Let us turn to the two portraits which are very characteristic examples of these. two masters. First of all, notice the hands. We have learned, in an earlier article, that hands are very expressive of character. In good portraits there is always a oneness of feeling and character between the hands and the head. Hals was a master in this respect. There is also an absolute oneness in the expression of the hand and that of the face in the Van Dyck, even to the curl of the forefinger, which echoes the curious, slanting glance of the eyes.
But we know that it was Van Dyck’s habit to make a rapid study of his sitters in black and white chalk upon gray paper, and to hand it to his assistants for them to paint the figure in its clothes, which were sent to the studio for that purpose, after which he retouched their work and painted in the head and hands; so we feel a suspicion that Van Dyck may have been as much interested in illustrating his own ideas of elegance and refinement as in reproducing the actual characteristics of his sitters.
We hardly feel this in the “Portrait of a Woman” by Hals. Of the fact that the woman looked in the flesh just as he has represented her on the canvas we are as sure as if we had looked over his shoulder and watched her grow beneath his brush. He has put in nothing but what he saw, and left out nothing that could complete the lifelike truth of the picture.
Looking at the “Portrait of Marie Louise von Tassis” by Van Dyck we cease to wonder if Marie Louise were really like this. Her portrait is merely an exquisitely beautiful picture. And then again we turn to the Hals, and again we have forgotten that it is a portrait. It is a woman that we face—a stout, wholesome Dutchwoman, whose husband had a hand in the shaping of the new republic, who was the mother of sons who fought in the long struggle for freedom. Those hands!—one loves them; strong, coarse hands that have done their share in the work of life, now folded so unaffectedly in the calm and peace of living which right well-doing has won. When you look at them, and, still more, when you read their fuller story in that high, broad forehead, with the strong, big skull beneath it, indicating steadiness of purpose; in the wide-apart eyes; in that resolute nose with its lines of energy; and in the firm, kindly, wise mouth, you realize how it was that Holland, having by its energy and patience set a barrier to the ocean, could keep at bay the power of Spain, and achieve for itself, after long waiting, liberty of life and thought.
This portrait, while serving as a record of a woman who actually lived, is more than that: it is a type of the race to which she belonged. It is a type, too, of the whole school of Dutch painting—and, moreover, such a marvel of painting!
The Dutchmen of the seventeenth century, having abandoned the large field of decorative composition, settled down in the small space of their canvases to a perfection of craftsmanship that has never been surpassed in modern art. From the standpoint of pure painting, they formed a school of great painters; differing among themselves, but alike in being consummate masters of the brush.
Hals set his figures in clear light, so that the modeling is not accomplished by shadows, but by the degree of light which each surface of the flesh or costume reflects. In this respect he worked like Velasquez, but in a broader way. He distributed the lights and painted in the colors in great masses, each mass containing its exact quantity of light; and so great was his skill in the rendering of values, that he could make a flat tone give the suggestion of modeling. Thus, in the uninterrupted, flat white tone of this woman's ruff we scarcely note the absence of lines indicating the folds of muslin.
Compare the treatment of the ruff in Van Dyck’s portrait—indeed, the explicit way in which the whole of the elaborate costume is rendered. Nothing is left to suggestion: everything is told with painstaking fidelity. The contrast of the Hals portrait offers an instructive example of what painters mean by the word “breadth,” and a lesson, also, in the effect of breadth on our imagination; for we get from the broad simplicity of this portrait a strong invigoration, from the other a pleasant fascination. Yet, while we miss the breadth in the Van Dyck, do not let us overlook the freedom with which it is painted, so that there is nothing small or niggling in all these details; they are