RKD STUDIES

131 CLAAS BERCHEM.

... quite skillful painter, who is said to have been a pupil of Paul Potter, must, I think, rather have been a pupil of Palamedes. In any case, it was Palamedes he followed, and he also seems to have studied Wouwerman and the other soldier painters.

CLAAS BERCHEM. – Claas (1) or Nicolaas Berchem, usually considered one of the most important painters, is a much lesser artist than Philips Wouwerman.

There is no doubt that he is as technically proficient as anyone else; he is natural and strong in his earliest style of painting, in which he was inspired by the view of his country and his own feelings. No doubt he gained mastery and a more elevated style in Italy, – but became less simple. He benefited from being able to compose landscapes and rustic scenes, without looking at nature, but from chic, as they say in the studios, using the subjective process inaugurated by the noble and majestic school of Poussin and his acolytes, the Dughets.¹ Only, instead of pastiches of ancient Greek or Roman aspects, with here and there a building with columns, a few disrobed models or a man in a tunic, the Dutchman continued his pastorales, with a tree trunk, a few stones at the edge of a ford, and ...

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(1) He usually signed with a C as his initial, as can be seen in the signatures on numbers 17, 18, and 27 in the Paris Museum; and almost always it reads Berchem.²

132 MUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM.

... on the horizon, a line of blue mountains; for characters, a shepherd, covered with a goatskin, a peasant woman in a blue skirt, sitting on her donkey; always the same donkey and the same skirt, and the same goatskin on the back of the same shepherd. In other words, Berchem lost all individuality in Italy.³

In contrast, the Dutch masters who were not subject to this southern influence retained a personality all their own. In German we would say that they were attached to the objective method. Their starting point is always nature: they love it, they contemplate it, they study it, they are in intimate connection with it, and when they translate it, they imbue it with the feeling that has inspired them. They may always do more or less the same simple subjects, but they always add something new because they have experienced a different impression under a certain effect. To reality, scrupulously observed with a kind of calm passion, they add an interpretation keenly felt in contact with nature itself. They enliven the outer life with the fire of their own originality.

Is this what we call naturalism? This naturalism is certainly good.

This is the radical difference between Berchem and the true Dutchmen, between a master whose style has been adulterated by foreign influences and the masters of their own soil.

France, which in the visual arts has almost never been ...

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For G Netscher, p.122, see the de Kat collection.⁴

Le Ducq. See his masterpiece in the Rotterdam museum.⁵
Immerzeel says he painted the staffage in Dirk van Delen. He engraved, at the van Leijden sale, 10 prints 250 fl. In 1824 other prints at the sale of the count of Fries….⁶
It appears, moreover that he did animals - in the style of Potter? – see Darmstadt no. 302. A J. le Duc signed, representing an ox, a cow, some sheep.⁷

Berchem 1335 Dresden, signed Berighem 1649
Did he sign like that in his early style?⁸

133 CLAAS BERCHEM.

... been more than a reflection of Italy, preferred hybrid painters, tinged with Italianism, to artists who remained free of transalpine systems and all those dangerous methods which, instead of spontaneous poetry sprouting from nature when lovingly viewed, substituted stereotyped combinations based on reflective science. This is why Berchem, Karel du Jardin, the Boths,⁹ and in general those affiliated with the Bentveughels in Rome,¹⁰ have always been more appreciated and also much better known in France than Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch and other originals, who never left their country and are not very classical.

Holland has nothing to teach France about Chevalier Van der Werff, but it can reveal to France and people of Latin descent many new secrets about her purely indigenous little masters, and even about the genius of Rembrandt.

Berchem is perfectly familiar to French artists and enthusiasts, as the Louvre has assembled eleven paintings by this master.¹¹ The Amsterdam Museum has only seven; the Van der Hoop Museum, three; the Hague Museum, four; the Rotterdam Museum, two.¹² Sixteen in all for the public museums of Holland.

Some of those in Amsterdam are very noteworthy, and of fine quality, particularly a "Mountain landscape with shepherds and cattle ...

134 MUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM.

... (No. 18)"[207],¹³ and an "Italian Landscape, by a River (no. 21)" [208].¹⁴

The first shows a herd crossing a ford, with the shepherdess, the shepherd and two dogs; in front, a beautiful white bull is rearing; the group of animals is perfect. On the left, a peasant woman on her cow talks to the shepherdess; on that side, the landscape is open, with mountains in the background. On the right are pines and other tall trees. Signed in full: Berchem. f. 1656. On panel. Height 1 foot 3 inches; width 2 feet (1).

In the second, a woman in a yellow bodice and blue cloak seated on a white horse, shepherds, a bull, cows, sheep, a goat, a donkey await the ferry full of passengers returning from across the river. On the hilly terrain, a few trees, a few houses, a castle, a tower. A background of blue mountains. Morning effect. Very rich and very capital composition; very Italian, – too Italian even. Signed, no date. At least three and a half feet wide and over two and a half feet high (2).

Then follow: another Italian Landscape, evening effect, somewhat in the manner of Both [209];¹⁵ –Ruth and ...

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(1) Auction Mrs. van Heemskerk, 1770, The Hague, fl. 1,265 (new cat.).
(2) Auction Antonij Sijdervelt, 1766, 1,530 gulden; auction Mrs. Bicker, 1809, Amsterdam, 3,040 gulden (new cat.).

135 ADRIAAN VAN DE VELDE.

... Booz in a wheat field [210];¹⁶ figures of more than a foot well in proportion (1); – two Winter Views, rather peculiar, and which could well be by another master, almost in the style of Pieter Wouwerman (2) [211] [212];¹⁷ from the collection Govers, Rotterdam, 1827;¹⁸ h. 1 foot 3 inches; w. 1 foot 7 inches; on panel; - and 7. a small Italian Landscape, from, I believe, the collections Tolozan and Van der Pot. Signed, no date.¹⁹

The only pupils or imitators of Berchem in the Amsterdam museum are: Jan van der Meer the younger: "a Landscape with Sheep" [213];²⁰ and Willem Romijn, three Landscapes with Animals.²¹

ADRIAAN VAN DE VELDE. – This artist paints subjects similar to Berchem's, but he does so completely differently. Born fifteen years after Berchem and deceased eleven years before him, he nevertheless left a more valuable body of work than Berchem, in my opinion.²² He was the one who loved nature simply, so to speak, with reverent chastity! When he had studied her to the ...

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(1) The new cat. gives a facsimile of the signature, which is very unusual: N Berighem, the N attached to the B. It could well be that this signature has been misread, or that it is apocryphal; which does not detract from the unmistakable authenticity of the painting.²³
(2) One painting, however, is signed and dated 1647; it is from the Van Heteren collection; for the other, without signature or date, 3,040 guilders was paid at the auction of Mrs. Bicker, Amsterdam, 1809 (new cat.).