DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49256#0117
RUYSDAEL.
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fitle of the first landscape painter of Holland, that is to say, the greatest in what is technically
called tlio pastoral style, in tlie same manner as Claude Lorraine is the greatest in heroic
landscape.* It is in feeling that the superiority of this fanions painter consists ; and it
may be said that lie felt nature even more than he studied it. Lebrun, in his Gaïlery of the
Dutch and Flemish Pointers, considers Everdingen a better painter than Ruysdael, and perhaps
he is right, as regards process. Another competent judge, Valenciennes, accuses this great
painter of having made use of the means which certain artists employ, who take as models
small branches of trees and small stones, in order to draw whole trees and large rocks from
them. lhese artists,” f says Valenciennes, u believe they are painting their pictures from
nature, while they are only deceiving themselves; for the more correctly they copy those
models, the more they increase the falsity of their painting. And, in fact, for the same reason
that the proportions of a child do not resemble those of a man, the formation of a brandi is of
quite a different character from the construction of a whole tree. The contexture of the bark is
THE RUSTIC BRIDGE.
also very different ; and on this point the humblest connoisseur cannot be deceived.” It is not
impossible that Ruysdael may, now and then, hâve made use of this convenient method, which
* Ruysdael is the master whose pictures form the proper type and centre of the whole pastoral school of landscape.
In his works, as in those of the great painter of idéal landscape, Claude Lorraine, natural objects are treated in a
manner which appears to manifest the influence of a higher spirit, but the means adopted by these two artists were
very different. Ruysdael did not need to decorate the ordinary forms of nature, or dress her up in a holiday garb.
in order to bring her nearer to something which was divine. Each single object, however homely and familiar,
provided it had not been cramped and regulated by the hand of man,—the green meadows, the silent sweep of the
clouds, the murmuring trees or brook,—ail breathe the pure and lofty feeling of that higher spirit. His paintings are
in fact a renewal of that old worship of the spirit of nature which the Roman historian has ascribed to the ancient
Germans. Yet there is in his pictures much that relates to the bus/ toil of man, but such features in general stand
in feeble opposition to the overwhelming mass of natural objects, and the traces of human works often appear as meie
ruins which hâve long yielded to the powerful operation of the éléments.—Kuglers Handbook of Painting.
f Ph. Valenciennes, painter : “ Eléments of Practical Perspective, with Notes on Painting, and particularly on the
Branch of Landscape,’’ &c. Paris, an viii.
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11
fitle of the first landscape painter of Holland, that is to say, the greatest in what is technically
called tlio pastoral style, in tlie same manner as Claude Lorraine is the greatest in heroic
landscape.* It is in feeling that the superiority of this fanions painter consists ; and it
may be said that lie felt nature even more than he studied it. Lebrun, in his Gaïlery of the
Dutch and Flemish Pointers, considers Everdingen a better painter than Ruysdael, and perhaps
he is right, as regards process. Another competent judge, Valenciennes, accuses this great
painter of having made use of the means which certain artists employ, who take as models
small branches of trees and small stones, in order to draw whole trees and large rocks from
them. lhese artists,” f says Valenciennes, u believe they are painting their pictures from
nature, while they are only deceiving themselves; for the more correctly they copy those
models, the more they increase the falsity of their painting. And, in fact, for the same reason
that the proportions of a child do not resemble those of a man, the formation of a brandi is of
quite a different character from the construction of a whole tree. The contexture of the bark is
THE RUSTIC BRIDGE.
also very different ; and on this point the humblest connoisseur cannot be deceived.” It is not
impossible that Ruysdael may, now and then, hâve made use of this convenient method, which
* Ruysdael is the master whose pictures form the proper type and centre of the whole pastoral school of landscape.
In his works, as in those of the great painter of idéal landscape, Claude Lorraine, natural objects are treated in a
manner which appears to manifest the influence of a higher spirit, but the means adopted by these two artists were
very different. Ruysdael did not need to decorate the ordinary forms of nature, or dress her up in a holiday garb.
in order to bring her nearer to something which was divine. Each single object, however homely and familiar,
provided it had not been cramped and regulated by the hand of man,—the green meadows, the silent sweep of the
clouds, the murmuring trees or brook,—ail breathe the pure and lofty feeling of that higher spirit. His paintings are
in fact a renewal of that old worship of the spirit of nature which the Roman historian has ascribed to the ancient
Germans. Yet there is in his pictures much that relates to the bus/ toil of man, but such features in general stand
in feeble opposition to the overwhelming mass of natural objects, and the traces of human works often appear as meie
ruins which hâve long yielded to the powerful operation of the éléments.—Kuglers Handbook of Painting.
f Ph. Valenciennes, painter : “ Eléments of Practical Perspective, with Notes on Painting, and particularly on the
Branch of Landscape,’’ &c. Paris, an viii.
59