CHAPTER VII
Albert Neuhuijs, Blommers and Artz followed the example of Israëls and infused new life into our art of genre-painting.
Neuhuijs belongs to the school of Israëls in his choice of subjects and to that of Jacob Maris in his colouring. He has shown himself a painter of feeling who is able to represent the calm workaday life of the people of Laren or Brabant in a natural and unforced manner: a woman tending her child, or preparing dinner, or watering flowers; an elder sister teaching a younger child to knit: all against the rich red of a cupboard, or a white wall, or a low dresser. Although his work of 1875 to 1885 possesses the solid merits of the cabinet-painters and will undoubtedly stand the test of time, he altered his methods afterwards to this extent, that he now paints in the houses themselves that form the background of his subjects, thus giving a more spontaneous effect, although he misses the precious side of his earlier pieces. The studio gives him no ideas and so he goes off with his big canvases to those Laren interiors where, as he says, "nature herself places the colours in his hands and the movements and attitudes of the figures are there, in their natural environment." And, even if the picture, as such, suffers occasionally through the defective lighting of his work, we gain the natural little child-figures upon which, in the ripe tone of the whole picture, the sunny light falls that gilds a profil perdu, a downy neck, a head of yellow hair.
Albert Neuhuijs was born at Utrecht in 1844 and received his first instruction at the hands of Gijsbertus Craeyvanger, studying later at the Antwerp Academy. He began as a history-painter in the Antwerp manner and is said to have excelled at that time in the painting of satin. The portraits of women which he produced during this period were noted for their elegance. He did not begin to turn his attention to the painting of interiors until 1870 or later.
Bemardus Johannes Blommers, the youngest of this generation of painters, was born at the Hague in 1845. He is a pupil of Bisschop and of the Hague Academy, but he formed himself and his work has nothing in common with that of his master, nothing of Israëls and but little of Jacob Maris, whom he admires above all others. As against the tender conception of his subjects displayed by Neuhuijs, Blommers sees his fisher-folk from the glad and robust side. There is a great contrast between his sturdy children of the sea and Israëls' frail, pensive creations. Like most painters, he began by producing powerfully-drawn small figures, like that strong picture, Maternal Joys, at the Municipal Museum in Amsterdam: a cabinet-piece which possesses every quality save that of atmosphere. It belongs to the time when our painters felt more strongly bound to the old masters and to their model, the time when the trend towards wider harmonies, subtler analyses of colour, quicker solutions of light was still slumbering. However delicately treated and powerfully modelled, the young mother in this picture already shows that healthy side of his art which, afterwards, about 1882, found its most forcible expression in The Fish-woman, engaged in gutting fish, in the Hague Museum: a strong figure painted in deep red tones, against which the white of the fish lying on the red tiles in the foreground stands out as a delightful still-life, completing the warm browns and reds of this truly imposing work.
Next to or together with Hein Burgers, David Adolphe Constant Artz was undoubtedly Israëls' principal pupil. He first came into contact with Israëls at the evening-classes under Royer at the Amsterdam Academy, where he painted by day from the living model, under Egenberger. From that time, he worked with his master, whom he followed to Zandvoort. Afterwards, when he had selected his tendency, he resolved to go to Paris, where he became very intimate with Jacob and Matthijs Maris (who painted the well-known portrait of Artz) and with Kaemmerer.