Studio: international art (55.1912)

The Van Randwijk Collection—II

The van randwijk collec-
tion.— II. THE BARBIZON
SCHOOL. BY MAX EISLER

In my first article on this collection published in
the last number of The Studio I dealt with some
of the chief works by members of The Hague school
which it contains. The present article concerns
the painters of the Barbizon school, who, as already
indicated, are represented by some fine examples.
But before passing to these works I should like
to refer briefly to two painters who may be re-
garded as connecting-links between The Hague
and Barbizon groups—J. B. Jongkind (1819-1899)
and Willem Roelofs (1822-1897). The former is
represented by a painting in which a sailing-vessel
figures and which, though dated 1870, stands out
among its neighbours of The Hague and Barbizon
schools by reason of its impressionistic freedom; in
its pellucid rendering of light it rather anticipates
Monet, yet characteristically Dutch traits are pre-
sent. With the name of Roelofs, who is represented
by a woody landscape, the question of modern
French influence on the northern school is closely
bound up. He himself when at Brussels came
very much under this influence, which he carried
to the group of painters who haunted the wooded
region of Oosterbeek in Holland, where the doctrines
of Fontainebleau were transplanted on to Dutch soil.
Himself a stern and rigorous seeker, with a great
admiration for Rousseau, his mission at Oosterbeek
proved disappointing, especially to those of a more
romantic temperament.

Diaz’s Forest of Fontainebleau affords an excellent
stepping-stone to the wooded landscapes of the
Oosterbeek painters. From the kindred essays of
that school it is evident that the breadth of vision and
depth of “ Stimmung ” which characterise this work
have left their mark. Such later masters of The
Hague school as came within the range of this circle
quickly and completely emancipated themselves
from its influence, and the character of the Ooster-
beek landscape facilitated this process, for real
forest scenery is altogether exceptional in Holland,
whose peculiarities of atmosphere are to be studied
only in the open country. Whatever features the
work of the two schools has in common are not of
great significance ; here and there one may discern,
amid differences due to nationality and personality,
a kindred conception of nature, but this coincidence
has its origin no doubt in their common study of
the old Dutch masters.

The juxtaposition of works by Rousseau and the
eldest Maris, by Dupre, Troy on, and Willem

Maris, furnishes opportunity for examining the
relations of The Hague and Barbizon schools. In
the landscape of Rousseau, a work of heroic pro-
portions, reminiscences of Ruysdael and Cuyp are
revealed, but there is equally manifest the intense
penetration of the seeker after new truths, the
impetuous appeal of the plastic artist whose pre-
occupation is wholly with the interpretation of
earthly power; while the world of Maris is the
broad expanse of the heaven, the source of all
that is lovely beneath its canopy and its crowning
glory. This appreciation of atmosphere and light
effects, a peculiarly Dutch characteristic, and the
very life of The Hague school, is unequalled. Then,
further, Maris’s space (Raum) is more precisely
thought out, more coherent and definite, his colour
more resolutely brought under the influence of
light, and the tone derived more immediately from
the atmospheric conditions. By the side of their
common ancestors, the old Dutch masters, Rous-
seau seems almost more conservative than their
lineal descendant, who, however, is more akin to
them in all that concerns the specifically Dutch in-
terpretation of landscape. Troyon’s Cattle going
to Pasture, Dupre’s Willows, and Willem Maris’s
Summer Landscape suggest similar comparisons.
The first-named work is executed in a very delicate
scheme of colour—the sky of a deep blue, laden
with warm vapour, graduating to a pale blue in the
distant horizon, then a strip of ripe yellow cornfield
with a variety of greens and browns in the fore-
ground. The chief interest centres in the ad-
vancing bull, a white animal with brown spots;
this is modelled with convincing power, and is
reminiscent of Potter and still more of A. van de
Velde. The modern Dutchman, on the other
hand, deviates far more boldly from the old master
prototype, and in dealing with the problem of
atmosphere betrays his Dutch breeding. In Dupre’s
picture the fine transitions of colour seem to be
gradations of a single tone. The essential contrast
with Willem Maris’s work lies in the pulverulent
glow of the light by which the meadow is suffused
and in the massiveness of the material details,
which in all the landscapes of The Hague school are
softened, that is, represented under atmospheric
conditions; while a point in which they are in
accord is the treatment of the mirroring water
surface, which in Dupre’s picture produces a fasci-
nating effect by the play of the metallic blue of the
sky and the brown shadows of the willows.

With the pictures of Corot and Daubigny we
get our last important insight into the relations
between the two schools—as regards mood,

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