by G. Palma; Female Portrait, by A. Allori; Landscape, by F. Lauri; two Landscapes with Pilgrims, Monks in a Grotto and Capuchins in a Grotto, by A. Magnasco; two Ruins, by L. Carlevaris; and Prometheus and Sisyphus, by L. Giordano.
Of unknown Italian artists of the sixteenth century, the subjects are:
God the Father and Holy Spirit, Landscape with Mary Magdalen, Landscape with St. Paul and the Hermit, Death of Abel, Venus, Dalilah, St. John the Evangelist, Ecce Homo, Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, and The Musicians.
Other Foreign Pictures in the Mauritshuis.—France is represented only by a portrait by J. A. Aved, A Group of Merchants by S. Bourdon, and two ideal landscapes by C. Vernet. The Spanish school is represented by a portrait by Velasquez, a Virgin and Child by Murillo, a Magdalen by M. Cereso, and a landscape and a portrait by unknown artists. The German artists are scarcely more numerous. There are two portraits by Holbein and three others of his school, three portraits by B. Beham, an Italian landscape by J. H. Roos, three portraits by J. F. A. Tischbein, and four Biblical and one mythological pictures by H. Rottenhamer. The subjects of these are: The Meeting of David and Abigail, St. Philip Baptizing the Eunuch, The Rest in Egypt, Christ Delivering Souls from Purgatory, and The Fall of Phaeton. The meagre list of foreign works also includes two portraits by the Danish artist, J. G. Ziesenis.
Strength and Weakness of the Gallery.—The strength of The Hague Gallery lies mainly in its portraits, either single or in groups. Of these there are considerably more than a hundred; of genre pictures there are about seventy, and of landscape more than sixty. There are nearly fifty Biblical and religious subjects, and more than thirty taken from pagan mythology. The Gallery is weak in historical pictures, of which there are only seventeen. Only seven canvases represent the great marine painters; and the pictures of birds, flowers and fruits, and still life are comparatively few.
The student naturally turns first to the great pictures that have a world-wide reputation. The two most famous are undoubtedly Paul Potter's Bull and Rembrandt's Lesson in Anatomy.
Paul Potter's Bull.—The picture represents an enormous black and white bull standing on a hillock beneath two trees. Beneath the trees lie a cow, a sheep, and a lamb, and behind the trunks stand a ram and a shepherd. An immense meadow, on which cattle are grazing, stretches away to the dim horizon, where the buildings of a town are barely visible. In the broad expanse of sky a bird soars with outspread wings. The bull is proud and defiant, with silky hide and loose dewlap, and stands with firmly planted feet. His eye is savage. This picture has been the subject of much criticism: the figures of the man, the sheep, and the lamb have been condemned by most critics, while the ram's horns have been called "a splendid piece of sculpture," and the head of the cow "the gem of the whole work." The face of the cow is marvellous. The eyes, and the wet and dripping nose and mouth, rivet the spectator's gaze. He fancies he smells the grass-laden breath of the animal, and sees her jaw begin to move as she chews the cud. "No painter ever concentrated so much life and truthful expression in the face of a ruminant," remarks a critic. Strange, then, that the fawn-colored body and crumpled leg are hard and wooden.
The Bull was painted in 1647, when Paul Potter was but twenty-two years of age, and was living in Amsterdam and Haarlem. The picture was purchased in 1749 for 630 florins, and in 1795 was carried by the French to Paris and placed in the Louvre, where it was ranked as the fourth most valuable painting—the others being Raphael's Transfiguration, Domenichino's Communion of St. Jerome, and Titian's Martyrdom of St. Peter. The Dutch government offered 60,000 florins to Napoleon for its restoration.
The Mirrored Cow.—A more beautiful picture, and greatly preferred by most critics to the Bull, is the Mirrored Cow, known generally by the French title, La Vache qui se mire. This was painted in 1648, and represents a beautiful landscape on a hot summer day. The meadows are flooded with sunshine; a limpid pool on the border of a forest is shown in the foreground, where cows, goats, and sheep are lying or standing under the shade of the trees. Two cows and a sheep stand in the water and are reflected there; one cow is drinking, and the other has her back to the spectator and is idly standing in the mud. Boys and men are swimming or playing on the banks, and two have evidently finished their bath. On the right is a farmhouse with some cows. One of these an old woman is milking, and a man stands by with his arm over the cow's back. In the middle distance a coach and six horses with lackeys is seen, and in the background the spires and towers of Rijswick are basking in the sunlight. The castle of Binkhorst is visible, and Delft lies on the horizon.
Criticism of these two Pictures.—Burger very wittily said that La Vache qui se mire was a chef d'œuvre, and not a hors d'œuvre, like the Bull. And Sir Joshua Reynolds noted: "Cattle finely painted by Potter, remarkable for the strong reflection of one of them in the water: dated 1648." "How bright, how sunny is this landscape!" exclaims Dr. Bredius. "How splendidly are all these animals drawn and modelled! The whole composition is beautiful and full of charm." It is painted in the small size which Potter usually preferred, and is one of his greatest creations.
Other Pictures by Potter, his Father, and Van der Helst.—The third picture by Potter, painted four years later, is also ranked among his best works. Like the two others it represents cattle in a meadow.
A portrait of Paul Potter by Van der Helst, painted shortly before his death (January 27, 1654), hangs near his masterpieces. It is the only work by which Van der Helst is represented in The Hague Gallery.
A picture by Paul Potter's father, Pieter Symonsz Potter, Shepherds with their Troops, signed and dated 1638, is owned by the Mauritshuis, but a better work is his Straw-Cutter in the Rijks.
Rembrandt.—The Hague Gallery is particularly rich in works by Rembrandt (1606–69). The Rijks Museum is the place to study the great productions of his middle and last periods; but The Hague Gallery is strong in works of his first period, owning no less than five painted during the first ten years of his career.
The Anatomy Lesson.—First, let us look at the most important work of Rembrandt in this gallery, The Anatomy Lesson by Dr. Tulp (1632), which made Rembrandt the most sought-after painter of his time.
Rembrandt was barely settled in Amsterdam and had painted only a few pictures there when the famous Amsterdam surgeon, Dr. Nicholaes Tulp, gave him the order to represent him with his students at an operation for the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, to be hung on the walls of their dissecting room with other works of a similar nature, such as the great anatomy pictures by Aert Pietersz (1603), by Thomas de Keijser (1618), by Claes Elias (1625), two by Mierevelt (1617), and one by Vosmaer. Rembrandt's work overshadowed them all. There is a resemblance to Vosmaer's picture and also to that of De Keijser too striking to be accidental; but Rembrandt's work shows the master's genius in the style, the arrangement of the figures, and the illumination. Bode says:
"Instead of an accidental arrangement of single persons, a masterly rounded-out composition has been created, in the happiest way, and at the most important moment, when at a point in the lecture to the learned anatomists the interest is concentrated on the body. The circumstances and the way it is painted deprive the picture of all disgust. In contrast with his predecessors, Rembrandt has painted his doctors, not as if they were having their photographs taken and gazing at the spectator, but in the most natural way—some looking at the body and some at the lecturing Dr. Tulp, Tulp himself quiet, and explaining his subject with the greatest authority. The body is painted in a masterly manner and the portraits are beyond all praise."
Physicians portrayed in the Anatomy Lesson.—On a paper held by Hartman Harmansz, the names of the physicians are inscribed: his own; Matthijs Kalkoen, who is leaning forward; Jakob de Wit, almost in profile, with extended neck, looking with extreme attention, with his collar almost touching the head of the corpse; below him, Jakob Blok, with fixed glance and furrowed brow; above Blok, Frans van Loenen,