On friday afternoon, I went to the Louvre with the idea that I would study Dutch painting of the second half of the 17th Century, and the beginning of the 18th Century. Study is perhaps a big word, motivated by a curiosity d'amateur and an interest in how the painters of different periods depict the world, their world. Access to the permanent collections of the Louvre, and to its exhibitions, is free for the unemployed, for those still looking for work, and for those who have given up.
Through a need and desire to free myself for a brief period from the difficulties of my own situation, and to breathe for a moment, through an interest in and a curiosity for something else, I found myself, therefore, on friday afternoon on the second floor of the Louvre's Richelieu wing, after an accidental and hasty stroll through the Napoleonic appartments located on it's first floor.
Though this period is rich in depictions of town life and in interior scenes of great warmth, subtlety and humour, I particularly enjoyed the paintings of Jan van der HEYDEN (1637 - 1712), whose paintings I had never before stopped before until this friday afternoon.
My favorites were the following 2 paintings :
- Le Dam avec le nouvel Hôtel de Ville à Amsterdam (1668)
- Place et église Saint-Victor à Xanten (Allemagne) (painted sometime after 1692)
The magnificent variations of light, and the very delicate and precise touch of the artist brings the viewer into the paintings through an extraordinary array of details that never become simply architectural or figé. A true and accidental light catches life at a moment of the day, in conditions we will not see again in quite the same way... the Nouvel Hôtel de Ville à Amsterdam is extraordinary in its mastery of the different effects that conditions of light can have on colour and form.
The auberge to the left of the Place et église Saint-Victor à Xanten is so rich in details and effects of light and shade that it could take us an age to reach the rest of the square. My gaze and curiosity were thus guided into the paintings by the gentle variations of light and detail, by a lecture suggested by the painter's art, rather than through any method of my own. One wonders what such attention to what is, and is seen, is inspired by : and why such simple details so painstakingly rendered hold us still today. What is there in seeing that makes such things important, or beautiful ?
These online images do not do justice to the originals, but at least they are perhaps a beginning.
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I returned to the Louvre today, in order to take some close-up views of the paintings presented here one week ago. In particular, Jan van der Heyden's "Le Dam avec le nouvel Hôtel de Ville à Amsterdam" (1668).
Although taken with a mobile phone, I hope they will suggest some of the detail and nuance in the painting.