The statement
Nothing graceful, wise, or sainted,--
That is how the Dutchman painted,
is so sweeping as to be untrue. Indeed it is wholly absurd. The truth
simply is that one goes to Dutch art for the celebration of fact
without mystery or magic. In other words, Dutch painting is painting
without poetry; and it is this absence of poetry which makes the
romantic Frenchmen appear to be such exotics when one finds them in
Holland, and why it is so pleasant in Holland now and then to taste
their quality, as one may at the Stedelijk Museum and in the Mesdag
Collection at The Hague.
We must not forget, however, that under the French influence certain
modern Dutch painters have been quickened to celebrate the fact _with_
poetry. In a little room adjoining the great French room at the
Stedelijk Museum will be found some perfect things by living or very
recent artists for whom Corot did not work in vain: a mere by James
Maris, with a man in a blue coat sitting in a boat; a marsh under
a white sky by Matthew Maris; a village scene by the same exquisite
craftsman. These three pictures, but especially the last two, are in
their way as notable and beautiful as anything by the great names in
Dutch art.
On the ground floor of the Stedelijk Museum is the series of rooms
named after the Suasso family which should on no account be missed, but
of which no notice is given by the Museum authorities.
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