Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 4, 1912.djvu/467

SECT, xv ADRIAEN VAN DE VELDE 453 Adriaen was but poorly paid for his art. Whether, like other great masters, he actually suffered from want, we do not know ; but his wife is said to have kept a hosier's shop to supplement his earnings. In 1672, at the age of thirty-six, he died in Amsterdam, where he had spent most of his life. His artistic career almost covers two decades. His first etchings date from the year 1653, and there are pictures by him which may certainly be assigned to the year 1656, and perhaps even to the year 1654. With Cuyp and Wouwerman, he is the typical painter of landscape with figures that is to say, of a group of pictures, in which the figures are just as important as the landscape, and the landscape as the figures. Berchem and Du Jardin painted this kind of subject in the Italian manner. Potter was, above all, a cattle-painter. Apart from his landscapes with figures and a few pictures of cowsheds with cattle, Adriaen van de Velde produced little that need be taken into account in estimating his artistic importance. His scenes from the Passion do not in the least add to his reputation. Of portraits and genre-pieces he left very few examples ; yet the small picture at Dresden (26) proves that, if he had wished, he could have done excellent work in this field. Among the genre-pieces of the Dutch school which bear no names, or are wrongly attributed, there may be some, in connection with which no one has yet thought of suggesting Adriaen van de Velde as their painter, though the suggestion, if once made, would be sympathetically received. In Adriaen's work there are, besides the principal group of landscapes with herdsmen and cattle, or cavaliers and huntsmen, two smaller groups which may be noticed first of all. These are the winter landscapes and the coast scenes. In these classes of subjects he has created several master- pieces, notably the "Winter Pastimes on the Town Ditch" at Dresden (369) and the remarkably fine coast scenes at Kassel (355) and Paris (360), as well as the sketchily handled view from the dunes down on to the sea in the Six collection (353). This last-named picture ranks with the best sea-pieces which the professional painters of the sea have produced. Adriaen found his characteristic themes in the pastures round his home, with their cows, sheep, and horses. He rendered such subjects with unsur- passed mastery, especially in his youth. He suggests with equal skill the moist atmosphere of early morning and the heat of noonday. The land- scape, the figures, and the sky are combined in a harmonious whole. This is especially true of his youthful pictures. In his later work he no longer does full justice to the sky ; tall trees and bushes occupy the larger portion of the surface of the picture, and a somewhat mannered sunset, done as if from a set pattern, has a disturbing effect. His rendering of sunshine is particularly fine, whether it throws strongly lighted figures or animals into relief against the background, or whether, as in the superb " Farmyard " at Berlin (80), it gives great prominence to a few birch trees. He does not represent atmospheric phenomena, such as rain, tempest, a thunder- storm, or the rainbow. In his figures Adriaen prefers a contrast of blue and brownish yellow, the blue occurring in the costumes of his shepherds and shepherdesses, and the brownish yellow both in these costumes and on the cattle. As in the