DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61252#0389
INTRODUCTION.
345
these he represented under every change of the seasons, as
they revolved; but he delighted principally in the effects
of a warm summer evening, with barges gliding along the
sun-illumined rivers, or herdsmen and milkmaids tending
cattle in the open pastures. Hobbema painted amid the
secluded forest scenery of Guelderland, where the little
Dutch hamlets lie buried amid embowering trees. His
shades, to the ear of fancy, are musical with bees and
birds. He paints foliage with such an exquisite lightness;
he conveys with such truth the feeling of shade and shel-
ter under a hot noontide sun, here and there piercing the
intermingled boughs, that one of his pictures in a room
would create a summer in the heart of winter, and seclu-
sion and peace in the crowded din of a city. Ruysdaal
was endowed with a more excitable and melancholy tem-
perament; and it must have been characteristic of the
man, as he has revealed himself in his works, that while so
many of his countrymen and cotemporaries were hurrying
to Italy, he went to Norway, and wandered there alone.
If Hobbema paints retirement, Ruysdaal paints solitude;
and he revelled in gloom, as Cuyp in sunshine : his skies
are grey and threatening; the autumn winds sigh through
the trees, oi' the cold dewy spring mornings have a chill
in their freshness. He gives us, too, sea storms and Nor-
wegian precipices, with the wild cataracts “ leaping like
Bacchanals from rock to rock,” and the woodcutters’ huts,
or little church with its slight wooden spire, seen amid the
rocky heights or beyond the tufted and tangled dell. Adrian
Vander Velde, just the reverse of Ruysdaal in every
respect, wanders from the homestead and farm-yard to the
flat beach, with its sandy expanse, and the grey northern
sea weltering to the shore, and gives us every variety of the
peasant’s and the fisherman’s life. Paul Potter has varied
his landscapes, which are indeed but backgrounds to his
groups of cattle, with such life and air, and cloud and sun-
0, 3
345
these he represented under every change of the seasons, as
they revolved; but he delighted principally in the effects
of a warm summer evening, with barges gliding along the
sun-illumined rivers, or herdsmen and milkmaids tending
cattle in the open pastures. Hobbema painted amid the
secluded forest scenery of Guelderland, where the little
Dutch hamlets lie buried amid embowering trees. His
shades, to the ear of fancy, are musical with bees and
birds. He paints foliage with such an exquisite lightness;
he conveys with such truth the feeling of shade and shel-
ter under a hot noontide sun, here and there piercing the
intermingled boughs, that one of his pictures in a room
would create a summer in the heart of winter, and seclu-
sion and peace in the crowded din of a city. Ruysdaal
was endowed with a more excitable and melancholy tem-
perament; and it must have been characteristic of the
man, as he has revealed himself in his works, that while so
many of his countrymen and cotemporaries were hurrying
to Italy, he went to Norway, and wandered there alone.
If Hobbema paints retirement, Ruysdaal paints solitude;
and he revelled in gloom, as Cuyp in sunshine : his skies
are grey and threatening; the autumn winds sigh through
the trees, oi' the cold dewy spring mornings have a chill
in their freshness. He gives us, too, sea storms and Nor-
wegian precipices, with the wild cataracts “ leaping like
Bacchanals from rock to rock,” and the woodcutters’ huts,
or little church with its slight wooden spire, seen amid the
rocky heights or beyond the tufted and tangled dell. Adrian
Vander Velde, just the reverse of Ruysdaal in every
respect, wanders from the homestead and farm-yard to the
flat beach, with its sandy expanse, and the grey northern
sea weltering to the shore, and gives us every variety of the
peasant’s and the fisherman’s life. Paul Potter has varied
his landscapes, which are indeed but backgrounds to his
groups of cattle, with such life and air, and cloud and sun-
0, 3