Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century. Gerharda Hermina Marius

day of his death. He painted many portraits and was, according to Vosmaer, who knew him in Rome, "a great artistic expert, a philosophical spirit, a most important man, yes, the type of a certain sort of artist: practical, experienced and positive in his execution, he is, at the same time, by nature a philosopher, whose deep-felt artistic speculations find utterance in fluent words and thoughts." Jan Daniel (1831-1857), a younger brother, the talented pupil of J. B. Tom the animal-painter, made excellent studies of draught-oxen in the South, went on to paint Dutch pastures with cattle and gave cause to expect that, had he not died at the early age of twenty-six, he might have developed into an independent and accomplished landscape-painter.

      Johan Philip was born at the Hague and was brought up to his father's trade as a carpenter. He soon showed a taste for painting, studied under Kruseman and followed the latter to Rome, where he remained for fifteen years, painting, drawing and modelling. On his return to the Hague, he painted Roman scenes, some of them with all the delicacy of a miniaturist. Later, when he succeeded Van den Berg at the Academy, he was more of a sculptor and an architect than a painter. Vosmaer calls his draughtsmanship severe. In these latter days, we should be inclined rather to call it unfeeling, at once hard and slack. At a time of more widespread culture, his lack of depth and originality would have been more apparent. He had nothing whatever in common with our seventeenth century masters, who above all were good painters, as were the Hague landscape-painters after them. But, notwithstanding his theories, notwithstanding the complete set of thoughts, principles and opinions which he had acquired from the Italian masters, Koelman was great enough, as a teacher, to inspire independent pupils.

       Mr. A. Dieudonné van Baerle - J. A. Kruseman (The property of Dr. C. E. Daniëls, Amsterdam)

       The doom of classicism had come. No words, no theories are able to impede the progress of imperious life or to arrest the spirit of the age. Our country, in its turn, underwent the influence of the romantic movement, which came to us viâ Belgium and showed itself first in literature. The painters followed in the wake of the poets and novelists. But it was essentially a foreign movement and, therefore, imperfect in its manifestations.

      Henri Beyle, in his Histoire de la peinture en Italie, says that what our soul asks of art is the portrayal of the passions and not of deeds provoked by the passions. And it was just this passion, which, in literature, was destined not to flame up until after 1870, that these natures were unable to render, either because they were over-polished by education or because they considered it incompatible with the calm belief of the time. Even the religious contests, surely the outcome of the most impetuous passion that could take fire in the Netherlands, had become dissolved in a calm, pious, conscientious life.

      When all is said, did not all the romanticism of that time, with one or two great exceptions, consist rather in the painting of deeds provoked by passions than in the portrayal of passion itself? And did not the Dutchmen of that time lack just the inspiring vigour with which a Delacroix translated romanticism into the purely pictorial, while, on the other hand, they lacked the expressive line with which the German painters conveyed the emotional side of romanticism? The passion of the first was to be kindled with us later in the bursts of colour of the Hague school, in the visions of beauty of Matthijs Maris, to blaze most brightly in that not yet fully understood visionary Vincent van Gogh. The views of the second were shared (although the Germans showed more nervous lines) by that Dutch Parisian, Ary Scheffer, the artist in whom the weak, but also the emotional aspect of romanticism found a more than enthusiastic spokesman.