The Netherland galleries - being a history of the Dutch school of painting, illuminated and demonstrated by critical descriptions of the great paintings in the many galleries (1912) (14782147884)

Identifier: netherlandgaller00prey (find matches)
Title: The Netherland galleries : being a history of the Dutch school of painting, illuminated and demonstrated by critical descriptions of the great paintings in the many galleries
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Preyer, David C. (David Charles), 1861-1913
Subjects: Art museums Painting
Publisher: Boston : St. Botolph Society
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library



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ill all are imbuedwith his own never failing dignity of character.He always prefers character to beauty. His mensheads are often fine, his heads of old women ex-ceptionally so, only occasionally a passable Dutchmaiden, while his squalid Bathshebas and Susannascertainly were not painted with any lustful eye, oreven to extol the delicacy of line and form whichtend to prettiness. The artist saw beauty else-where. To him the ugliness of features and handsand of the nude body could be made expressiveof beauty as the vehicle of his vision of the actionof light with its glints of surprise, and of colourin its golden harmony of broken tints. What caredhe whether others were pleased, so long as his in-dependent mind had free scope to create beauty ashe saw it. And deep-seated in his nature was atrait, never wholly absent from any of his works,but especially noticeable in his biblical composi-tions — that of reverence. There is a serious spiritfelt in his work, lending such essential power to
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IRembran&t 65 his creations that even anachronistic details, or in-cidents which might turn the thoughtless to levity,are put out of obtrusive sight. Rembrandts spiri-tual side was not shaped by dogmatic tenet orchurchly creed. His intense humanism was rever-ent before the divine in nature, which he recognizedand worshipped. Every mental giant sooner or later becomes thevictim of diagnosis and analysis, and Rembrandtsindividuality has always been a tempting subjectfor the dissecting scalpel of the student of psy-chology. Eugene Fromentin, the only notablepainter who was also a good critic, has for longbeen regarded the best commentator on the Dutchmaster. In fact his penetrating, illuminating anal-ysis that Rembrandt was compact of two natures:one the realist, the other the idealist, has been tac-itly accepted by all that have come after him; evento the point where Fromentin claims that the wholesecret of Rembrandts art is found in the strugglebetween these natures, which this oth