE NETHERLANDS. 151 
 
 Phidias. Never did artistic sympathy clasp nature 
 in such an open and universal embrace. Ancient 
 boundaries, already often extended, seem removed 
 purposely to expose an infinite career. There is no 
 respect for historic proprieties ; he groups together 
 allegoric with real figures, and cardinals with a 
 naked Mercury. There is no deference to the moral 
 order; he fills the ideal heaven of mythology and 
 of the gospel with coarse or mischievous char- 
 acters ; a Magdalen resembling a nurse, and a Ceres 
 whispering some pleasant gossip in her neighbor's 
 ear. There is no dread of exciting physical sensi- 
 bility ; he pushes the horrible to extremes, athwart 
 all the tortures for the punishment of the flesh and 
 all the contortions of howling agony. There is no 
 fear of offending moral delicacy ; his Minerva is a 
 shrew who «an fight, his Judith a butcher's wife 
 familiar with blood, and his Paris a jocose expert 
 and a dainty amateur. To translate into words the 
 ideas vociferously proclaimed by his Suzannas, his 
 Magdalens, his St. Sebastians, his Graces and his 
 Sirens, in all his keriaesses, divine and human, ideal 
 or real. Christian or pagan, would require the terms 
 
152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 of Rabelais. Through hira all the animal instincts 
 of human nature appear on the stage; tliose which 
 had been excluded as gross he reproduces as true, 
 and in him as in nature they encounter the others. 
 Nothing is wanting but the pure and the noble ; the 
 whole of human nature is in his grasp, save the 
 loftiest heights. Hence it is that his creativeness 
 is the vastest we have seen, comprehending as it 
 does all types, Italian cardinals, Roman emperors, 
 contemporary citizens, peasants and cowherds, along 
 with the innumerable diversities stamped on human- 
 ity by the play of natural forces and which more 
 than fifteen hundred pictures did not suffice to 
 exhaust. 
 
 For the same reason, in the representation of the 
 body, he comprehended more profoundly than any 
 one the essential characteristic of organic life; he 
 surpasses in this the Venetians, as they surpass the 
 Florentines ; he feels still better than they that flesh 
 is a changeable substance in a constant state of 
 renewal; and such, more than any other, is the 
 Flemish body, lympathic, sanguine and voracious, 
 more fluid, more rapidly tending to accretion and 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 153 
 
 waste than those whose dry fibre and radical temper 
 ance preserve permanent tissues. Hence it is that 
 nobody has depicted its contrasts in stronger relief, 
 nor as visibly shown the decay and bloom of life — at 
 one time the dull flabby corpse, a genuine clinical 
 mass, empty of blood and substance, livid, blue and 
 mottled through suifering, a clot of blood on the 
 mouth, tlie eye glassy and the feet and hands clay- 
 ish, swollen and deformed because death seized them 
 lirst ; at another the freshness of living carnations, 
 :he handsome, blooming and smiling athlete, the 
 mellow suppleness of a yielding torso in the form of 
 a well-fed adolescent, the soft rosy cheeks and placid 
 candor of a girl whose blood was never quickened 
 or eyes bedimmed by thought, flocks of dimpled 
 cherubs and merry cupids, the delicacy, the folds, 
 the exquisite melting rosiness of infantile skin, seem- 
 ingly the petal of a flower moistened with dew and 
 impregnated with morning light. In like manner in 
 the representation of soul and action he appreciated 
 more keenly than any one the essential feature of 
 animal and moral life, that is to say the instantaneous 
 movement which it is the aim of the plastic arts to 
 
154: THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 seize on tlie wing. In this again he surpasses the Vene- 
 tians as they surpassed the Florentines. Nobody 
 has endowed figures with such spirit, with a gesture 
 so impulsive, wdth an impetuosity so abandoned and 
 furious, such an universal commotion and tempest 
 of swollen and writhing^ muscles in one sinsjle effort. 
 His personages speak ; their repose itself is suspen- 
 ded on the verge of action ; we feel what they have 
 just accomplished and what they are about to do. 
 The present with them is impregnated with the past 
 and big with the future; not only the whole face but 
 the entire attitude conspires to manifest the flowing 
 stream of their thought, feeling and complete being ; 
 we hear the inward utterance of their emotion ; we 
 might repeat the words to which they give expres- 
 sion. The most fleeting and most subtle shades of 
 sentiment belong to Rubens ; in this respect he is a 
 treasure for novelist and psychologist ; he took note 
 of the passing refinements of moral expression as well 
 as of the soft volume of sanguine flesh ; no one has 
 gone beyond him in knowledge of the living organ- 
 ism and of the animal man. Endowed with this sen- 
 timent and skill he was capable, in conformity with 
 
W THE NETIIERLAXDS. 155 
 
 the aspirations and needs of his restored nation, of 
 amplifying the forces he found around and within 
 liimself, all that underlie, preserve and manifest the 
 overflow and triumph of existence ; on the one han<l 
 gigantic joints, herculean shapes and shoulders, red 
 and colossal muscles, bearded and truculent heads, 
 over-nourished bodies teeming Avith succulence, the 
 luxurious display of white and rosy flesh ; on the 
 other, the rude instincts Avhicli impel human nature 
 to seek food, drink, strife and pleasure, the savage 
 fury of the combatant, the enormity of the big-bel- 
 lied Silenus, the sensual joviality of the Faun, the 
 abandonment of that lovely creature without con- 
 science and " fat with sin," the boldness, the energy, 
 the broad joyousness, the native goodness, the or- 
 ganic serenity of the national type. He heiglitens 
 these efl*ects again through their composition and 
 the accessories with which he surrounds them — mag- 
 nificence of lustrous silks, embroidered simarres and 
 golden brocades, groups of naked figures, modern 
 costumes and antique draperies, an inexhaustible 
 accumulation of arms, standards, colonnades, Vene- 
 tian stairways, temples, canopies, ships, animals, and 
 
150 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 ever novel and imposing scenery, as if outside of 
 ordinary nature he possessed the key of a thousand 
 times richer nature, whereon his magician's hand 
 could forever draw without the freedom of liis imag- 
 ination ending in confusion, but on the contrary 
 with a jet so vigorous and a prodigality so national 
 that his most complicated productions seem like the 
 irresistible outflow of a surfeited brain. Like an 
 Indian deity at 'leisure he relieves his fecundity by 
 ireating worlds, and from the matchless folds and 
 jues of his tossed simarres to the snowy whites of 
 /lis flesh, or the pale silkiness of his blonde tresses, 
 there is no tone in any of his canvasses which does 
 not appear there purposely to aiford him delight. 
 
 Tliere is only one Rubens in Flanders, as there 
 is only one Shakespeare in England. Great as the 
 others are, they are deficient in some one element of 
 his genius. Grayer has not his audacity nor his 
 excess ; he paints beauty calm,* sympathetic and 
 content along with requisite eflects of bright and 
 mellow color. Jordaens has not his regal grandeur 
 
 *See at Ghent his "St. Rosalie," at Bruojes his " Adoration of the 
 Shepherds," and at Rennes his "Lazarus." 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 157 
 
 and liis lieroic poetic feeling ; lie paints with vinous 
 color stunted colossi, crowded groups and turbulent 
 plebeians. Yan Dyck has not, like hitn, the love of 
 power and of life for life itself; more refined, more 
 chivalric, born with a sensitive and even melan- 
 choly nature, elegiac in his sacred subjects, aristo- 
 cratic in his portraits, he depicts with less glowing 
 and more sympathetic color noble, tender and 
 charming figures whose generous and delicate souls 
 are filled with sweet and sad emotions unknown to 
 his master.* His works are the first indication of 
 the coming change. After 1660 he is already prom- 
 inent. The generation whose energy and aspira- 
 tions had inspired the grand picturesque revery, 
 faded away man by man ; Grayer and Jordaens 
 alone, by merely living, kept art up for twenty years. 
 The nation, reviving for a moment, falls backward ; 
 its renaissance never perfects itself. The archducal 
 sovereigns, through wdiom it had become an indepen- 
 dent state, ended in 1633 ; it reverts back to a Span- 
 ish province under a governor sent from Madrid. The 
 treaty of 1648 closes the Scheldt to it, and completes 
 
 * See, especially, his bacred works at Maliues and Antwerp. 
 
158 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 the ruin of lier commerce. Louis XIV. dismembers 
 her, and on three occasions deprives her of portions 
 of her territory. Four successive wars trample over 
 her for thirty years; friends and enemies, Spaniards, 
 French, English and Hollanders live upon her; the 
 treaties of 1715 convert the Dutch into her purvey- 
 ors and tax-gatherers. At this moment, become Aus- 
 trian, she refuses the subsidy ; but the elders of the 
 states are imprisoned, and the chief one, Anneessens, 
 dies on the scaffold ; this is the last and a feeble 
 echo of the mighty voice of Van Artevelde. Hence- 
 forth the country subsides into a simple province in 
 which people keep soul and body together and only 
 care to live. At the same time, and through a reac- 
 tion, the national imagination declines. The school 
 of Rubens degenerates; with Beyermans, Yan Herp, 
 John Erasmus Quellin, the second Van Cost, Deys- 
 ter and John Van Orley we see originality and 
 energy disappearing ; coloring grows weak or be- 
 comes affected; attenuated types incline to pretti- 
 iiess; expression is either sentimental or mawkish; 
 the personages occupying the great canvas, instead of 
 filling it are dispersed, the intervals being supplied 
 
Z.Y THE NETHERLANDS. 159 
 
 with arcliitecture ; the vein is exhausted ; painting 
 is mere routine or a mannered imitation of the 
 Italian school. Many betake themselves to foreign 
 countries. Philippe de Champagne is director of the 
 Academy of the Fine Arts at Paris and becomes 
 French in mind and country ; still more, a spiritualist 
 and Jansenist, a conscientious and skilful painter of 
 grave and thoughtful spirit. Gerard de Lairesse 
 becomes a disciple of the Italians — a classic, aca- 
 demic and erudite painter of costume and historic 
 and mythologic resemblances. The logical reason 
 assumes empire in the arts, having already obtained 
 it in social matters. Two pictures in the Musee of 
 Ohent equally display the change in painting and 
 the change in society. Both represent princely 
 entrees, one in 1666 and the other in 1717. The 
 first, of a beautiful ruddy tone, shows the last of the 
 men of the grand epoch, their cavalier air, their 
 powerful frame, their capacity for physical endeavor, 
 their rich decorative costumes, their horses with 
 with flowing manes — here nobles related to Yan 
 Dyck's seigniors, and there pikemen in buff and 
 cuirass kindred to the soldiers of Wallestein — in 
 
160 THE PHILOSOPHY OF AllT 
 
 short, the last remains of the lieroic and picturesque 
 age. The second, cold and pale in tone, shows 
 highly refined, softened, Frenchified beings — gentle- 
 men clever at salutation, women of fashion con- 
 scious of their appearance, in brief, the imported 
 drawing-room system and foreign modes of de- 
 meanor. During the fifty years separating the 
 former from the latter both the national art and 
 the national spirit vanished. 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 161 
 
 IT. 
 
 Whilst the Southern provinces, henceforth subject 
 and Catholic, followed the Italian road in art, and 
 represented on their canvasses the mythological epos 
 of the grand and heroic nude figure, the provinces 
 of the Xorth, becoming free and Protestant, devel- 
 oped their life and art in another direction. The 
 climate is more rainy and colder, and for this reason 
 the presence of the nude is a rarer and less sym- 
 pathetic thing. The Germanic race is chaster, and 
 through this quality the mind is less inclined to 
 appreciate classic art, as it was conceived of by 
 the Italian renaissance. Life is more difficult, more 
 laborious, and more economic; man, therefore, ac- 
 customed to effort, to forethought and to a method- 
 ical self-government, has more trouble in compre- 
 hendinoj the fascinatinor dream of a sensuous and 
 full-blown existence. We can imagine the Dutch 
 citizen in his home after the day's toil at his business. 
 His dwelling consists of small apartments, some- 
 
102 THE PHILOSOPET OF ART 
 
 what resembling the state-rooms of a ship ; it would 
 be a troublesome matter to suspend on the walls tlie 
 large pictures decorating the saloons of an Italian 
 palace ; its owner's chief requirements are cleanliness 
 and comfort ; with these he is content and does not 
 insist on decoration. According to the Venetian 
 ambassadors, " they are so moderate that, even with 
 
 the richest, one sees no unusual pomp or luxury 
 
 They make no use of retainers or silken habits, very 
 little silver-ware, and no tapestry in their houses ; 
 the household numbers a very few and is very 
 limited. Outside and inside, in dress and in other 
 matters, all maintain the true moderation of small 
 fortunes, nothing superfluous being perceptible." * 
 When the Earl of Leicester came to take command 
 in Holland in the name of Elizabeth, and Spinola 
 arrived to negotiate peace for the King of Spain, 
 their regal magnificence formed a striking contrast 
 and even provoked scandal. The head of the re- 
 public, William the Taciturn, the hero of the age, 
 wore an old mantle which a student would have pro- 
 
 * Motley's "United Netherlands," Vol. IV. p. 551. Report of Con- 
 tarini, 1609. 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 1G3 
 
 nonnced tlii-cadbare, with a pouvpoint like it, unbut 
 toned, and a woollen waistcoat resembling that of a 
 bargeman. In the next century the adversary of 
 Louis XIV., the grand pensioner John de Witt kept 
 only one domestic; everybody could approach him; 
 he imitated his illustrious predecessor, who lived 
 cheek-by-jo'wl with " brewers and bourgeois." AYe 
 find yet at the j^i'esent day, in their social ways, 
 naany an indication of ancient sobriety. It is clear 
 that with such characters there is but little room for 
 the decorative and voluptuous instincts which else- 
 where in Europe fashioned aristocratic show, and 
 rendered comprehensible the pagan poesy of beauti- 
 ful bodies. 
 
 The opposite instincts, in effect, predominate. 
 Relieved of the drawback of the Southern provinces, 
 Holland, at the end of tlie sixteenth century, sud- 
 denly and with extraordinary energy turns in the 
 direction of its natural proclivities. Primitive incli- 
 nations and faculties appear Avith the most strik- 
 ing results ; they are not a new birth, but simply 
 a revelation. Good observers had detected them 
 a liundred and fifty years before. "Friesland is 
 
164 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 free," said Pope ^neas Sylvius,* " lives in her OAvn 
 fashion, will not endure foreign empire, and has no 
 desire to dominate over others. The Frieslander 
 does not hesitate to face death in behalf of liberty. 
 This spirited people, used to arms, of large and 
 robust frames, calm and intrepid in disposition, 
 glories in her freedom notwithstanding that Philip, 
 Duke of Burgundy, proclaims himself lord of the 
 country. They detest military and feudal arro- 
 gance, and tolerate no man who seeks to raise his 
 head above his fellows. Tlieir magistrates are 
 elected annually by themselves, and are obliged to 
 administer ]3ublic matters with equity. . . . They 
 severely punish licentiousness among women . . . 
 They scarcely admit an unmarried priest lest he 
 should corrupt the wife of another, regarding con- 
 tinence as a difficult thing and beyond the natural 
 powers." Every Germanic conception of state, mar- 
 riage and religion are here visible in germ, and 
 forecast the final flowering of the republic and of 
 Protestantism. Subjected to trial by Pliilip II. 
 they offer to sacrifice beforehand " their lives and 
 
 * Cosinographia, p. 421 
 
IJT THE NETHERLANDS. I(j5 
 
 their property." A small population of traders, 
 lost on a mud-heap at the extremity of an empire 
 more vast and more feared than that of Xapoleon 
 resisted, subsisted and increased under the weiglit 
 of the colossus who tried to crush her. Their sieges 
 are all admirable; citizens and women, suj^ported 
 by a few hundreds of soldiers, arrest an entire army 
 before ruined ramparts, the best troops in Europe, 
 the greatest generals and the most skilful engin- 
 eers ; and this remnant of emaciated people, after 
 feeding on rats, boiled leaves and leather for 
 months, determine, rather than surrender, to place 
 the infirm in the centre of a square and go forth to 
 die in the intrenchments of the enemy. The details 
 of this war must be read in order to realize the 
 extent to which man's patience, coolness and energy 
 may be carried.* On the sea a Dutch vessel is 
 blown up rather than strike its flag, while their voy- 
 ages of discovery, colonization and conquest, in 
 Kova Zembla, India and Brazil, by the way of the 
 Straits of Magellan, are as magnificent as their 
 
 * Among others the capture of Bois-le-Duc by Heraugiere and sixty 
 nine volunteers. 
 
1G6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 combats. The more we demand of human nature 
 the more she gives; lier faculties are exalted in 
 their exercise, while the limits to her power of 
 doing and suffering are no longer perceptible. 
 Finally, in 1609, after thirty years w^arfare, the cause 
 is won. Spain recognizes their independence, and 
 during the whole of the seventeenth century they 
 are to play a most prominent part in the affairs of 
 Europe, ^o power can make them yield, neither 
 Spain during a second war of twenty-seven years, 
 nor Cromwell, nor Charles II., nor England com- 
 bined with France, nor the fresh and formidable 
 power of Louis XIV. ; after three wars their am- 
 bassadors are all to be seen m humble and fruit- 
 less entreaty at Gertruydenberg, and the grand- 
 pensioner Hemsius, is to become one of the three 
 potentates to control the destinies of Europe. 
 
 Internally their government is as good as their 
 external position is exalted. For the first time in 
 the world conscience is free and the rights of the cit- 
 izens are respected. Their state consists of a com- 
 munity of provinces voluntarily united, which, each 
 within its own borders, maintains with a degree of 
 
IJH THE NETHERLANDS. 167 
 
 perfection unknown till then the security of the pub- 
 lic and the liberty of the individual. " They all love 
 liberty," says Parival in 1660 ; "no one among them 
 is allowed to beat or abuse another, while the women 
 servants have so many privileges their masters, 
 even, dare not strike them." Full of his admiration^ 
 he repeatedly insists on this wonderful respect for 
 human personality. " There is not to-day a prov- 
 ince in the world which enjoys so much liberty as 
 Holland, with so just a harmony that the little can- 
 not be imposed upon by the great, nor the poor by 
 the rich and opulent . . . The moment a seignior 
 brings into this country any serfs or slaves they are 
 free ; yes, and the money he laid out in their pur- 
 chase is lost . . . The inhabitants of a villaore having: 
 paid what they owe are as free as the inhabitants of 
 a city . . . And above all each is king in his own 
 house, it being a very serious crime to have done 
 violence to a bourgeois in his own domicile." Every- 
 body can leave the country when he pleases, and take 
 all the money he pleases with him. The roads are 
 safe day and night even for a man traveling alone. 
 The master is not allowed to retain a domestic 
 
168 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 against his will. Nobody is troubled on account of 
 bis religion. One is free to say what he chooses, 
 "even of the magistrates," and to denounce thera. 
 Equality is fundamental. "Those who hold office 
 obtain consideration rather through fair dealing than 
 advance themselves over others by a proud bearing." 
 A nation like this cannot fail to be prosperous; when 
 man is both just and energetic the rest comes to him 
 as surplus. At the beginning of the War of Inde 
 pendence the population of Amsterdam was 70,000 ; 
 in 1618 it was 300,000. The Venetian ambassadors 
 reported that people swarmed in the streets every 
 hour of the day as at a fair. The city increased two- 
 thirds ; a surface equal to the size of a man's foot 
 was worth a gold ducat. The country is as good as 
 the city. Nowhere is the peasant so rich and so 
 able to derive advantage from the soil; one village 
 possesses four thousand cows ; an ox weighs two 
 thousand pounds. A farmer offers his daughter to 
 Prince Maurice with a dowry of one hundred thou- 
 sand florins. Nowhere are industrial pursuits and 
 manufactures so perfect ; cloths, mirrors, sugar-refin- 
 eries, porcelain, pottery, rich stutls of silk, satin and 
 
IN THE NETHERLANDS. 169 
 
 brocacie, iron- ware and ship-rigging. They snpply 
 Europe with half of its luxuries and nearly all its 
 transportation. A thousand vessels traverse the 
 Baltic in quest of raw material. Eight liundred 
 boats are engaged in the herring fishery. Yast com- 
 panies monopolize trade with India, China and 
 Japan ; Batavia is the centre of a Dutch empire ; at 
 this moment, 1609, Holland on the sea and in tiie 
 world is wdiat England was in the time of Napoleon. 
 She has a marine of one hundred thousand sailors ; in 
 war time she can man two thousand vessels; fifty 
 years after she maintains herself against the com- 
 bined fleets of France and England ; year after year 
 the great stream of her success and prosperity is 
 seen to increase. But its source is yet more bounti- 
 ful than the stream itself; that which sustains her is 
 an excess of courage, reason, abnegation, will and 
 genius; "this people," say the Venetian ambassa- 
 dors, " are inclined to labor and industry to such a 
 degree that no enterprise is too difficult for them to 
 succeed in . . . They are born for work and for priva- 
 tion, and all are doing something, some one ^vay and 
 some another." Much production and light con- 
 
170 THE niiLOSoriiY of aut 
 
 sumption is tlie mode of growth of public prosperity 
 The poorest, "in their small and humble habita- 
 tions," have all necessary things. The richest in 
 their fine houses avoid the superfluous and ostenta- 
 tion; nobody is in want, and nobody abuses; every 
 one is employed with his hands or his mind. "All 
 things are made profitable," says Parival ; " there are 
 none, even to those who gather ordure out of the 
 canals who do not earn half-a-crown a day. Chil- 
 dren even who are learning their trades almost earn 
 their bread at the start. They are so inimical to bad 
 government and to indolence that they have places 
 in which the magistrates imprison idlers and vaga- 
 bonds, also those who do not properly attend to 
 their business — the complaints of wives or family 
 relations being a sufficient warrant, and in these 
 places they are obliged to work and earn their sub- 
 sistence whether they will or not." The convents 
 ire transformed into hospitals, asylums and homes 
 for orphans, the former revenues of lazy monks sup- 
 porting invalids, the aged, and widows and children 
 of soldiers and sailors lost in war. The army is so 
 efficient that any of its soldiers might serve as 
 
J/Y TUE NETHERLAKVIS. 171 
 
 captain in an Italian army, while no Italian captain 
 would be admitted in it as a common soldier. In 
 culture and instruction, as well as in the arts of or- 
 ganization and of government, the Dutch are two 
 centuries ahead of the rest of Europe. Scarcely a 
 man, woman or child can be found w^io does not 
 know how to read and write (1609). Every village 
 has a public school. In a bourgeois family all the 
 boys read Latin and all the girls French. Many 
 people write and converse in several foreign lan- 
 guages. It is not owing to simple precaution, to 
 habits of laying up and calculations of utility, but 
 they appreciate the dignity of science. Leyden, to 
 Avhich the States-General propose a recompense, after 
 its heroic defense, demands a University ; no pains are 
 spared to attract to it the greatest savans of Europe. 
 The States themselves unite, and through Henry lY. 
 cause letters to be sent to Scaliger, who is poor and 
 a professor, begging him to honor the city with his 
 presence ; no lessons will be required of him ; they 
 merely wish him to come and converse with the eru- 
 dites, direct their efforts, and allow the nation to 
 participate in the fame of his writings. Under this 
 
172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 regime Leyden becomes the most renowned schoo- 
 in Europe ; she has two thousand students ; philoso- 
 phy hunted out of France finds refuge there ; during 
 the seventeenth century Holland is the first of 
 thoughtful countries. The positive sciences here 
 find their native soil, or the land of their adoption. 
 Scaliger, Justus Lepsius, Sauraaisius, Meursius, the 
 two Heinsius, the two Dousa, Marnix de Ste-Alde- 
 gonde, Hugo Grotius and Snellius preside over 
 learning, laws, physics and mathematics. The Elze- 
 virs carry on printing. Lindshoten and Mercator 
 furnish instruction to travellers and develop geo- 
 graphical science. Hooft, Bor and Meteren write 
 the history of tlie nation. Jacob Cats provides 
 its poetry. Theology, which is the philosophy of 
 the day, takes up, with Arminius and Gomar, the 
 question of grace, and, even in the smallest villages, 
 agitates the minds of peasants and bourgeois. The 
 Synod of Dordrecht at length in 1609 constitutes 
 the oecumenical council of the Reformation. To 
 this primacy of speculative intellect add that of 
 practical genius : from Barnevelt to De Witt, from 
 William the Taciturn to William III., from Heems- 
 
IN TlfK NI^TIIERLAXBS. 173 
 
 kerck the admiral to Von Troinp and De Ruyter, 
 a sequence of superior men are at the head of art 
 and business matters. It is under these circum- 
 stances that the national art appears. All the 
 great original painters are born in the first thirty 
 years of the seventeenth century, after grave danger 
 had passed away, when the final victory was assured, 
 when man, sensible of great things accomplished, 
 points out to his children the onward path which 
 has been cleared by his vigorous arm and stout 
 heart. Here, as elsewhere, the artist is the offspring 
 of the hero. The faculties employed in the creation 
 of a real world, now that the work is accomplished, 
 reacli beyond and are employed in the creation of 
 an imaginary world. Man has done too much to 
 go back to school ; tlie field spread out before him 
 and around him has been peopled by his activity ; 
 it is so sjlorious and so fecund he can Ioug: dwell 
 upon and admire it ; he need no longer subdue his 
 own thought to a foreign thought; he seeks and dis- 
 covers his own peculiar sentiment ; he dares to con- 
 fide himself to it, to pursue it to the end, to imitate 
 nobody, to derive all from himself, to invent with no 
 
174 THE PHILOSOFHY OF ART 
 
 other guide but the voiceless preferences of his own 
 senses and his own affections. His inner forces, his 
 fundamental aptitudes, his primitive and hereditary 
 instincts drawn out and fortified by experience con- 
 tinue to operate after his experience, and, when they 
 have formed a nation they form an art. 
 
 Let us consider this art. It manifests through col- 
 ors and. forms all the instincts that have just ap- 
 peared in actions and in works. So long as the 
 seven provinces of the North and the ten provinces 
 of the South formed but one nation they had but one 
 school of art. Engelbrecht, Lucas of Leyden, John 
 Schoreel, the elder Heemskerck, Corneille of Harlem, 
 Bloemaert and Goltzius paint in the same style as 
 their contemporaries of Bruges and Antwerp. There 
 is not as yet a distinct Dutch school, because there is 
 not as yet a distinct Belgian school. At the time 
 when the War of Lidependence begins the painters 
 of the North are laboring to convert themselves 
 into Italians like the painters of the South. After 
 the year 1600, however, there is a complete change 
 in painting as in other things. The rising sap of the 
 nation gives predominance to the national instincts. 
 
IX THE XETHERLAXDS. 175 
 
 Nudities are no longer visible ; the ideal figure, the 
 beautiful human animal living in full sunshine, the 
 noble symmetry of limbs and attitude, the grand al- 
 legoric or mythological picture is no longer adapted 
 to Germanic taste. Galvanism, moreover, which now 
 rules, excludes it from its temples, and amidst this 
 population of earnest and economic laborers there is 
 no seigneurial display, no widespread and grandiose 
 epicureanism which, elsewhere, in the palaces and in 
 proximity to luxurious silver, liveries and furniture, 
 demands the sensual and pagan canvas. Wlien 
 Amelia of Solm desires to raise a monument in this 
 style to her husband, the stadtholder Frederic Henry, 
 she is obliged to send to Orangesaal for the Flemish 
 artists Yan Thulden and Jordaens. To these real- 
 istic imaginations and amidst these republican cus- 
 toms, in this land where a shoemaking privateer can 
 become vice-admiral, the most interesting figure is 
 one of its own citizens, a man of flesh and blood, not 
 draped or undraped like a Greek, but in his own cos- 
 tume and ordinary attitude, some good magistrate 
 or valiant officer. The heroic style is suited to but 
 one thing, the great portraits which decorate the 
 
176 THE PHILOSOPHT OF ART 
 
 town-lialls and public institutions in commemoration 
 of services rendered. We see, in fact, a new kind of 
 picture make its appearance here, the vast canvas on 
 whicli are displayed five, ten, twenty and thirty full- 
 length portraits as large as life, hospital directors, 
 arquebusiers on target excursions, syndics assembled 
 around a table, ofiicers ofiering toasts at a banquet, 
 professors giving clinical lectures, all grouped ac- 
 cording to their pursuits, and all presented to view 
 with the costume, arms, banners, accessories and 
 surroundings belonging to their actual life; it is a 
 veritable historical picture, the most instructive and 
 most impressive of all, where Franz Hals, Rembrandt, 
 Govaert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, Theodore de Keyser 
 and John Ravenstein depict the heroic age of their 
 nation, where sensible, energetic and loyal heads 
 possess the nobleness of power and of conscience, 
 where the fine costume of the renaissance, the scarfs, 
 the buff vests, the frills, the lace collars, the pour- 
 points and the black mantles throw their gravity 
 and brilliancy around the solid portliness of the stout 
 forms and frank expressions of the faces, where the 
 artist, now through the virile simplicity of his 
 
7.y THE XUTHERLANDS. 177 
 
 means, now through the strength of his convictions, 
 becomes the equal of his heroes. 
 
 Such is painting for the public; there now remains 
 painting for private life, that wliich decorates the 
 houses of individuals, and which, in its dimensions 
 as well as subjects, conforms to the condition and 
 character of its purcliasers. "There is no bourgeois 
 so poor," says Parival, " who does not liberally in- 
 dulge his taste tliis way." A baker pays six hun- 
 dred florins for a single figure by Van der Meer of 
 Delft. This, along with a neat and agreeable inte- 
 rior, constitutes their luxury ; "they do not grudge 
 money in this direction, which they rather save on 
 their stomachs." The national instinct re-appears 
 here the same as revealed in the first epoch with 
 John Yan Eyck, Quintin Matsys, and Lucas of Ley- 
 den ; and it is emphatically the national instinct, for 
 it is so deep and so active that, even in Belgium, in 
 close proximity to mythological and decor^ive art, 
 it runs through the Breughels and Teniers like a 
 small brook alongside of a broad river. It exacts 
 and provokes the representation of man as he is and 
 life as it is, both as the eye encounters them, citizens, 
 8* 
 
ITS THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 peasants, cattle, shops, taverns, rooms, streets and 
 landscapes. There is no need to transform them m 
 order to ennoble them ; they are satisfied if they are 
 worthy of interest. ISTature, in herself, whatever she 
 may be, whether human, animal, vegetable or inani- 
 mate, with all her irregularities, minutiae and omis- 
 sions, is inherently right, and, when comprehended, 
 people love and delight to contemplate her. The 
 object of art is not to change her, but to interpret 
 her ; through sympathy it renders her beautiful. 
 Thus understood, painting may represent the house- 
 keeper S23inning in her rural cot, the carpenter plan- 
 ing on his work-bench, the surgeon dressing a rustic's 
 arm, the cook spitting a chicken, the rich dame 
 washing herself; all sorts of interiors, from the hovel 
 to the drawing-room ; all sorts of types, from the 
 rubicund visage of the deep drinker to the placid 
 smile of the well-bred damsel ; every scene of refined 
 or rustic life — a card-party in a gilded saloon, a peas- 
 ant's carouse in a bare tavern, skaters on a frozen 
 canal, cows drinking from a trough, vessels at sea, 
 the entire and infinite diversities of sky, earth, water, 
 darkness and daylight. Terburg, Metzu, Gerard 
 
n THE NETHERLANDS. 179 
 
 Dow, V:in der Meer of Delft, Adrian Brouwer^ 
 Schalcken, Franz Mieris, Jan Steen, Wouvermau, 
 the two Ostades, Wyiiants, Cuyp, Van der Neer, 
 Ruysdael, Ilobbema, Panl Potter, Backhuysen, the 
 two Vanderveldes, Philip of Kcenig, Van der Heyden, 
 and how many more ! There is no school in which 
 artists of original talent are so numerous. When 
 the domain of art consists, not of a small summit, 
 but of the wide expanse of life, it offers to each mind 
 a distinct field ; the ideal is narrow, and inhabited 
 only by two or three geniuses ; the real is immense, 
 and provides places for fifty men of talent. A tran- 
 quil and pleasing harmony emanates from all these 
 performances. We are conscious of repose in look- 
 ing at them. The spirit of the artist, like that of his 
 figures, is in equilibrium ; we should be quite content 
 and comfortable in his picture. We realize that his 
 imagination does not go beyond. It seems as if he, 
 like his personages, were satisfied with mere living. 
 Nature appears to him excellent ; all he cares for is 
 to add some arrangement, some tone side by side 
 with another, some effect of light, some choice of 
 attitude. In her presence he is like a happy-wedded 
 
180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 Hollander in the presence of his spouse ; he would 
 not wish her otherwise ; he loves her through affec- 
 tionate routine and innate concordance ; at the ut- 
 most his chief requirement of her will be to wear 
 at some festival her red frock instead of the blue 
 one. He bears no resemblance to our painters, ex- 
 pert observers taught by a3Stlietic and philosophic 
 books and journals, who depict the peasant and the 
 laborer the same as the Turk and the Arab, that is 
 to say, as curious animals and interesting specimens ; 
 who charge their landscapes \vitli the subtleties, re- 
 finements and emotions of poets and civilians in order 
 to rid themselves of the mute and dreamy revery 
 of life. He is of a more naive order ; he is not dis- 
 located oy over-excited by excessive cerebral activ- 
 ity ; as compared to us he is an artizan ; when he 
 takes up painting he has none other than picturesque 
 intentions ; he is less affected by unforeseen and 
 striking detail than by simple and leading general 
 traits. His work, on this account, healthier and less 
 poignant, appeals to less cultivated natures, and 
 pleases the greater number. Among all these puint- 
 ers, two only — Ruysdael, in spiritual finesse and 
 
IjH the NETHERLAXDS. 181 
 
 marked superiority of education, and Rembrandt 
 especially, in a peculiar structure of the eye and a 
 wonderfully wild genius — developed, beyond their 
 age and nation, up to tlie common instincts wliicli 
 bind the Germanic nations together and pave tlie 
 way for modern sentiments. Tlie latter, constantly 
 collecting his materials, living in solitude and borne 
 along by the growth of an extraordinary faculty, 
 lived, like our Balzac, a magician and a visionary in 
 a world fashioned by his own hand and of which he 
 alone possessed the key. Superior to all painters in 
 the native delicacy and keenness of his optical per- 
 ceptions, he comprehended this truth and adhered to 
 it in all its consequences that, to the eye, the essence 
 of a visible object consists of the spot (tache), that 
 the simplest color is infinitely complex, that every 
 visual sensation is the product of its elements 
 coupled with its surroundings, that each object on 
 the field of sight is but a single spot modified by 
 others, and that, in this wise, the principal feature 
 of a picture is the ever-present, tremulous, colored 
 atmosphere into which figures are plunged like fishes 
 in the sea. He rendered this atmosphere palpable. 
 
182 THE PHILOSOPHY OF APT 
 
 and revealed to us its mysterious and thronging poi> 
 ulation ; he impregnated it with the light of his own 
 country — a feeble, yellow illumination like that of a 
 lamp in a cellar ; he felt the mournful struggle 
 between it and shadow, the weakness of vanishing 
 rays dying away in gloom, the tremulousness of re- 
 flections vainly clinging to gleaming walls, the sum 
 of that vague multitude of half-darks which, invisible 
 to ordinary gaze, seem in his paintings and etchings 
 to form a submarine world dimly visible through an 
 abyss of waters. On emerging from this obscurity 
 the full light, to his eyes, proved a dazzling shower ; 
 he felt as if it were flashes of lightning, or some 
 magical efi'idgence, or as myriads of beaming darts. 
 He found accordingly, in the inanimate world the 
 completest and most expressive drama, all contrasts 
 and all conflicts, whatever is overwhelming and pain- 
 fully lugubrious in night, whatever is most fleeting 
 and saddest in ambiguous shadow, whatever is most 
 violent and most irresistible in the irruption of day- 
 light. This done, all that remained was to impose 
 the human drama on the natural drama; a stage 
 thus fasliioned indicates of itself its own characters. 
 
I^ THE NETHERLANDS. 183 
 
 The Greeks and Italians had known of man and 
 of life only the straightest and tallest stems, the 
 healthy flower blooming in sunshine ; he saw the 
 root, everything which crawls and moulders in 
 shadow, the stunted and deformed sprouts, the 
 obscure crowd of the poor, the Jewry of Amster- 
 dam, the slimy, suffering populace of a large city 
 and unfavorable climate, the bandy-legged beggar, 
 the bloated idiot, the bald skull of an exhausted 
 craftsman, the pallid features of the sick, the whole 
 of that grovelling array of evil passions and hideous 
 miseries which infest our various civilizations like 
 Avorms in a rotten plank. Once on this road he 
 could comprehend the religion of grief, the genuine 
 Christianity ; he could interpret the Bible as if he 
 were a Lollard ; he could recognize the eternal Christ 
 as present now as formerly, as living in a cellar or 
 tavern of Holland as beneath a Jerusalem sun ; the 
 healer and consoler of the miserable, alone capable 
 of saving them because as poor and as miserable as 
 themselves. He too, through a reaction, was con- 
 scious of pity ; by the side of others who seem 
 painters of the aristocracy he is of the people ; he 
 
181: THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART 
 
 is, at least, the most humane; his broader sympa 
 tliies embrace more of nature fundamentally ; no 
 ugliness repels him, no craving for joyousness or 
 nobleness hides from him the lowest depths of truth. 
 Hence it is that, free of all trammels and guided by 
 the keen sensibility of his organs, he has succeeded 
 in portraying in man not merely the general struc- 
 ture and the abstract type which answers for classic 
 art, but again that which is peculiar and profound 
 in the individual, the infinite and indefinable com- 
 plications of the moral being, the whole of that 
 changeable imprint which concentrates instantane- 
 ously on a face the entire history of a soul and 
 Avhich Shakespeare alone saw with an equally prodi- 
 gious lucidity. In this respect he is the most origi- 
 nal of modern artists, and forges one end of the 
 chain of which the Greeks forged the other; the 
 rest of the masters, Florentine, Venetian and Flem- 
 ish, stand between them; and when, nowadays, our 
 over-excited sensibility, our extravagant curiosity in 
 the pursuit of subtleties, our misparing search of 
 the true, our divination of the remote and the 
 obscure in human nature, seeks for predecessors and 
 
I^r THE NETHERLANDS. 185 
 
 masters, it is in him and in Shakespeare that Balzac 
 and Dekicroix are able to find them. 
 
 A blooming period like this is transient for the 
 reason that the sap which produces it is exhausted 
 by its production. Towards 1667, after the naval 
 defeats of England, slight indications show the 
 growing change in the manners, customs and senti- 
 ments which had stimulated the national art. Tlio 
 prosperity is too great. Already, in 1660, Parival, 
 speaking of tliis, grows ecstatic in every chapter ; 
 the companies of the East and West Indies declare 
 dividends to their stockholders of forty and fifty per 
 cent. Heroes become citizens; Parival notices the 
 thirst for gain among those of the highest class. 
 And more, " they detest duels, contentions and quar- 
 rels, and commonly assert that Avell-off people never 
 fight." They want to enjoy themselves, and the 
 houses of the great, which the Venetian ambassadors 
 early in the century find so bare and so simple, be- 
 come luxurious; among the leading citizens there 
 are found tapestries, high-priced pictures and " gold 
 and silver-plate." The rich interiors of Terburg and 
 Metzu show us the new-found elegance — the light 
 
186 THE PIIILOSOPUT OF ART 
 
 silk dresses, velvet bodices, the gems, the pearls, 
 the liangings honey-combed with gold, and the lofty 
 chimneys with marble columns. Ancient energy 
 relaxes. When Louis XIV. invades the country in 
 1672 he finds no resistance. The army has been 
 neglected ; their troops are disbanded ; their towns 
 surrender at the first blow; four French cavaliers 
 take Muyden which is the key to the floodgates ; the 
 States-General implore peace on any terms. The 
 national sentiment degenerates, at the same time, in 
 the arts. Taste becomes transformed. Rembrandt 
 in 1669 dies poor, almost without anybody's knowl- 
 edge ; the new-found luxury is satisfied with foreign 
 models obtained from France and Italy. Already, 
 during the most flourishing epoch, a number of paint- 
 ers had gone to Rome to paint small figures and 
 landscapes ; Jan Both, Berghem, Karl Dujardin, and 
 many others — Wouvermans himself— form a half-Ital- 
 ian school alongside of the national school. But 
 this school was spontaneous and natural ; amid the 
 mountains, ruins, structures and rags of the South 
 the vapory whiteness of the atmos23here, the genial- 
 ity of the figures, the mellow carnations, the gayety 
 
m THE NETHERLANDS. 187 
 
 and good Immor of tlie painter denote tlie persist- 
 ency and freedom of the Dutch instinct. On the 
 other hand, we see at this moment this instinct be- 
 coming enfeebled under tlie invasion of fashion. On 
 the Kaisergracht and the Heeregracht rise grand 
 hotels in the style of Louis XIV., while the Flemish 
 painter who founded the academic school, Gerard de 
 Lairesse, comes to decorate them with his learned 
 allegories and hybrid mythologies. The national 
 art, it is true, does not at once surrender ; it is pro- 
 longed by a succession of masterpieces up to the 
 first years of the eighteenth century ; at the same 
 time the national sentiment, aroused by humiliation 
 and danger, excites a popular revolution, heroic 
 sacrifices, the inundation of the country, and all the 
 successes which afterwards ensue. But these very 
 successes complete the ruin of the energy and enthu- 
 siasm which this temporary revival had stimulated. 
 During the whole of the war of the Spanish succes- 
 sion, Holland, whose stadtholder became King of 
 England, is sacrificed to its ally ; after the treaty of 
 1713 she loses her maritime supremacy, falls to the 
 second rank of powers, and, finally, still lower ; 
 
188 THE PIIILOSOPIIT OF ART 
 
 Frederic the Great is soon able to say that she is 
 dragged in the wake of England like a sloop behind 
 a man-of-war. France tramples on her during the 
 war of the Austrian succession ; later, England im- 
 poses on her the right of search and deprives her of 
 the coast of Coromandel. Finally, Prussia steps in, 
 overwhelms the republican party and establishes the 
 stadtholdership. Like all the weak she is hustled 
 by the strong, and, after 1789, conquered and recon- 
 quered. AVhat is worse she gives up and is content 
 to remain a good commercial banking-house. Al- 
 ready in 1723 her historian, John Leclerc, a refugee, 
 openly ridicules the valiant seamen who, during the 
 War of Independence, blew themselves up rather 
 than strike their flag.* In 1732, another historian de- 
 clares that " the Dutch think of nothing but the ac- 
 cumulation of riches." After 1748 both the army 
 and the fleet are allowed to decline. In 1787 the 
 Duke of Brunswick brings the country under subjec- 
 tion almost without striking a blow. What a dis- 
 tance between sentiments of this cast and those of 
 
 ♦ " This good captain belonged to (hose who die for fear of dying. If 
 God fori?ives ench people it is because they are out of their mind." 
 
ly THE NETHERLANDS. ISO 
 
 the companions of William the Taciturn, Dc Riiyter 
 and Von Tromp ! Hence it is that, through an ad- 
 mirable concordance, we see picturesque invention 
 terminating with practical energy. In ten years 
 after the commencement of the eighteenth century 
 all the great painters are dead. Already for a gQw- 
 ei-ation a decline is manifest in the impoverished 
 style, in the more limited imagination and in more 
 minute finish of Franz Mieris, Schalcken, and the rest. 
 One of these, Adrian Van der Werf, in his cold and 
 polished painting, his mythologies and nudities, his 
 ivory carnations, his impotent return to the Italian 
 style, bears witness to the Dutch oblivion of native 
 tastes and its own peculiar genius. His successors 
 resemble men who attempt to speak with nothing 
 to say ; brought up by mawters or famous parents, 
 Peter Van der Werf, Henry Van Limborch, Philip 
 Van Dyck, Mieris the younger, and another the 
 grandson, Nicholas Verkolie, and Constantine Nets- 
 cher repeat sentences they have heard, but like au- 
 tomatons. Talent survives only among painters of 
 accessories and flowers — Jacques de Witt, Rachel 
 Ruysch and Van Huysum — in a small way, which 
 
190 
 
 ABT in THE NETHERLANDS. 
 
 requires less invention and wliicli still lasts a few 
 years, similar to a tenacious clump of bushes on a 
 dry soil whereon all the great trees have died. This 
 dies in its turn, and the ground remains vacant. It 
 is the last evidence of the dependence which attaches 
 individual originality to social life, and proportions 
 the inventive faculties of the artist to the active 
 energies of the nation. 
 
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