Kitabı oku: «The Mentor: Holland, v. 2, Num. 6, Serial No. 58», sayfa 3

Tulips and Windmills

FIVE

Spring is the best time to visit Haarlem in Holland. The traveler to this city passes through wonderful fields covered with broad sheets of scarlet, white, and yellow tulips. It is a sight never to be forgotten. But, beautiful as the tulips are, it is not for this that the Hollanders grow them in such quantities. They grow the bulb not for the flower but for the “onion,” as it is called.

The cultivation of tulips is a great business in Holland; but today only a small percentage of the population commercialize the flower, compared to the number that cultivated it in the seventeenth century. The tulipomania of that time was really a form of gambling, in which admiration of the flower and interest in its culture were secondary matters. In those days thousands of florins were paid for a single bulb.

Tulips grow wild along the northern shores of the Mediterranean, and in Africa and the Far East. They were introduced into the Low Countries in the sixteenth century from Constantinople and the Levant. Owing to their great beauty the flowers became immediate favorites in European gardens. It was in 1637 that the extraordinary tulipomania first took possession of the Dutch. Not only were flower merchants seized with it, but almost every citizen took up tulip growing. A single bulb called the “Semper Augustus” was sold for thirteen thousand florins, and for another of the same variety was traded “a new carriage, a pair of gray horses, and forty-six hundred guilders.” A prize of one hundred thousand florins offered by the horticultural society at Haarlem was won by the black tulip of Cornelius van Baerle. But when the government stepped in and enforced a law against gambling the price of tulips fell to nothing. The bubble burst, and thousands of dealers were beggared in a single night.

There is an old Dutch proverb which says, “God made the sea; but we make the shore.” For hundreds of years the Hollanders have proved this true by literally making the land upon which they live. They must continually fight against the encroachment of the sea, and a big factor in the work of keeping the ocean out is done by great windmills, which pump the water from the fields into the rivers and canals, and thus drain the land.

Everywhere in Holland windmills can be seen. Besides pumping and draining, they also saw wood and grind corn. Although nowadays steam and gasolene engines can do most of the work formerly performed by windmills, they still form a picturesque part of the Dutch landscape. By draining whole marshes they have transformed this waste land into beautiful green and fertile fields. In passing from The Hague to Haarlem on the train one can see the largest of these “polders,” as the drained marshes are called.

Windmills were used as early as the twelfth century. In all the older windmills a shaft called the wind shaft carried four to six arms or whips, on which long, narrow sails were spread. The tips of the sails made a circle of sixty to eighty feet in diameter. It is this type of windmill, with its long arms waving above the landscape, that is associated so closely with Holland.

Art in Holland

SIX

Many people consider Dutch art the most interesting in the world. The artists of Holland did not portray classic gods and prayerful madonnas. They were too practical and matter-of-fact for that. Their minds were serious, and scenes of everyday life attracted them more than they did the artists of Italy or Spain. Portrait painting began very early among the Dutch. This was because the Dutch spirit was essentially commercial. The prosperous burghers liked to have great artists paint them, and they were usually willing to pay pretty well for the privilege. Also the nobility, due to their love of splendor, gave abundant employment to the artists.

Some of the earlier Dutch artists who achieved fame are the brothers Van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes, Roger van der Weyden, and Quentin Massys. But greater than any of these is Frans Hals, who was born in 1580. He was a great portrait painter. His marvelous capacity for catching an impression on the instant brought him many patrons. He loved to paint people as they were, and jolly topers and rich burghers were his favorite subjects; but, great artist though he was, he died almost in poverty.

Rembrandt Harmanzoon van Rijn, who was born in 1607, the son of a miller of Leyden, has been called the greatest painter of northern Europe. Today his pictures are beyond price. His influence on the Dutch artists that followed him was very great. But he died at the age of sixty-two, alone and neglected.

Paul Potter, called the “Raphael of animal painters,” was born in 1625, and died from overwork at the age of twenty-nine. It is said that he painted portraits of animals, and tried to know the character of every beast that he drew.

Jan Steen painted all sorts of subjects, – chemists in their laboratories, card parties, marriage feasts, religious subjects, and especially children. Besides being a successful artist, he was a brewer at Delft. He failed in this business and opened a tavern. Hence he has often been called “the jolly landlord of Leyden.”

Pieter de Hooch was the most neglected of all Dutch painters; yet in 1876 the Berlin Museum paid $26,000 for one of his paintings. He was born in Rotterdam about 1630, and became one of the most charming painters of homely subjects that Holland has produced. He died at Haarlem about 1681.

Meyndert Hobbema was born in Amsterdam about 1638, and was buried there in a pauper’s grave in 1709. Although today he is considered one of the great landscape painters of Holland, his work was not appreciated during his lifetime. Hobbema liked to paint only landscapes. It is said that when it was necessary for him to get a figure in a picture he had another artist do it.

All these men were great artists of Holland. And it is a peculiar thing that most of them lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Since then Holland has done comparatively little in art.