Landscapes. Émile Michel

went to Rome at the age of twenty-two, and there was especially influenced. Curious to search out new paths, he delighted in discovering the most solitary and picturesque spots where nature had freely put forth her wealth of beauty. Plants with large leaves are generally to be found in the foreground of his pictures; hop, ivy and wild vines climb up the trunks of the trees and fall in thick garlands from the branches. The artist’s kindliness won for him the friendship of his numerous fellow artists of the foreign colony in Rome. This, no doubt, accounts for the reputation he won and the important place his compatriots continue to attribute to him in the history of art, for certainly his own talent does not suffice to account for the rank assigned to him. His name is, nevertheless, the only one we can give as a landscapist of the German school down to the Romanticism of the nineteenth century. This school seems to have foundered completely during the period of the religious wars and the internal strife which so long disturbed the tranquillity of the whole of Germany.

      Chapter 3 Dutch Landscapists

      Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn), Landscape with an Obelisk (detail), 1638.

      Oil on wood, 55 × 71.5 cm.

      Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

      Paul Bril, Stag Hunt, c.1590–1595.

      Oil on canvas, 105 × 137 cm.

      Musée du Louvre, Paris.

      Joachim Wtewael, Perseus and Andromeda, 1611.

      Oil on canvas, 180 × 150 cm.

      Musée du Louvre, Paris.

      The School of Utrecht and the “Italianisers”

      With the genius of the Van Eycks, oil painting, as we have seen, first flourished in Northern countries with incomparable brilliancy. We cannot, however, either before or immediately after them, speak of a Dutch School distinct from the early Flemish School. During the first years of the seventeenth century there were marked differences between the artistic aims of Flanders and of the Netherlands. The entire country had risen against the foreign tyranny and was endeavouring to shake off the Spanish yoke. The struggle in the Southern provinces was neither as intense nor as stubborn as in those of the North. Whilst the former accepted the government to which for long afterwards they were subject, the others would not agree to any arrangement and would not lay down their arms until they had secured their complete independence. With this political division, a separation also took place between the two schools, which had hitherto been united. Faithful to its old traditions, the Flemish School considered Antwerp as its principal centre. The Dutch School, on the other hand, inaugurated a new and quite original art under very special conditions.