Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century. Gerharda Hermina Marius

when his horse was wounded at Bauterzen, 12 August 1831, a picture which, like Pieneman's, may be looked upon as a sort of continuation of the doelen- or corporation-pieces. But this interlude had no influence upon the remainder of his work. The culture which he had acquired during his stay in Paris and his Italian journey had gradually alienated him from his own nationality. A long stay in Italy has never proved other than detrimental to any of our painters. It simply meant that they returned home seeing things from a point of view quite at variance with our national feeling. Ecclesiastical art brought into a Protestant country by a Protestant Dutchman must needs become theatrical. And in technique also Kruseman was doomed to fall short; for, though his ideas were formed upon the Italian masters of the Renascence and upon Raphael in particular, he lacked the feeling and the technical knowledge necessary to emulate the peculiar qualities of those masters. All that we can say, therefore, is that Kruseman knew how, at a given moment, to give to a certain public exactly what it demanded, namely, an ideal conception of biblical figures, devoid of sensual charm or passion. And the result was that, although theologians wrote in indignant terms to protest that this great man was indulging in anachronism in his biblical subjects and in spite of virulent criticism, he enjoyed a fame so universal as to exceed that ever known by Jozef Israëls, Jacob Maris, or even by Hendrik Willem Mesdag, who was so much more easily understood outside his own painting-room than either of the others.

      Nor can this be called unnatural. The pictorial art of the Pienemans, of the Krusemans and, in particular, of Cornelis Kruseman was a direct echo of their time. As an historical painter in a period of newly-awakened national consciousness, Pieneman was the right man in the right place and he owes his reputation to his delineation of Quatre-Bras and the battle of Waterloo, which set the seal upon our liberty and renewed our compact with the House of Orange, to which the episode of the wounded Crown-prince lent an emotional side.

      Kruseman, who had begun with a similar subject, devoted himself later on, after the peace had restored the ancestral Calvinism in a stricter form, mainly to the painting of Bible subjects, which were greatly admired for their "idealistic conception," to use the then prevailing phrase so popular in pious circles:

      "Probably no people has at any time been more devoted to home-reading of an edifying character than our Protestant fellow-countrymen," says A. C. Kruseman in his History of the Book-trade.

      Cornelis Kruseman's phlegmatic ideas were in the taste of the day: any passion would have disturbed the tranquillity of a view of life which demanded that everything should be gentle, pious and noble. The seventeenth-century paintings and prints, selected by a few, were thought low and common compared with the engravings published in the elegant almanacks of those days and accompanied by letterpress by serious authors. And the scenes of Italian peasant-life, the Neapolitan women, the pifferari, with their dark features, their sharp outlines against a blue sky, had what was known as a certain "nobility" of line which formed a great contrast with the vulgar Dutch people, the vulgar old-Dutch paintings, and which pleased the ladies.

       The Three Sisters - Cornelis Kruseman (The property of Mr. J. D. Kruseman, the Hague)

       And yet it was not only the women who formed the ranks of Kruseman's worshippers; these included practically everybody: the King, the Queen and, more, the painters. In connection with his St. John the Baptist, a painting which he had executed for the most part during his second stay in Rome, the Hague artists united to offer him a lasting memorial of the admiration with which they were seized at the contemplation of that work. This testimonial took the form of a silver cup, with cover and dish, beautifully designed and chased in the style of the sixteenth century and engraved with a suitable inscription in rhyme immortalizing the homage paid by the Dutch school to Kruseman after seeing his St. John, while a vellum document with Gothic illuminations spoke in well-chosen words of the painter's imperishable fame.

      Public favour is fickle. The lasting duration which the inscription prophesied was fulfilled neither figurative nor literally. Most of his great works no longer exist. Thanks to his habit of continual repainting Kruseman was not easily pleased with himself and of constant treatment with some siccative or other, a process to which perhaps he did not give enough care, it happened that the paint, which was never quite dry under the surface, began to sink, so that the upper portion became unrecognizable, and, while the hands of the Baptist of the picture, at that time in the collection of King William II., had dropped to the ground, the head hung where the hands should be and great lumps of paint were heaped up at the bottom against the frame. The case is not without parallel: the same thing is told of English painters insufficiently acquainted with the secrets of their craft. Only a few of Kruseman's pictures escaped this fate, including the four religious paintings in Mrs. Labouchère's château at Zeist, his best work; a portrait of Three Sisters; and some of his other portraits and smaller pictures.

      But the lasting fame that makes us mourn what is lost the more we admire what has been preserved, this also was denied him. His was not an art that excelled in artistic merit or originality of ideas: it owed its existence and its success to the conception of the subject, which, being the product of his time, was bound to die with the spirit of that time.

       His chief pupils were Jan Adam Kruseman, his cousin, in whose studio Jozef Israëls was to work in later years, Vintcent, who, although he died young, turned with all his soul towards the romantic movement, Jan Hendrik and Johan Philip Koelman, of whom the latter was to prove the last adherent to classicism, David Bles, whom one would not expect to find here, Herman ten Kate, De Poorter, Elink Sterk and Ehnle.

       Ada of Holland - J. A. Kruseman (Teyler's Institute, Haarlem)

       Jan Adam Kruseman, born at Haarlem in 1804, is best known as a portrait-painter. His portraits were praised as good likenesses and excellent pictures. The fact is that, without showing the artistry of the old Dutchmen, they do impress us by their simplicity and a certain style. Jan Kruseman did not try to complete his education in Italy, but, after the departure of his master, Cornells, for that country, worked for two years in Brussels under the great David and went from there to Paris, whence he returned in 1825 and made a start with The Invention of Printing by Laurens Koster. He also began to paint corporation-pieces for the Baptist community at Haarlem and the Amsterdam Leper Hospital. Although, in his historical and biblical subjects, we are able to recognize a love of pronounced forms showing the influence of David or perhaps even more of Ingres, he possessed neither the vigour nor the tenacity of these painters. On the other hand, there was something in his colouring and his modelling that was more free and natural than in the elder Kruseman's and yet not to so great an extent that these pieces can be valued by posterity apart from historical associations. The case is different with his portraits, although in these he is terribly uneven. His simple and natural portrait of Adriaan van der Hoop, his Portrait of Himself in the museum at Haarlem, conceived in the style of Ingres, and a portrait of a more pictorial character exhibited under his name in the same gallery might have been painted by three different artists.

      He had a great name as a painter and was especially valued as a portrait-painter, in which capacity, according to his contemporaries, he made thirty thousand guilders a year. He led an excellent life in Amsterdam, was a jolly companion, kind to his brother-artists, helping them when he could, and later, as director of the Academy, a zealous teacher. Together with Tétar van Elven, he founded the society known as Arti et Amicitiae and, with it, the Artists' Widows and Orphans Fund. He died in 1862.

      The best-kown of his biblical subjects is The Widow's Mite popularized through Steelink's engraving. De Genestet wrote a poem on it and the grave conception we do not know the painting itself and popular subject made it a favourite ornament for the sitting-room. He had as little romanticism in him as the elder Kruseman; only his ideas were a little less uncouth, less prejudiced, less hard, though quite as passionless.

       Of all Cornelis Kruseman's pupils, the Koelmans alone remained faithful to the principles which their teacher proclaimed. Johan Philip Koelman (1818-1893) stood