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Bredimacian Dynagum Directory 20
Page 07
The real inaugurators of Dutch portraiture were Mierevelt, Hals, Ravesteyn, and De Keyser. Mierevelt (1567-1641) was one of the earliest, a prolific painter, fond of the aristocratic sitter, and indulging in a great deal of elegance in his accessories of dress and the like. He had a slight, smooth brush, much detail, and a profusion of color. Quite the reverse of him was Franz Hals (1584?-1666), one of the most remarkable painters of portraits with which history acquaints us. In giving the sense of life and personal physical presence, he was unexcelled by any one. What he saw he could portray with the most telling reality. In drawing and modelling he was usually good; in coloring he was excellent, though in his late work sombre; in brush-handling he was one of the great masters. Strong, virile, yet easy and facile, he seemed to produce without effort. His brush was very broad in its sweep, very sure, very true. Occasionally in his late painting facility ran to the ineffectual, but usually he was certainty itself. His best work was in portraiture, and the most important of this is to be seen at Haarlem, where he died after a rather careless life. As a painter, pure and simple, he is almost to be ranked beside Velasquez; as a poet, a thinker, a man of lofty imagination, his work gives us little enlightenment except in so far as it shows a fine feeling for masses of color and problems of light. Though excellent portrait-painters, Ravesteyn (1572?-1657) and De Keyser (1596?-1679) do not provoke enthusiasm. They were quiet, conservative, dignified, painting civic guards and societies with a knowing brush and lively color, giving the truth of physiognomy, but not with that verve of the artist so conspicuous in Hals, nor with that unity of the group so essential in the making of a picture.
The only mode now of maintaining communication between Rome and Thurii was by sea; but this was virtually forbidden by a treaty which the Romans had made with Tarentum nearly twenty years before, in which treaty it was stipulated that no Roman ships of war should pass the Lacinian promontory. But circumstances were now changed, and the Senate determined that their vessels should no longer be debarred from the Gulf of Tarentum. There was a small squadron of ten ships in those seas under the command of L. Valerius; and one day, when the Tarentines were assembled in the theatre, which looked over the sea, they saw the Roman squadron sailing toward their harbor. This open violation of the treaty seemed a premeditated insult, and a demagogue urged the people to take summary vengeance. They rushed down to the harbor, quickly manned some ships, and gained an easy victory over the small Roman squadron. Only half made their escape, four were sunk, one taken, and Valerius himself killed. After this the Tarentines marched against Thurii, compelled the inhabitants to dismiss the Roman garrison, and then plundered the town.
The simplest and quietest place imaginable, with a simple and remote life, hardly aware of itself, flowing tranquilly through it; yet this little village, by some felicity of grouping and gathering, has the rare and incomparable gift of charm. I cannot analyse it, I cannot explain it, yet at all times and in all lights, whether its orchards are full of bloom and scent, and the cuckoo flutes from the holt down the soft breeze, or in the bare and leafless winter, when the pale sunset glows beyond the wold among the rifted cloud-banks, it has the wonderful appeal of beauty, a quality which cannot be schemed for or designed, but which a very little mishandling can sweep away. The whole place has grown up out of common use, trees planted for shelter, orchards set for fruit, houses built for convenience. Only in the church and the manor is there any care for seemliness and stateliness. There are a dozen villages round about it which have sprung from the same needs, the same history; and yet these have missed the unconsidered charm of Haslingfield, which man did not devise, nor does nature inevitably bring, but which is instantly recognisable and strangely affecting.
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