PAINTERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
After the decadence of the great schools of the Netherlands of which Rembrandt, Rubens, and Ruysdael were the chief exemplars, in no other country did the art of painting languish as it did there; but after the wars of Napoleon were ended and peace had once more settled over the Conti nent, the painters of the Low Countries seemed to feel a genial warmth, and there was a revival of art begun there which was important, although it had neither the magnitude nor the brilliancy attained by some of the contemporary painters of England, France, and Germany. Though, with one or two exceptions, there has been no great art in Belgium or Holland, there has been much that is pleasing and creditable. The qualities of the two distinct schools of these countries have been similar and of the gen eral character of modern French painting.
Flemish Painters: Hendrik. of the earliest and most suc cessful of the painters of the recent Belgian school was Hendrik Leys, born at Antwerp in 1815 and died in 1869. Intended for the Church, his love of art would tolerate no such sacrifice of his abilities, and he became a student at the Academy of Antwerp. He adopted history-painting for his field, and his patriotism placed him in sympathy with the stirring episodes of Flemish history. Until 1851, Leys had a style that was neither original nor bad, being mildly conventional ; but in that year his works showed a new departure in the method of expression. For want of a better name, some called this " pre-Raphaelism;" it was in reality a deliberate attempt to shake loose from the teachings of schools and make a closer study of Nature. In other words, it was realism. There can be little question that the later works of Leys are for this reason of more value—in quality, if not in thought—than his earlier paintings. Leys was a man of reflection and no small degree of imagination. He identified himself with the past, and is unsurpassed in the representation of life in the Middle Ages. He painted, not costume only, but also men; he was a dramatist in color who depicted the emotions and passions, the humor and tragedy, of that turbulent period. The color of Leys's paintings was
sometimes inclined to rawness, which may be one reason why he has never won the world-wide repute that sonic painters of apparently no greater talents have gained.
Antoine Joseph energy, extraordinary imagination, and weird power characterized the art of that most eccentric of painters, Antoine Joseph \Viertz, born at Dinant in 18°6 and died at Brussels in 1;365. He sketched with case at the early age of four; at ten he painted a portrait, and at twelve engraved his own pictures; at twenty he took the grand prize of the Academy of Antwerp, and was sent to Rome to study. So far as he imitated any painter, Rubens was his master; but he resem bled him only in the rapidity of his execution and the ambitions and energetic character of his subjects.
Wiertz executed pictures of vast size. The Greeks and Trojans con tending Jri the Body qf Pat/we/us is twenty feet wide by thirty long; the Triumph of Christ is on a canvas fifty feet by thirty. For the former he refused an offer of sixty thousand dollars; the latter was received with such acclaim that the Belgian government built the artist a studio on the plan of one of the temples at Pcestum, on condition that he should leave his ideal compositions to the state. Since his death his works have been preserved in this building, which is called the \Viertz Museum. After settling in this studio the imagination of \Viertz turned toward the grotesque, the horrible, and sometimes the obscene. Some of these singu lar works were painted with great power. Among them are The Child Burned, The BirM of the Passions, A Scene in Hell, and The 11/au of the Future re:carding the Things of the Past. Many of these paintings are done in a method invented by him and called ficinture male, combin ing the qualities of fresco- and oil-painting. He sold few of his ideal compositions, preferring to meet his humble expenses by an occasional portrait.