the lonely tree standing out against the great background of land and sky, the boat on the mysterious and never-ending sea; these were his favourite subjects, and excited his deepest sympathy. All such scenes as these are big and simple, and the great characteristics of his works are space and simplicity. He faithfully portrayed the moods of nature, not her physical beauties or topographical character. A bit of water, land, or sky was to him as important, as beautiful, and as expressive of nature's moods as the most perfect composition. A few reeds and a glimpse of a canal made a picture; a simple meadow with a few cattle was, in his hands, a poem; a windmill and a lonely farmhouse became a passage of dreamland. He looked not for subject alone, but sought out the temperament and sympathy of his theme, and gave expression to these things with an unerring regard to technique, colour, and composition. As a painter he was real and absolutely true to nature, but his reality is that of pathos and feeling, his truth that of the heart and mind. Beyond all the artists of the last fifty years, he is the real as well as the spiritual exponent of the beautiful, the true, and the sympathetic. His finest works are the trusted companions of our solitude, and never fail to join in the harmony of the thoughts that seek to be alone. They speak, but it is in language that perhaps few hear and fewer of us fully understand or appreciate. And as we go back to our boyhood dreams and aspirations, and the 'long, long thoughts of youth,' so we turn to our friends given to us by Weissenbruch, and cling to them when the works of men even greater than he in the eyes of the world's critics grow cold and lifeless." "This is the way the pictures of Weissenbruch appeal to those who appreciate their beauty and tenderness of feeling. And in this sense, perhaps, no man ever attained the rank of Weissenbruch as a purely landscape painter. He quickens our sense of beauty and our highest perception of truth by his great and simple loneliness, and draws us into harmony with the fitful moods of nature's ever-varying temperament. There is no false pretence, no jarring note in his work or its methods. The power of his pictures lies in the fact that they create in our minds sympathy with their moods and a fellow-feeling in their company. They touch some chord that lies hidden, and which answers only to the mysterious call of a power greater than itself, and yet in unison with it. Thus must Weissenbruch, as time goes on, appeal to and reach an ever-widening circle that is bounded only by the limits of thought and human joy and sadness." rude Of all purely landscape painters, Weissen- "The best bruch is the most typically Dutch in his art. pictures are He never strays afield or wanders to other draughts of lands for subjects. For him it is not necessary. a few of the miraculous dots and lines and make up the ever 'landscape with For round about Haarlem, the Hague, or Noorden, on the sandy shore of Scheveningen dyes, which or on the flats of Zeeland, he finds material for a lifetime; warm, sunny skies, storm changing and rain, the great solemn sea, and the everchanging, soft, vaporous atmosphere. These figures' big things are the scenes he loves to paint, and which we here his art is at home. No one since Con- dwell." stable lived has painted moving skies, with Art.” clouds and storm effects, like the Dutch artists amidst "Essay on Emerson. |