Bosboom and His Contemporaries

Bosboom and His Contemporaries

This review, published in Literature on 3rd December 1898, assesses the volume Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century, edited with a general introduction by Max Rooses, keeper of the Musée Plantin-Moretus at Antwerp, supplemented by biographical notes from various hands. The reviewer notes that English connoisseurs now recognise a second great period in Dutch art beyond the Seventeenth Century, following a barren interval, and regrets that no single qualified writer has yet produced a proper history of this revival. The reviewed volume covers only a dozen painters, a selection called arbitrary: among them Miss Jacoba van der Sande Backhuysen, a flower painter who died three years earlier at seventy-one, and Henriette Ronner, a painter of cats, whose inclusion the reviewer questions. Israels and Alma-Tadema are noted as rightly included, while Van Haanen, Mauve, Mesdag, Artz, Mathieu Maris, and especially Jacob Maris are cited as damaging omissions. Bisschop, Weissenbruch, and Gabriel are welcomed. The review then concentrates on Johannes Bosboom, placed first in the volume, born at the Hague in 1817 and died in 1891 aged seventy-four, long recognised among Dutch painters and critics, notably M. Mesdag. Bosboom is described as a painter in the succession of Rembrandt, working in oils but more finely in water-colour, chiefly as a painter of church interiors, with later work broader than his drier early manner, comparable to Cotman and Dewint though less colourful than Cotman and more concerned with tone and space. His works such as the "Taking the Sacrament in Utrecht Cathedral," the "Church at Trier," and the "St. Joris Church at Amersfoort" are discussed, with the quiet, spacious interiors judged his finest subjects. The reviewer calls for the Burlington Fine Arts Club to assemble a fuller showing of Bosboom's work in England.

By Frederick Wedmore · First published 1899 · Genre: Art History, Art Criticism, Biography · 1,548 words

First lines

The English _cognoscenti_ of the modern type have now for some time recognised that in Dutch Art there is more than one great period that has to be reckoned with -- that the great Seventeenth Century does not exhaust the achievements of this people. It may not be quite true to say of Dutch painting, as of French sculpture, that the traditions have been invariably preserved, and that there has been little break in the school; for the last century in Holland was a barren one -- just as barren there as in France and England it was brilliant. The revival has been for later generations, and of those who did most to accomplish it some are yet living, in an old age not so very advanced, and others are lately dead. A history of this revival would be a great and worthy subject: it may yet, one hopes, be undertaken by some one writer qualified to treat it. Such a writer could not possibly be a person who had lived wholly within its influence. He would have to bring with him something better and wiser than the ungoverned admirations of the modern studio. A knowledge of the Past must be his. Meanwhile, we receive, and experience a certain satisfaction in receiving, even that fragmentary contribution to the subject which is made in the volume called _Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century_. Max Rooses -- the keeper of the Musée Plantin-Moretus at Antwerp -- furnishes a general introduction, which is readable and fairly comprehensive, if not particularly critical.

Similar titles

Genres

Tags

art criticism · art review · Dutch art · 19th-century painting · church interiors · watercolor · oil painting · artistic revival · light and shade · tone · spatial composition · artistic canon

What this Textopian page supports

Bosboom and His Contemporaries is listed on Textopian as an essay by Frederick Wedmore, dated 1899 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

More by Frederick Wedmore