International studio (33.1907/1908(1908))

Johannes Bosboom

In 1835 he made a short journey along the
Rhine with two of his friends, and soon after paid
a visit to Rouen, travelling through Holland,
where he discovered splendidly picturesque churches,
cloisters, town halls, cloister-kitchens, and farm-
interiors, which furnished him with the subjects
of some of his masterpieces.
In 1846 Bosboom made the acquaintance of a
Dutch authoress, Miss A. L. G. Toussaint, whom
he married some years afterwards. They began
together a quiet life of regular labour, she writing-
numerous, highly valued novels, in the style of
Walter Scott, he constantly producing works,
nearly all of which show his great natural gifts.
Notwithstanding these exceptional gifts, life was
often difficult to him, and attacks of deep melan-
choly sometimes disturbed its regular course; but
he had a friend and protector in Jhr. van Rappard,
one of those cultured men who live for art. This
gentleman collected all the water-colour drawings
done by Bosboom, and sometimes invited the artist
and his wife to stay at his country estate near Utrecht.
Here the artist found rest and renewed strength
after these periods of gloom. Walks in the de-
lightful surroundings of his friend’s house revealed
to him more than ever the beauties of landscape,
and from that moment a new order of subjects

became his own. I allude to those big barns
(boeren-deelen), full of Rembrandt-like light and
shade with rich golden-brown depths, which he
handled with such skill. In conception rather
different from that of Israels, Bosboom made of
these splendid subjects works of wonderful
grandeur and of most powerful colour. These
“deelen,” now fast disappearing, were vast thatched
constructions, roughly built on heavy, richly-
coloured wooden piles. As is usual in Holland,
the cows stood in rows along the walls, while hens,
chickens, and dogs walked freely about among the
peasants themselves. The light-effects in these
lofty farm buildings are of a quite special char-
acter, and these interiors, almost as much as
watermills, add to our understanding of the so-
called “Rembrandtic light.”
Some years ago I explained in “ L’Art Moderne ”
the origins of Rembrandt’s “fantastic” light,
showing that this was not at all a mere product of
his imagination, but simply the natural, diffuse
light in a watermill. Rembrandt, whose uncle was
a miller, must in his boyhood have often seen in
such a mill the splendid gamut of golden values
produced by a sunbeam penetrating through a small
window, the hazy, smoky space, with its quite pecu-
liar transparency of purplish and bluish tint. It



LANDSCAPE
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BY J BOSBOOM