Landscapes. Émile Michel
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excellence of the Van Eycks is most evident when they are compared with their predecessors. It is none the less striking when they are compared with the painters who succeeded them. The charm of naturalness, the force and frankness of expression which we admire in them, is not to be met with in the same degree in the period that followed. They seemed to reach perfection at once, and to fix with decisive authority the limits of their art. With them and their immediate successors, Rogier van der Weyden (c.1399–1464) and Hans Memling (c.1430–1494), terminates that initial period of Flemish art in all its freshness. The impressions it interpreted were honestly felt, and there was no touch of conventionalism to modify its frankness. Subsequently the very genius of these early masters hampered their successors and paralysed the originality of their talent. Whether they yielded to involuntary reminiscences, or whether, on the contrary, they tried to refrain from following the example of their predecessors, an unconscious mannerism crept into their works and gave them a somewhat affected and artificial character. Following Gerard David’s example, some of his contemporaries were induced to attempt a too detailed imitation of nature, whilst others endeavoured to seek for themselves new paths in the domain of the fantastic and marvellous. Hieronymus van Aken (c.1450–1516), better known as Bosch, is celebrated for his Temptations, Hells, and the diabolical visions which were his specialty, but his originality is evident when he restricts himself to the representations of nature. In one of his most remarkable works, the triptych entitled The Adoration of the Magi, the landscape, which stretches away beyond the cradle, is rendered with great detail.
By the firmness of the drawing and the truthfulness of the colour, he has expressed very forcibly the character of one of those wild districts, whose poetry had not hitherto tempted the brush of his predecessors. A stream of water, overhung by beautiful trees, is to be seen, and, farther away, uncultivated land sparsely covered with grass.
In time the taste for painting gradually became more general throughout the Netherlands, but, attracted by the ever-increasing prestige of the Italian Renaissance, Flemish artists began to cross the mountains in search of their idyll and to complete their education. As a result of this migration toward the South we see the originality of the old national art of the Netherlands gradually disappear. By coming into contact with foreign art, it lost that sincerity which had been its great force. All attempts to conciliate aspirations so contrary, notwithstanding the talent of those who made them, resulted in hybrid productions devoid both of style and naturalness.
Joachim Patinir, Landscape with St. Jerome, 1516–1517.
Oil on wood, 74 × 91 cm.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Saint John the Baptist in the Desert, c.1490.
Oil on wood, 42 × 28 cm.
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.
Nevertheless, the name of Bernard van Orley deserves to be remembered among the painters we have just mentioned. After his return from Italy his talent certainly developed and was unique unto himself. But it is not in his pictures that we must look for the best proofs of his originality as a landscapist. Van Orley was a decorator of the first rank and, together with his designs for the beautiful St. Gudule windows, those of several series of tapestries, particularly Maximilian’s hunting scenes, deserves mention for the breadth with which the landscape is treated. In the series of the Twelve Months, some panels of which are in the Louvre, there are various hunting episodes which give a faithful picture of the country around Brussels, Soignie Forest, Tervuren, Septfontaines, with the castles, convents, pools, or rivers in the neighbourhood. The plants and shrubs skilfully grouped in the foreground of these compositions testify to a scrupulous study of the local flora, which has also furnished the motives of the designs of the borders. But such exactness is quite exceptional with the Flemish painters of this period.
We must mention Joachim Patenier, who was for a long time regarded by critics as the inventor of landscape painting as a separate branch of art sufficient in itself. Of him, who is said to have been Herri met de Bles’ master, many fables have been told. There is, however, nothing among the few certain dates and facts that we know of his life to justify the reputation for drunkenness and disorder attributed to him by certain chroniclers. He went at an early age to live in Antwerp, and in 1515 was a member of the Guild there. Albrecht Dürer, who was travelling in the Netherlands, was present at his induction, which took place in 1521. Dürer was celebrated greatly by Patenier, who appreciated the young artist’s talent. As a souvenir of his visit, Dürer not only painted his portrait, but also left him several sketches of little figures for his compositions.
Patenier frequently placed his brush at the service of his fellow artists. He was one of the first to set the example of those collaborations which subsequently became so frequent. For several of his fellow artists he painted the backgrounds of their pictures. His ability and also his care and conscientiousness in the execution of his work would serve, if necessary, to refute the accusations against him.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Parable of the Blind Men, 1568.
Tempera on canvas, 85.5 × 154 cm.
Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples.
The district in which Patenier was born no doubt contributed to develop his love of nature. He was surrounded by somewhat weird scenery but well calculated to delight a landscapist of those times. The situation of Dinant on the banks of the Meuse; the rapid course of the river, and such variety of scenery within so restricted a space, was just what the painters of that period delighted to depict. Far from endeavouring to simplify this already complex nature, Patenier seems to deliberately add to its strangeness by the crowd of heterogeneous details that he brings together. We have the sea; steep mountains; lonely, inaccessible rocks crowned by towns or dwellings; perspectives which stretch out on every side, and streams of water. In spite of this packing-in of detail, he does not appear to consider that landscape can be of sufficient interest alone to make it the exclusive subject of his pictures. He thinks it necessary to introduce episodes into them, but he restricts, more than his predecessors, the number of his figures. These supply him with titles. Thus we have the Baptism of Christ and other episodes that his predecessors had already treated and which, for long afterwards, were painted by his successors.
Patenier, therefore, was certainly not an innovator. He attempted, with more success than anyone else up to that date, to increase the importance of landscape and to reduce that of the figures, though without eliminating them entirely. He was the first to adopt that systematic distribution of the three tones which is to be seen in his landscapes; the warm brown for the foreground to give relief, the more or less decided greens for the less important parts, and the blue for the distances. This distribution, in accordance with the laws of aerial perspective, lends itself to pretty contrasts. For a long time Flemish landscapists, no doubt following the example of the Venetians, had recourse to this method of obtaining effect which Patenier had inaugurated. We find traces of this method, more or less disguised, in all of them, and the exaggerated use of so simple an expedient gives a certain monotony to their work.
With the landscapists of the close of the sixteenth century, this defect is more particularly noticeable. It is to be seen in the works of Jan Bruegel the Elder. Another cause of uniformity which lessens the value of these artists is the choice of their favourite subjects. We have Earthly Paradise, The Tower of Babel, The Deluge, The Massacre of the Innocents, Orpheus Charming the Animals, Fairs, Battles, etc; all subjects which allow the artist to increase the number of his figures and animals at pleasure. They yielded to this current of routine and vogue with an almost submissive ease. The history of art gives us only too many instances of this kind. Instead of trying to find direct and individual inspirations in the country around them, most of them went to other lands, particularly to Italy, in search of impressions which were necessarily superficial and confused. Landscape painting of such a kind is purely decorative, and its various aspects, insufficiently characterised, are not calculated to appeal to us.
The Bruegels, Rubens, and Teniers
Notwithstanding