Art in the Netherlands
By . Translated by J. DURAND. New York : Leypoldt and Holt.
M. TAINE dwells first upon the physical and mental differences of the Teutonic and Latin races, especially as these are developed in Holland and Italy ; then he studies the intellectual and social life of the Dutch, and the natural conditions which influence it ; then he sketches the famous epochs of their history ; and so, in the light of temperament, society, and events he considers the art of these people, who, without achieving any distinction in literature, have equalled the English in their capacity for political and religious liberty, and have surpassed all other Teutonic peoples in painting. The subject naturally divides itself after the period of Holland’s separation from Flanders, when the former became free and Protestant, and the latter remained subject and Catholic. The Flemish fell more rapidly under the control of the Italian school, to which the Dutch also succumbed ; but in both cases the loss of the authentic spirit of art occurred for the same reasons, — enormous material prosperity, and luxurious and artificial life among the people. Of course, M. Taine does not fail to indulge his love of generalization upon each of these points ; but it requires no great intelligence and no great fortitude in the reader to refuse to follow him where he goes too far, and in a certain measure his generalizing is extremely good. In the historical view of the subject, which is very entertaining, there is no great original value ; the easily accessible and pretty well-known facts are effectively and significantly grouped, but much as the average reader will already have arranged them in his own memory ; the considerations of race are not new nor striking : perhaps they are rather conventional ; the social and religious life of the people is more forcibly treated ; but the chief excellence of the book is in the vivid sense it gives of Holland as a fact of nature, with the characteristics in her which would probably produce great painters. These are first separately considered, and then contrasted with the analogous traits which gave the world Venetian coloring, and the natural differences are suggested that resulted in the artistic differences of the Dutch and Venetian schools.
The book is a most delightful one, full of a social and historical pageantry that you enjoy whilst you proclaim its cheapness, and crowned with this really valuable and unsurpassed disquisition upon the actual character of art in the Netherlands. It is much shorter than either of M. Taine’s books on Italy which Mr. Durand has given us, — “Rome and Naples” and “Florence and Venice,” — but we think it may be read with quite as much instruction, and with less employment of the friendly distrust which is useful in reading M. Taine, — or, for that matter, any other theorizer upon art.