Studio: international art (55.1912)

The van Randwijk Collection

impression of coolness and refreshment, the finely
treated colours of the various details enumerated
above contrasting forcibly with the equally well-
rendered effects of chiaroscuro, whilst the way in
which the grand arch in the background, with
the vista beyond and all the varied play of
light upon it, is indicated does full justice to what
is acknowledged to be a true masterpiece of
architecture.

Next in date to Bosboom comes Josef Israels
(1824-1911), who ranks with him as one of the
founders and most notable exponents of the new
school. Three admirable examples of his mature
style which belong to the collection may be
described here. A Mother's Care is a true inter-
pretation of loving motherhood, in which, as in
many earlier works from the same hand, a simple
everyday scene is made suggestive of a sublime
spiritual truth, the very humbleness of the sur-
roundings in the poverty-stricken
home giving to the composition an
added pathos. The room is that
of a peasant, such as Israels loved
to paint, looking out upon the
narrow, peaceful street of a village.

The light is dim ; the various articles
of furniture and the household
utensils are but half revealed in the
heavily laden atmosphere, the at-
tention being concentrated on the
human beings in the restricted space,
for all Israels’ art is devoted to the
elucidation of the life of the people.

The group at the table in the present
instance is a very simple one, free
from all restraint, but it is a most
exquisite presentment of mother-
hood. The fair-haired boy, fright-
ened at the approach of the hen,
instinctively turns for protection to
her to whom he owes his being;
the baby cuddled down deep in the
lap of the mother compels her to
retain a somewhat strained attitude
so as not to disturb her little one;
and the ever-anxious solicitude and
untiring industry of the housewife
are suggested by the hands busy
with needlework, the fact that the
baby’s little arm rests on one of them
making apparently no difference;
whilst truly marvellous skill is
shown in the way in which the
light is managed, blending together
98

every detail of the touching incident ot home
life.

Of the other two works, the Children of the Sea,
showing a group of little ones at play on the
seashore, is an illustration of another side of
its author’s temperament, yet it too, in spite of the
humour it displays, produces a melancholy im-
pression and is evidently the work of one who
takes a grave if not exactly a gloomy view of exist-
ence. In the Home-coming, too, melancholy is the
dominant note, for it represents old age, the old
age of a lonely, weary woman who knows what it is
to want the bare necessities of life, yet has now
reached the stage when she has ceased to wish for
anything. It is a most characteristic specimen of
the master’s mature period, in which he reached the
very zenith of his power of expressing spiritual
truth. In the gloomy grey twilight of the dreary,
desolate sand-dunes a tall, bony woman, every

BY WILLIAM MARIS

SUMMER LANDSCAPE