17th century Dutch painting

1. General overview of the development of Dutch painting

The development of Dutch painting in this era made a significant contribution to world art with its originality and a special view of the world, which was expressed in the characteristic Dutch realism. In addition, a significant difference from the painting of other countries was the predominance of everyday, everyday and political subjects over religious and mythological.

Paintings of the Dutch, these Venetians of the north, in the XVII century introduced to the world a lot of new artistic values. Nova was the immediacy of the transmission of the great and small, snatched out by them manifestations of a complex world, the sophistication with which they animated simple nature, not so much the beauty of lines, as the colorful charm of light and light and shade, the inner force that enlivened the coarsest nature of conscious or unconscious experience of the visible or alleged attitudes toward human destiny and the human heart; they have also independently achieved mastery of a flexible brush, always consciously adapted to each individual case, the late letter of Titian’s style drowning in the broad scope, then competing with the sophisticated painting of the 15th century, carefully stripping any particular or smooth all tenderness of its technique.

If Dutch painting, in contrast to its more ardent Belgian sister, because of the lack of decorative tasks set by the Catholic Church and the magnificent princely court, did not have the ability to create altar paintings, then it sincerely deepened the task of humanly and heartily bringing sacred episodes to the Bible-reading reformed community individuals, transferring them to the atmosphere of the Dutch home life and dressing them in modern or oriental clothes.

Precisely because Dutch painting was essentially a domestic art that wanted to decorate a burgher’s dwelling, generally understandable, close to life forms of painting, what are portrait, genre, landscape and architectural painting, painting of animals and dead nature, some of which were newly created, occupied more significant place than religious painting, along with which, at the same time, mythical, symbolic and historical themes were not neglected. But precisely because Dutch painting was a home art, the art of reproduction, which knocks on every door, was often replaced now in Holland by wall and ceiling painting. Dutch engraving with spicy vodka from the 17th century, caused by the same need as German engraving on copper from the 15th and 16th centuries, stands next to it, as an equal branch of art. Almost all the significant Dutch painters of this era, with Rembrandt at the head, are also known as etchers of their own works.

The peculiarity of the Dutch easel painting, designed to decorate burgher houses, required her to observe certain peculiar decorative conditions. The arrangement of the paintings on two opposite sides of the wall required the opposite distribution of mass and light in them. From here inevitably flowed the well-known laws of composition, which Dutch painting of the 17th century shares with the bar art of other countries. From this, however, one should not yet see, together with some young researchers, in every mass action and in every diagonal line of Dutch easel paintings, namely, baroque. In general, the healthy naturalness of Dutch national easel painting is a direct counterbalance to the predominance of baroque pretentiousness. Landscape Dutch painting, where it follows its own impulse, differs from the Flemish one, as de Jong has already shown, by the fact that it does not customize its images to this frame, but only arbitrarily limits them to the necessary framework, like free clippings from unlimited nature with her whole animal and human life. National Dutch landscape painting independently depicts the forms of the entire native coastal and pasture area to the border German forests and the state of the atmosphere of its high sky, which then resolves everything, according to the sun’s struggle with soft misty covers, in gray or brownish tonal painting, then under the influence of perfectly covered or half the clouds of the sky, holds the natural colors and at the same time always awakens a kind of mood in the human soul.

Of the public spaces, the Netherlands provided its painting, except for the large Amsterdam town hall and the small Hague Forest Castle, only simple Soviet and guild rooms, or meeting rooms in charitable institutions; they were decorated almost exclusively by life-size portrait groups, ratsgers, guild elders and “regents” of charitable institutions. These groups, under the name of “images of shooters and regents”, have risen to the significance of large historical paintings and constitute a special glory of Dutch painting.

Along with this quite national Dutch direction in all Dutch cities flourished, however, the Italian academic secondary direction, which had no serious significance even where it adjoined, as in Utrecht, the great Italian naturalist Caravaggio, although during the transition to the XVIII century, assistance of the French influence, won everywhere.

Some masters of both directions benefited in the first third of the century the influence of the Frankfurt Amman Adam Elsheimer (1578–1610) who worked in Rome, whose peculiar manner puts relief patterns of his small paintings in light proportions to the space of the landscape or interior, was adopted everywhere as a new invention. Rembrandt himself fell under his influence.

Rembrandt, the only powerful master with all the purely Dutch qualities, through which he ascended to the realm of the universal, animated by the passion of world art, as one of his great masters, rose above all the local currents of quiet contemplative painting of the national-Dutch direction.

The most important basic preparatory works for the general history of Dutch painting were given by Burger, Frommanten and Vaagen, from among the old scholars, and in recent times especially Bode, Bredius and Gofstede de Groot. Shorter general essays belong to Vlooten, Vaagen, Krové, and Gavard. Named earlier lexicographical works also matter. Smith’s “catalog” must be replaced by the extensive work of Gofstede de Groote. Let us point out here and to articles about various Dutch painters, published in the journals “Obreens Archief” and “Oud Holland”, by such researchers, aside from those mentioned as Vris, Dosi, de Revere, Vet, Moes, Zyks, IK Meyer, Jr. Gaverkorn van rieswijk.

The author of this book in his and Voltman "History of Painting" performed the first dismemberment of the history of Dutch painting according to the "schools" of various cities that took an independent part in its development. At the same time Bredius spoke in the same sense. Gofstede de Groot spoke against this dismemberment of the material on the grounds that the Dutch cities were too close to each other and too often exchanged masters so that the history of North Dutch painting could be matched to local schools. That there really can be no talk about sharply separated schools, in this we agree with Gofstede de Groot, but, as before, we believe that the development adopted by painting in various Dutch cities is rather instructive, and we proceed from it.

2. Utrecht painting

Utrecht occupies a special place in the history of Dutch painting of the 17th century, being predominantly a Catholic city and, accordingly, under strong Italian influence. The most prominent values ​​in Utrecht were Abraham Blumart, Gillis d'Ondecoeter, Davids de Gay.

Utrecht painting (book S. Muller) occupies a special place in the life of Dutch art. Rome was closer to the Catholic Jansenist city of Utrecht than Calvinistic coastal cities. His painters almost without exception made pilgrimages to Italy, and their art, except perhaps dead nature, was under Italian influence. The famous Utrecht master of transition, who founded a large, influential school here, Abraham Blumart (1564-1651), son of the architect Cornelis Blomart, in his cool, variegated early paintings, like Niobe (1591) in Copenhagen, still stands entirely on the soil of Italianizing Manist XVI century, in the middle period of his life reaches only to the academic works, as "Lazar" in Munich (1607); but in the bright works of his old age, for example, in the Hague Atalanta (1626), he can no longer completely renounce the freer and milder manner of his compatriots who have gone ahead.

The main group of his students, who were fond of Caravaggio in Rome, besides Hendrik Terbruggen (1587–1629), was especially Gerard van Honthorst (1590–1654), a well-known prolific master, who received the nickname “Gerardo Dalle Notti” in Italy for his rude biblical scenes and full-size genre paintings, mostly night episodes, for better use of Caravadoje's light and shade lit by candles, and acquired a wide range of activities as a skillful, sober portraitist with a smooth brush. His "Prodigal Son" in Munich, "Dentist" in Dresden, "Concert" in the Louvre, "Merry Fiddler" in Amsterdam give his best manner. In the decoration of “Guis ten Bosch” he participated in 1650 with a cold allegorical picture.

The second group of artists of the Blomart school, who was also influenced by Elsheimer, attacked the manufacture of small landscapes and figured paintings of the same value. It is headed by Cornelis van Pöhlenburg (1586–1667). His landscapes of Campagna, softly drawn, complacently rounded, filled with cheerful light, frame the biblical stories, the pagan myths, the Arcadian nudity of the genre with the outlined Italian language of forms. Of his paintings totaled to 150, 21 are in the Florentine state galleries, 12 in Dresden, 11 in St. Petersburg, 7 in the Louvre, 6 in Munich. To the number of eight small belongs “The Triumph of Love”, a snapshot of which we place here. It was because of the sugary charm of the Pöhlenburg picture that many imitators and admirers were found.

Fig. 162. "The triumph of love." A painting by Cornelis van Pelenburg in the Kassel Gallery. From the photo of F. Ganfshtengl in Munich

Further, a pupil of Blumarat was a native of Leipzig, Nikolai Knupfer (born in 1603), who appeared in 1630 in Utrecht. Went dedicated work to him. Refined, filled with golden room light, a small family portrait in Dresden (about 1640) with his brush already shows the influence of Rembrandt. His brightly colorful narrative paintings - “Cases of Mercy” in Kassel, “Solomon sacrificing to the gods” in Brunswick, “The Hunt for Happiness” in Schwerin, which, as shown by Weizsäcker, inspired by the lost original of Elsheimer, clearly reveal the influence of this Roman from upper Germany.

Jan Bot (1610–1652), the main representative of the Italian landscape in Holland, was also a disciple of Blomart. His pleasantly composed, riddled with warm brownish gold of sunshine, forest and mountain landscapes, of which Amsterdam, London and Munich have the richest choice, clearly adjoin Claude Lorrain to the great shining landscape art. The influence of Bot lived in his disciples and imitators until the 18th century.

Blomart’s school also included the versatile depicter of southern nature and folk life, northern animals and dead nature, Giovanni Battista Veeniks (1621–1660), born in Amsterdam, but preferred to Utrecht as an apprentice and master. He painted a free, coarse brush in Italy rich in life, colorfully captured views of the harbors, Campagna and the ruins that can be seen in the Louvre, in St. Petersburg, in Stockholm, in Munich and in Stuttgart. The kitchen scene in Schwerin represents a transition to equally bright and colorful images of the living and dead local animal world, of which it is worth noting the chicken yard with a crested hen in Dresden.

Such Utrecht masters as Paulus Morelze (1571–1638), who left Mirevelt School in Delft a skilled portrait painter and became close to Blomarth’s students in the life-size genre in their genre, were more distantly related to the school of Blumarth; outstanding painters of animals and dead nature, which are most convenient to attach to the Utrecht masters, are still further from Blomart.

The famous painter of a dead nature, Jan Veenix (1640–1719), born and died in Amsterdam, attended the school of his father Giovanni Battista in Utrecht. Sometimes he painted the southern harbors, such as the Louvre painting, sometimes soft portraits perfect in tone, as in the Gaarlem museum. His main specialty, however, was a dead nature. Sometimes his paintings, representing hunting prey, such as the Munich series, written between 1703–1712. for the hunting castle of Bensberg, the Elector of Palatinate, supplemented with figures of hunters and dogs, sometimes (the big Amsterdam painting 1714) just a barking dog. In most cases, dead game, fruit and hunting gear against the background of the park, illuminated by the twilight light of the evening sky, make up the entire content of his paintings, both of which are large Dresden ones, which, with a surprisingly amorous extract of objects, are distinguished by a gentle mood of painting.

From Antwerp or Mecheln was born Gillis d'Ondecköter (died in 1638), who belonged to landscape painters who migrated to Amsterdam in the style of a transitional progressive direction.

His son Gisbert d'Ondekoeter (1604-1653), who moved to Utrecht, painted landscapes in the manner of his father, bird houses in the style of his brother-in-law Giovanni Battista Veenix. But the son of Gisbert Melchior d'Ondeköter (1636–1695), who again traded Utrecht for The Hague and Amsterdam, became a famous display of the life of domestic birds. His paintings of chicken yards and duck ponds with life-sized birds, in Amsterdam and The Hague, in Dresden and Kassel, he sometimes reported a dramatic movement, introducing attacking predatory birds or four-legged predators, always wrote them with a wide brush, and at the same time with attentive painstakingly trimmed every feather, always in brilliant, natural and with all that internally merged gorgeous colors.

The greatest Dutch painter of fruits and flowers, Jan Davids de Gay (1606–1684), who moved to Antwerp in 1635, was a native of Utrecht. He was a student of his father, David. Truly amazing is his ability to pay homage to each individual fruit, flower and leaflet in a form and color to a full, strong and yet brushing detail, all gold, silver or glass vessels and even the smallest insect crawling on it; no less surprising is the ability to combine all these trifles into a single whole, connected with a warm overall tone, a dead nature, so fabulous and so natural in its pomp. It is presented in almost all large galleries, just more abundant in Dresden. His son Cornelis de Gay (1631–1695) followed in the footsteps of his father in Antwerp.

All these masters, who had a more or less distant or close relationship with Utrecht, are the classical representatives of Dutch painting of animals and dead nature, fruits and flowers, pointing out new areas to art and revealing unprecedented fantastic worlds.

3. Gaarlem painting: early period

Gaarlem was the center of the national art of Holland in the 17th century. By this time, the history of the original Gaarlem schools totaled more than a century. Italian styles and trips to Italy for study were still common, but nevertheless the work of the Gaarlem masters is completely independent and differs by its focus on everyday and common people.

In Gaarlem (Van der Willigen's book) painting also flourished on entirely national grounds. Gaarlem, the heart of Holland, with his participation in national defense and his concerns about national spiritual life, contributed most of all to the development of a new Dutch way of life; Already in the 15th century, Gaarlem landscape painting fertilized Flemish art, and in the 16th century, having mastered the human figure, Gaarlem art influenced the artistic development of the national group portrait and in the 17th century took a significant part of the direction of the nationally Dutch movement that managed to impart an artistic expression to the direct the impression of nature by combining a common tone.

Of course, in Gaarlem there was no shortage of craftsmen who still relied on Italian art with one foot, like Peter Claes Southman (1580-1657), Rubens' engraver. Finally, Italian life was portrayed by Peter van Laer (1582–1642), a Gaarlem master, nicknamed in Rome for his hump “Bambochcho”. Здоровые, писанные скорее в караваджевской, чем в рембрандтовской святотени, изображения оживленных итальянских рынков, улиц и площадей дают ему право считаться отцом мелкофигурной жанровой живописи из итальянской народной жизни без прикрас. Его картины во Флоренции, в Уффици и в галерее Корсики, в Германии главным образом в Дрездене, Касселе и Мюнхене, оказали такое же большое влияние на итальянское искусство, как и на нидерландское по его возвращении на родину. Именно, в Гаарлеме имело решающее значение то самобытное направление, которое придало новый отпечаток гаарлемской, и вместе с нею голландской, даже европейской живописи. Творец его Франс Халс старший (около 1580–1666 гг.), родившийся от гаарлемских уроженцев в Антверпене, уже в молодости переселился в Гаарлем, где основал большую школу и сделался влиятельным мастером своего времени. Боде, Унгер и Моес распространили среди нас его славу. Франс Халс быстро преодолел влияние своего учителя Кареля ван Мандера (1548–1606), имевшего большее значение, как писатель об искусстве, чем художник. Исключительно живописец людей, преимущественно портретный живописец, Халс был великий реалист, желавший прежде всего закрепить на полотне личность, твердо очерченную, схваченную в ее самой интимной сущности, насколько возможно натуральнее, но также и мастер со свободной живописной кистью, картины которого отражают развитие техники голландской живописи в течение полувека. Именно его изображения стрелков и регентов незаметно становятся историческими картинами, именно его портреты лиц из народа — жанровыми картинами в натуральную величину, из которых только его ученики развили мелкофигурную голландскую жанровую живопись. Чисто голландским является его драгоценный, ничуть не грубый юмор, проникающий его фигуры. Никто не изображал смех так естественно и сердечно, как он. Чисто голландской является и его манера сообщать непосредственным впечатлениям природы художественную высоту только посредством живописной передачи.

Large images of shooters and regents in the Museum of Gaarlem, the temple of his art, show the steps of his artistic development. The “reel of the shooters” of 1616 is still simple in composition, brownish in an overall strong tone, plastically written out with an accelerating brush. "The revel of shooters" in 1627 is freer in composition, broader in design, lighter and brighter in color. The painting with arrows in 1633 is no longer a party, but places them in the garden of the guild house in two simple, artfully connected groups, and is already replete with hand strokes, giving unfused strokes, a whitish golden tone and excellent colorful chords. The large picture of 1639 extremely simply distributes the figures in two rows, and in the powerful interpretation of them and the subtle color of the common gray tone, shows the master at the height of his power. In the majestic group of five regents of the Elizabethan hospital in 1641, the influence of Rubens' light and shade slips, which in the end no one escaped. The mean, inspired, truly impressionistic late style of the master appears with striking evidence in both of his group paintings of 1664, with portraits of four regents and four regents of the poorhouse.

Fig. 163. “Revel of shooters on the day of St. George, 1627. Painting by Frans Hals in the Gaarlem Museum. From the photo of F. Ganfshtengl in Munich

The portraits of the group from private life, representing the married couple on a bench under the trees of the park (at the State Museum of Amsterdam), is no less remarkable for its brilliant freedom of life composition, as well as the expressive transfer of a happy spiritual mood to a noble couple. Of the single portraits, we note the portrait of Willem van Geitguysen in the Liechtenstein Gallery, which already paid tribute to the era in the Baroque motif in the form of a purple curtain, hung behind a gentleman standing in the garden, but in the transfer of a person distinguished by a purely Dutch naturalness. Adjacent here are superb, simpler portraits in Berlin, Kassel, Petersburg, the Louvre, The Hague, and Frankfurt. As typical genre figures are given the “Merry story-teller” in Amsterdam, half-figure in a big hat with pendulous fields, with speaking lips and an expressively raised right hand, then the so-called “Gille Bobbe”, laughing Gaarlem witch with an owl on his shoulder, in Berlin and “Merry Quito "in Kassel, in Amsterdam and the Duke Arenberg in Brussels. Some of his most famous multi-genre paintings, such as "Merry Trilistik" and "Players", seem to have survived only in copies, at least in Europe. The singing boys in Kassel are also great. The influence exerted by France Hals on his contemporaries in Holland, and later, two hundred years later, on the modern representatives of the broad art of the whole of Europe was powerful.

Fig. 164. "Gille Bobbe." Frans Hals painting in the King Friedrich Museum in Berlin. From the photo of F. Ganfshtengl in Munich

Disciples and followers of Frans Hals

Of his students, the son of Frans Hals the Younger and the painter Judith Leicester (1600–1660) are closest to him in his beloved area, and we owe the acquaintance of Gofstede de Groote to him. His younger brother, Dirk Hulse (1591–1656), wrote not only individuals, but entire groups of individuals of a good society in their particular way of life, and portrayed them, maintaining the unity of room lighting and tone, in artfully arranged, small figures playing, music , drinking, courting or walking in the air. At first, brighter in colors, later with a more subtle general tone, his “secular paintings”, known in London, Paris, Berlin and Copenhagen, are distinguished by their vital characteristics of types and furnishings. Along with him, maybe even before him, Gendrik Gerrits Pot (circa 1585–1657), who was still a fellow practitioner of old Hals with Van Mander, and then developing in parallel with Dirk, can be considered the father of this Dutch “secular painting”, who readily portrayed also the peaceful life of soldiers for wine, music, maps, with women, in sentries and camps. Later, well represented in the Louvre and Dresden, then followed by more or less subtle feeling masters of this manner, of whom Peter Codda (circa 1600–1678) deserves a mention in Amsterdam, who completed a large group of Frans Hals shooters in the local State Museum, Jacob Duk (about 1600–1660) in The Hague and Anton Palamedes (1601–1677) in Delft. As we see, the movement of the main school of one city has spread to neighboring cities.

A certain contrast to these “secular painters” is made by the genre painters of the Frans Hals school, depicting the life and deeds of the lower strata of the people in paintings, in most cases even smaller ones. The most important of them, Adrienne Brouwer. These include Jan Mienze Molenar (about 1600–1668), the husband of the aforementioned Judith Leicester, but their main representative was Adrien van Ostade (1610–1685), one of the most highly valued masters and engravers. First, he joined, as already shown by his "Playing Cards" (1637) in the Louvre, in a light, delicate flavor, to Hals, in almost cartoon types to Brouwer. From 1640, he found himself in the portrayal of the full humor of the cozy life of little people, in the calmly finished composition of his simple plots, in easy fluency of writing, in Rembrandt's subtle inspiration of his interior, in the warm golden light of his landscape backgrounds. At the transition is already filled with a warm light "Organ-grinder" in Berlin (1640). The main paintings of Ostade in the forties were The Peasant Tavern in the Louvre (1643) and Peasant Dance (1647) in Munich. To the most beautiful of his paintings of the fifties are the radiant Summer Tavern (1659) in Kassel and the excellent Peasant Music (1656) in Buckingham Palace, in which the gentle light and shadow of the room fights with the bursting glow of sunset. In the sixties, he painted such magnificent paintings as “The table of regulars in a village tavern” (1660) and “The artist in his workshop” (1663) in Dresden, “The village school” (1662) in Paris and the “Village concert” (1665) In Petersburg. As he wrote in the seventies, they show his "Village Violinist" (1673) in The Hague and "Village Tavern" (1674) in Dresden. Ostade did not rise high and did not sink deep, but that solar height, on which Ostade created his masterpieces, goes far away.

Fig. 165. “Village Violinist”. Painting by Adrien van Ostade in the Hague Museum. From the photograph of F. Brookman in Munich

Of the students of Adrien van Ostade, his brother Isaac van Ostade (1621–1649) adjoins him in his paintings with outdoor scenes, which he cultivated with great subtlety of perception of landscape lighting and summer life on village streets, winter rush on frozen canals and rivers . Harnessed horse is his main interest. In any case, his paintings, which are in all major collections, endow the images of nature with the charm of light and color.

But the remaining students of Adrien van Ostade, of whom we call Cornelis Peters Beg (1620–1664), did not enrich the history of painting with special values.

4. Gaarlem painting in the second half of the century

In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Gaarlem School became the leading school in the field of Dutch landscape painting. Seascapes typical for Holland are especially common. There are many major artists, including entire dynasties: Vermerie, Broome, Reysdali.

Then the Gaarlem School played a major role in the history of the development of Dutch landscape painting, the threads of which converged in it at least between 1610 and 1657. Her oldest landscape painter, although he worked in Gaarlem only between 1610–1618, but it was here that had a decisive influence, Amsterdam resident Esayas van de Velde (1590 to 1630) refused to have bundle-like woody foliage and a promising triple chord of colors of his Flemish predecessors, but borrowed from them motley human life unfolding on their landscapes. He firmly and definitely distinguishes buildings and somewhat rounded trees in a clear sky. But his landscape paints are already striving, in their greenish-gray-brown tone, to a special mood. Next to its lively summer landscapes, like the picture of the river (1622) in Amsterdam, the canal in Berlin, are equivalent winter landscapes of 1624 in The Hague, 1629 in Hamburg. We saw how the old pictures of the months of handwritten calendars, already in the XV century, were developed landscape. Now they come alive again. The picture of the dunes of 1629 in Amsterdam passes to a simpler depiction of ordinary Dutch nature, and to its transfer in brownish painting, eventually developed by Esayas' student Jan van Goyen (1596–1656) in The Hague to light, destroying all local colors, smoothness. The student of Esaias, Peter de Moline (1595–1661), saved from oblivion by Granberg, became the main support of the older Gaarlem landscape school. His paintings, though lively with the colorful hustle and bustle of the people, produce essentially the impression of landscapes. Near the wooded hills, the outlines of which intersect the area of ​​the painting diagonally, there are wide views of the plain. Molyina trees, written out confidently and naturally, although they still resemble the teacher’s style, but do not at all neglect fresh natural greens; its slightly cloudy skies often shine with light azure. Known for his "Night festival in the village" (1625) in Brussels, "Dune" (1626) in Braunschweig, "Robbery" (1630) in Gaarlem "Hilly landscape" in Stockholm; important are his later paintings in Swedish private collections.

Along with Peter de Molini the Elder, Jan Wermer, van Haarlem and Cornelis Wroe became landscape painters with independent significance.

As already shown by Van der Willigen, there were three Gaarlem Vermeres, a grandfather, a father, and a son. On the basis of the testimony of one manuscript given by Bredius, we returned to the elder Jan Vermeer (about 1600–1670) simply and naturally, but strictly and firmly made landscapes, what are the types of dunes on the Gaarlem plain in Dresden, Berlin, Braunschweig and The Hague, along with Brom's paintings signify transitions from the brownish tone of the painting to the full mood of natural brightness. In this case, the share of the second Jan Vermeer van Haarlem (1628–1691), to whom the paintings just mentioned are usually attributed, will remain more necessary forest landscapes, for example, the Munich picture, also marked by the name of the artist in another manuscript. However, we do not consider this distinction attempt to be completely reliable. The third Wermer van Haarlem (1656–1705) stands on completely different grounds.

Cornelis Broome, the son of the famous marine painter Hendrik Broome (1566 to 1640), who wrote only ships and battles, was a master who laid new paths, which revealed to the Dutch the beauty of the northern forest edges in natural shapes and colors. The contrast between the dark green peaks of the trees and the blue sky, appearing in its desert river landscape (1630) in Schwerin and the forest landscape in Berlin, charmed him. Earlier are both of his extremely natural “Forest roads” in Dresden. We consider Giliam Dubois (died in 1660), a subtle painter of forest edges with his mood, to be a pupil of Broome, in Berlin, Schwerin, and Brunswick (1649).

Allart van Everdingen from Alkmar (1621–1675), a pupil of Rohlant Saveri in Utrecht and Peter de Moliyna in Gaarlem, who worked, as Granberg proved, around 1640–1644 in Sweden (also in Norway), between 1645–1652. who lived in Gaarlem, and then moved to Amsterdam, can not be isolated from among the Gaarlemians. His directly observed, therefore sometimes somewhat sharply translated landscapes in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Petersburg, Amsterdam and Paris, written in brown and gray tones, as well as in all the main German meetings, depict mostly Scandinavian mountain landscapes with their huts, spruces and waterfalls. Everdingen was the oldest master, speaking with the image of gray foamy waterfalls.

The Reysdals rest on the shoulders of all these masters: Isaac van Reisdal (died in 1677) with his famous son the great Jacob van Reisdal (circa 1628–1682) and his brother Salomon van Reisdal (circa 1600–1672) with his son, the less remarkable, the second Jacob van Ruysdael (1635–1681).

Salomon van Ruysdal was formed, adjoining to Moleen and Van Goyen. In its widely-marked, tree-rich, river and village landscapes, villagers and fishermen, canoes and wagons, cattle and horses play an integral role. His paintings of the thirties in Dresden and Berlin reveal a wide, smear-tinted painting of Van Goyen, translated from a brown to a gray-green tone. In the forties, he competes, with a more solid and colorful interpretation, as in "Ferry" (1647) in Brussels, in "Village Street" (1649) in Budapest, with golden light Isak van Ostade. Truly excellent are his “City on the River” (1652) in Copenhagen, the “Rural Tavern” (1655) in Amsterdam, and the “Lowlands Landscape” (1656) in Berlin. His youngest son, Jacob van Reisdal, joined his shredded late manner, as his paintings in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Kassel show.

Creativity Jacob van Ruysdael

The great Jacob van Ruysdal, who lived in Gaarlem until 1657, until Amsterdam in 1681, and only before his death, who returned to his hometown, learning from Salomon, apparently also experienced the influence of Cornelis Broom. But in the great artist of God by the grace that he will remain, despite the less: favorable new judgments, he developed thanks to his own deepening in nature. The secret of the powerful action of its dune and forest landscapes, sea and urban species, to which a number of subtle etchings adjoin, lies primarily in their inner truth. His landscapes, with an ambitiousness, written mostly by an outsider and irrelevant, convey nature as directly as it was observed, and photographs from them could pass for pictures taken from life taken during solemn moments. But the secret lies at the same time in that mental mood, which reflects the soft, melancholic, dreamy soul of the artist. Very few of its landscapes are simple species of certain localities. He knows how to artfully and naturally intertwine individual motifs, carefully studied in various localities, that for the viewer the experience of art becomes an experience of nature. How amazingly the diversity of clouds and the heavenly light of its atmosphere merges with the earth and other parts of its landscapes. No one before him had depicted the clouds so softly and truthfully, so easily or so hard. At the same time, his flexible, natural transfer is equally far from the sweeping latitude and from excessive smoothness, his letter, later sometimes darkened, avoids a sharp underlining of bright light spots or luminous local colors and tends to the calm refined truth of nature, using slightly olive and gray colors; in short, he knows how to give his paintings a comprehensive artistic balance, which is communicated to the soul of the viewer.

With his method of work, it is hardly possible to draw a line between those pictures that seek to convey the indigenous landscape, including neighboring German wooded areas, and fantastic landscapes reproducing alien mountain or rocky terrain, or wide gray streams and waterfalls. But Bode rightly thinks that the Scandinavian motifs of his later paintings seem to have been borrowed mainly from the sketches of his friend Everdingen. In total, he came to the confluence of diverse motives of din, where, as in the Dresden Jewish Cemetery, he consciously sought to embody certain ideas in his landscapes. The tombstones depicted in the picture are indeed taken from the Amsterdam Jewish cemetery. A brick ruin, reminiscent of the ruins of the Castle of Brederode. Trees to the right and a bare trunk in the foreground are taken at home in German oak forests. How bore a mountain stream, which, foaming, makes its way among the graves! How black is a thundercloud, how pale the rainbow is. The picture proclaims with tremendous inexorability that elemental forces that reject and destroy all affairs