RKD STUDIES

36 MUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM.

On the other side of the table are several other figures, one cutting a chicken, another peeling a lemon, and so on. In all, there are twenty-four life-size full-length figures whose names are written at the bottom of the painting [31].¹

In the background, in the center, a half-open window through which trees and houses can be seen;² left the archway giving access to the shooting range and a brown wall. In the very foreground, a large, gilded basin, from which vines emerge.

The painting is signed in large letters: Bartholomeus van der Helst fecit. Ao 1648.

Several of the heads are wonderfully lifelike, especially those of the cupbearer with the yellow stockings, the standard-bearer, the lemon peeler, etc. The hands (1), the fabrics, the various ornaments, all are executed with a meticulous correctness that shuns no detail, but also with a breadth and accuracy of touche, with an abundance of paint mass, which preserves this dazzling painting from being overcorrect; admittedly it is too bright throughout, and without detracting from shadows and contrasts which, by concentrating the light on certain main points, provide the unity of effect. The light, which is virtually the same on both sides of the canvas, ...

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(1) The author of the Description of the Paintings of the Old Town Hall, Van Dijk, whom we quoted earlier, has said: "If one took the Hands there out and threw them among each other, one could bring them all to the persons, to whom they belong ...".³

Interleaved page

for the portrait van Uitenbogaard (p. 30-31)⁴ – Fd. Bol? In his masterpiece in the Leper House, there is a portrait of Uitenbogaard, which is similar, in treatment to the one in the museum.⁵

On Drost new information in Kramm.⁶
Re-examine the Drost which must be rather by Fabritius,⁷ but we have not discovered any trace of signature there.

The old woman of Herodias, supposed by Drost (and which is Fabritius), is the same model as the Rebecca in the picture by Flinck of 1638.⁸ Fabritius therefore worked with Rembr. with Flinck, in 1638?⁹

There is a signed Drost, at Dr Leroy d’Etioles in Paris.
Drost fec. 1654.¹⁰
1659, The last number is uncertain. See the Leroy cat. 1655?
The 2 Pellicorn were signed Drost!¹¹ (Hopman – Cremer)¹²
There is a Drost owned by Mme van de Poel.¹³
Another in the town hall of a village (Cremer)
This Drost is surely by Fabritius (a tawny tone), after having seen the great Fabritius recently in the Rotterdam museum. (1861.)¹⁴

37 VAN DER HELST.

... divides attention too much. The eye jumps from a figure to a costume, admires for a moment, gets lost, becomes weary, and transmits only a multiple impression to the mind. Each piece, painted to perfection, is very amusing and instructive for artists, but the whole does not grab you like Rembrandt's poetic painting, which is opposite (1).

It is very curious to spend a few hours between these two masterpieces, which have always competed for the prize of the great Dutch school and have often elicited exclusive partiality. You turn from one to the other, you study them, you ask yourself questions in an attempt to explain the great difference between the impressions created by the two.

Both paintings, each in its own way, push reality into a form of illusion. But this relationship between the words themselves proves that there is nothing less real than reality in painting. What we call this depends on the vision of individuals. For all combinations of the effect anybody can produce lie in nature, and in these infinitely diverse combinations we see more or less this or that, depending on our inner imagination. The artists ...

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(1) Mr. Ducamp (Revue de Paris) greatly belittles this Banquet by Van der Helst: "I recognize, he says, all the qualities which predominate in this enormous composition,.... but... I see that it is a first canvas of the third or fourth order.... it is not a masterpiece...".¹⁵

38 MUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM.

... who are truly endowed with a poetic ability have a very special way of seeing. What Leonardo saw in the Mona Lisa, probably no one there would have seen. All the Renaissance painters would have wanted to paint this model, but not one would have done what Leonardo did. Is this Mona Lisa not yet a reality? If suddenly, without thinking of painting, we were face to face with the man in yellow of the Night Watch, we would step aside to let him pass with his partisan. So it is also reality, but as Rembrandt saw it in a brilliant flash.

Van der Helst's view, on the other hand, is more general or vulgar, which amounts to the same thing. It corresponds better to the general feeling of the masses. This is what a Banquet scene should look like, at least according to almost everyone. And this is why Van der Helst's painting has always had more universal success than Rembrandt's.¹⁶ The old catalog of the Amsterdam Museum (1835) did not even hesitate to call it "the most exquisite of all Dutch paintings."¹⁷ Mr. Duchesne senior thought everything was perfect: "In this masterpiece of the Dutch school, composition, color, harmony, expression, all are good, all are perfect. Van Dijk¹⁸ and Rubens could not have better succeeded (1).” Not everyone loves the Night Watch, and we have seen academic painters cross ...

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(1) Musée, de peinture, et de sculpture, by Réveil, vol. X.¹⁹

39 VAN DER HELST.

... for this sphinx-like painting; but those who love it adore it.

The proximity of these two paintings raises the same questions for different reasons and on different, though similar, points as the comparison of a Raphael and a Rubens. And this is extraordinary! Those who want to exchange Rubens for Raphael, "the divine poet," are precisely those who prefer the somewhat banal realism of Van der Helst to the wild poetry of Rembrandt.

Joshua Reynolds, in his Tour in Holland, as usual, drew a parallel between these two paintings, which have always been contrasted,²⁰ and committed a cruel heresy against Rembrandt: "The Night Watch has betrayed my expectations ... ". To be sure it was by Rembrandt, he had to put his signature on it! Perhaps the great English painter, who lost his eyesight a few years after his trip to Holland (1), could no longer see very well in 1781: he was then fifty-eight years old. But in any case, he highly appreciated Van der Helst's Banquet, even with a little exaggeration: "It is perhaps, he said, the most beautiful painting of portraits that exists ...".²¹

All the figures in Van der Helst's painting are, ...

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(1) He depicted himself wearing glasses in several of his portraits, notably the 1788 portrait that belongs to Queen Victoria.²² By 1790 he had lost an eye and had to give up painting.

40 MUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM.

... indeed portraits, all of which would look wonderful in their own frame. Which after all this criticism, or rather these explanations, does not prevent the Banquet from being a masterpiece of its kind, which should have a fine place in an exhibition of the most outstanding paintings of all the European schools.

The secretary of the society Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam, Mr. Kaiser, recently published a large, very correct and very skillful engraving²³ of the Banquet [32].

The second important painting by Van der Helst in the Amsterdam museum is another doele piece, titled in the catalog (no. 104) [33], "The Overmen or Prize Masters of the Archery Doelen in Amsterdam (1)."²⁴ This brotherhood or guild is called the St. Sebastiaansdoelen; Jacob van der Helst, brother of Bartholomeus, was the 'kastelein' of their doele in 1664, from which this painting comes.²⁵ Four of the shooting directors (doelheeren), master judges of the guild, are seated around a table covered with a Persian carpet (2). "Three of them show the fourth the principal ornaments and objects ...

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(1) The new cat. retains roughly the same title: “De Overlieden van den St. Sebastiaans Doele te Amsterdam. (The Headmen of the St. Sebastian's Doele at Amsterdam).” The size given is 2.64 wide by 1.75 high.²⁶
(2) We reproduce here the very exact description of Mr. Scheltema.²⁷