Arts

Dutch discoveries

David Wakefield

The Hague School: Dutch masters of the 19th century (Royal Academy)

It is rare nowadays to find an exhibition devoted to some totally undiscovered theme or school of painting. This can, for- tunately, be said of the exhibition of 19th- century Dutch painting, The Hague School, now at the Royal Academy (until 10 July) which even specialised art-historians — who usually have seen everything and know everything — are likely to find unfamiliar. Many of the artists whose names figure most prominently, Israels, Weissenbruch, Artz, Maris, Anton Mauve, are virtually unknown to the average English art-lover, and yet they were clearly men of con- siderable stature. The Dutch themselves must take the credit for this effort of rediscovery. The catalogue produced by a team of scholars is a tribute to their in- dustry, with full and detailed biographical information on the artists concerned as well as useful introductory essays on the general significance of Dutch painting in the 19th

century. The ordinary visitor, however, is likely to find it far too cumbersome. The handlist, fortunately, is perfectly adequate for enjoyment of the exhibition.

The painting of the Hague School im- mediately invites comparison with the much

better known and loved school of Dutch 17th-century art, popularised above all by Fromentin's incomparable book Les Maltres d'Autrefois (1876). Nobody understood better than Fromentin, a

novelist and practising artist of some distinction, the subtle compound of realism and poetry in Dutch painting, its faithful mirror-like reflection of an entire civilisa- tion. But the 19th-century Hague School in this exhibition is by no means a simple pastiche of its earlier counterpart.

The themes in both schools are basically identical: trees, windmills, polders, canals, stagnant ponds, windswept dunes and the cold grey North Sea, providing the setting for the dull monotonous lives of the cot- tagers and fishermen who merge into the landscape with a kind of passive self- effacement. But the treatment of these themes, their underlying feeling, is somehow different. Whereas most Dutch art in the 17th century (with the notable ex- ception of Rembrandt) is cheerful, imper- sonal and curiously devoid of individual sentiment, these 19th-century artists place far greater emphasis on the emotional con- tent (Israels's 'The Cottage Madonna') and, sometimes, the tragedy (Israers's mon- umental `Fishermen Carrying a Drowned Man') of the scene. We are immediately aware of 19th-century humanitarianism at work, magnifying events into universal themes and extracting the maximum pathos from them. Here the works of Millet, Proudhon and Courbet spring to mind, in the same democratic egalitarian vein which dominated art, thought and letters throughout Europe in the mid-19th century. The shift in the social scale is re- flected in the fact that crude rustic cottages have mostly replaced the cool patrician interiors painted by Terborch and Metzu in the earlier period.

The Hague School's true affinity is of course with French 19th-century art. Some of these artists like Jacob Maris and Anton Mauve lived for a while in France, exhibited there and were deeply impressed by the painters of the Barbizon School, whose perception of nature coincided so closely with their own. One member of the Hague School, Bilders, wrote after seeing the works of Diaz, Rousseau, Troyon, Dupre, Courbet and Millet at the Salon of 1860: 'I saw paintings there such that I had never dreamed of, in which I found all that my

Spectator 18 June 1983 heart could desire . . . Solitude, peace, gravity and, above all, an inexplicable in- timacy with Nature which struck me in all these paintings.' This relationship between the two schools is so close that for nearly every one of the Dutch paintings here a French equivalent can be found: with Bosboom's church in- teriors (also indebted to Emanuel de Witte) we think of similar scenes by Granet and Isabey, Israels's 'Fishermen' reminds us of Jules Breton, Le Poittevin and (as the catalogue suggests), of Courbet's 'Burial at Ornans', while many of Israels's genre scenes like the very moving painting 'Grow- ing Old', showing an old peasant woman warming her hands over a fire, are strongly suggestive of Millet's tragic vision of life.

The single artist who — to my mind „—

stands out above all the rest is J. H• Weissenbruch, a superb landscape painter, combining in his technique some of Courbet's heavy use of impasto with Corot's superb tonal clarity. These lessons he applies with great success to the Dutch landscape of canals and windmills in his work by any of athne Trekvliet' —and, t' aancoutstanding k

in a more

lyrical vein, in the beautiful 'Souvenir of Haarlem' bathed in a Corotesque penum- bra. When, however, he came to paint a corner of France, a typical river scene at Montigny-sur-Loing, the result is somehow drab Pissarro iddwloacnks bthaevespgen sparkle which Corot or The overall impression created by the ex- hibition is one of muted colours, of sub- dued greys, browns and dull reds. All this, no doubt, has something to do with Dutc.f, geography and nationality — the actual di ferences of eyesight and visual perceptioll which explain why a painting by a Dutch ar- tist never quite looks like one by a French artist, even when their themes are identical. Training, of course, contributes a lot but „ cannot explain everything, least of all wn_Y certain artists show a preference for certain colours and range of tones. Perhaps we should re-consider for a mo ment Taine's influential but now ' ,.e discredited environmental theory era'', milieu, moment'), fully expounded in nP Philosophie de l'Art published between. 1865 and 1869. In the section devoted to all, in the Low Countries Taine shows hovs uc‘h factors as the flat horizons of theh n landscape, the humidity of the atmosphere and the ever-presence of water all influei ed the perception of the Dutch artist _ acid help to explain the particular choice of rit.' palette. Unfortunately Tainerigidity app which

own theory with a systematic ._nt

seemed to rule out such an inconvencicn_ person as the individual painter, rediu.c i to him with relentless determinist log membership of a 'school'. But there we The fact that artists are shaped bas h

y important element of truth in this t the

atmosphere things, the scenes and the atmfut.ife around them may be a statement o. h tion. of paintings represented inillutmniisneaxten. the vious, but it may also help