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G.H. Breitner Bergsma, J.H.G.

2012

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citation for published version (APA) Bergsma, J. H. G. (2012). G.H. Breitner: Vijf studies over een Amsterdamse schilder en zijn tijd.

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Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 G.H. Breitner Five studies on an painter and his time

Summary

The topic of this thesis is the Amsterdam period of George Hendrik Breitner (1857- 1923), a Dutch artist who would become known as the painter of late 19th-century city life; as a painter pur sang, whose temperament and passion as well as his virtuoso use of brush and colour are invariably mentioned. Breitner was a born painter; there is no doubt about that in the standard literature. There is much less agreement among art historians and critics about the artist’s place within art history. Opinions are generally varied or unsure about what school he belongs to. Until just after the Second World War, experts connected Breitner’s work to naturalism or , sometimes both. After that, a shift towards impres- sionism occurred. Breitner belonged to a group of artists that is sometimes referred to as the ‘Amster- dam impressionists’ or ‘The painters of Eighty’: painters who cherished grand ideals in the 1880s, together with their colleagues the poets and writers of Eighty. This Amsterdam generation, of which Breitner was the most important representative, was innovative compared to their predecessors and masters, the painters of School, who concentrated mainly on landscape. Their common source of inspiration was the city of Amsterdam, a metropolis in the making where the consequences of industrialisation became noticeable. According to the generally accepted interpreta- tion, this group of painters was only occupied with the exaltation of personal feeling; art was passion. Social or ethical considerations with regard to their subjects played no role. In this thesis, the question is asked whether the prevailing image of Breitner as the passionate, high-spirited painter, who only sees light and colour and does not care about his subject, is correct. I also investigate whether the climate of the fin-de-siècle, a period in which many changes in various fields occurred, had repercussions on Breitner’s art. Did important 19th-century theories such as darwinism or influential movements such as naturalism really have no influence at all? Recently, researchers have established that the Netherlands was not perceptive to naturalism; it passed our country by, as it were. The same can be said for recent research into darwinism in

 visual art, in which no attention was paid to the Dutch situation, although there is every reason to do so. I have chosen a thematic approach. After an introductory chapter on Breitner and his time, the following chapters will discuss a specific theme in detail. The thematic approach is combined with a descriptive, biographical approach, always within a broader, cultural-historical framework. The visual art from the 1880s and 90s, the painter’s most productive period, are the central focus. Besides paintings, drawings, sketchbooks and photographs will be discussed at length. In chapter 1, Man and Nature - The nature of man, the question is raised whether darwinism, as part of a complex of changes taking place in the second half of the 19th century, was reflected in Dutch visual art from the period 1880-1895. Test- ing material is formed by the genres in visual art where the relation man-nature is expressed most directly, such as the landscape or the (working) man in his ‘natural’ environment or in his ‘natural’ function. One of the most important conclusions is that within a few decades, a different attitude towards nature, including human nature, arose. In the works of the painters of the , we clearly see an idealisation of nature, in this case the untouched landscape and the natural connection of man and animal with their environment. The painters studied nature, and with their interest in atmospheric phenomena they tried to catch a certain moment or phenomenon in order to capture it on canvas. The foundation for this was generally an idyllic, still romantic belief about nature and beauty. Among the Amsterdam generation, a very different belief about nature arose, and, following this, about beauty. First of all, the concept of ‘natural’ nature was aban- doned. Nature was replaced by this generation by ‘life’. The concept was widened, and not just limited to tree, flower, plant, animal or human in a natural environment. In this vision nature, and that included the artist himself, became more an all-en- compassing principle of the whole of reality. Art was mostly about the personal expe- rience of the sensorially perceptible reality. The consequence was that the distinction between town and country disappeared, and that the range of topics was extended. Nature was no longer seen as a standard for the beautiful. Beauty could also be found in a building pit, a bunch of weeds or a couple of ugly lower class women on a lock bridge. From the second half of the 1880s and the early 90s, artists such as Isaac Israels and Breitner focused on the city and its inhabitants, on the urban proletariat that was visualised without any idealisation or aestheticisation. Man in the city was driven by passions and instincts, by blind regularity and animal urges. The 1890s saw a reaction among a number of artists to this fatalistic vision on man and nature. They aimed to reach a more philosophical and idealistic considera- tion of nature, of man. Points of interest were the thinking about art and the artist’s role in society. Solutions were sought in the ideals of symbolism or community art and the associated Nieuwe Kunst (Art Nouveau), the innovative movement in Dutch crafts. Evolutionary thinking seems to resonate here as well, both on a theoretical and practical level.

 Chapter 2, Man in the city, discusses in more detail issues that were touched upon in chapter 1. The aim is to further specify the general conclusions from the first chapter, and to substantiate them through the work of the painter Breitner, the most important representative of the Amsterdam generation. Testing material is, as the title suggests, man in the city. A first question that is raised concerns the origin of Breitner’s interest for this contemporary theme. A second question is whether we, as has often been stated, should see in Breitners ‘mood’ images only passionate impres- sionistic impressions of the sensorially perceptible world around him, or whether the painter did actually propagate a vision on man, society, life. Breitner’s desire to become a modern historical painter who portrayed the history of the common man of his own time originated during his period in The Hague in the early 1880s. The idea was not only partly fed by the French naturalist literature by the brothers Goncourt and Emile Zola, which was very popular at the time, but also by Breitner’s interest in history. That interest was broader and went deeper than is generally assumed. Sketchbook drawings and notes, letters, books that were read or mentioned by him, and his preference for a realistic treatment of a contemporary subject are used to demonstrate that the painter was interested in philosophers/his- torians/writers who tried to fathom the historical or contemporary social reality by means of a scientific objective approach, and for whom the thinking in evolutionary terms played an important role. Breitner was a typical exponent of that 19th-century intellectual climate in which positivistic and biological views had permeated various fields of society, including historical thinking and the arts. A turning point in his development was Souvenir de Montmartre (Amsterdam, Ste- delijk Museum), a painting that he started working on during his visit to Paris (1884) and finished in the Netherlands. This work reveals an approach of the horse that was completely different from earlier approaches. Even though little is known about Breitner’s stay in Paris, everything indicates that he must have been under the spell of naturalism. However, his ideal to become ‘the painter of the people’ was not entirely realised until he moved to Amsterdam in 1886. The life that Breitner wanted to paint was man (man and woman) on the street in his continually changing existence. He focused on the lower class, on the ‘Jordaan’ type, to which he attached a unique physiognomy. Race, environment and moment determine the life of man; man is a prod- uct of his environment and is lived by that environment. The deterministic ideas of Hippolyte Taine and the thinking in terms of evolution of Charles Darwin must have influenced Breitner’s vision on the city and its inhabitants. Another characteristic of Breitner’s street and city views is the element of move- ment. We find this on paintings, sketchbook drawings and photographs that he made of the Amsterdam street life. He painted, drew and photographed not only passing servants, trotting horses or labourers working in building pits, but also demolished buildings and blocks and new phenomena such as electrically lit shop windows or advertisements on walls. Movement symbolises change, and it is clear that the painter wanted to make the viewer a witness to a specific moment in history of a city and its inhabitants; it shows a phase in a metropolis’s evolution.

 From a naturalist vision, the painter was looking for certain laws that lay at the basis of life, of nature, and tried to present these to the viewer as objectively as pos- sible. The observer was confronted with snapshots in time, tranches de vie, which are characterised by frontal viewpoints and direct cutouts, placing the observer at the heart of contemporary city life. However, the ‘broken fragments of reality’ that the painter shows in his paintings have carefully been selected and composed. Chapter 3, A painter, a camera and a city, demonstrates the extent of study and preparation preceding Breitner’s paintings. Although he enjoyed making (oil) studies and sketches from the window, on the street or in a building pit, they always served as preparations for the larger works. This composing work style of the painter can definitely not be called impressionist; it shows much more similarity with the method of working pursued by the naturalists. Documentation and observation laid down in countless photographs, (photographic)postcards, sketches with notes and prepara- tory studies played an important role in the creation of Breitner’s work. We also see a continual verification of the facts through the years; a specific motif or detail could be studied again and again in photographs and sketches under various circumstances. All in all, it demonstrates an investigative attitude, an attachment to the facts, which fits in with the scientific method propagated by Taine and Zola. By objective obser- vation, reality, which is life, could be understood. Another issue that arises in this chapter is Breitner’s interest in the beauty of the old city of Amsterdam and of other cities and villages in and outside the Netherlands. His interest for it could be expressed in a more traditional view on the Palace on Dam Square or a beautiful painting of the Reguliersgracht, but also in an small old ship- yard on Prinseneiland and a simple alley in the Jordaan. Although this is not imme- diately apparent, the various city views tell a story. The beautifully dressed lady in the painting Reguliersgracht (private collection) saunters past one of the picturesque spots in Amsterdam that are increasingly threatened. Breitner’s views of Dam Square show the horse tram; the electrical tram that started to dominate the in 1904 was not pictured by the painter. He painted the Exchange building of Zocher various times, but he never painted the new Exchange building of Berlage, which was com- pleted in 1903. A similar attitude of the painter can be seen in the many demolitions and building sites. All these paintings show an old situation in the cityscape; he never painted the new situation. Clearly, Breitner was selective in choosing his subject. With the passing of the years, the painter Breitner seemed to be more and more annoyed by all the changes that the city underwent. Prove for this is found in the notes in his sketchbook, which mention that buildings are demolished or canals filled in, his statements about the introduction of the electrical tram which spoiled the cit- ies, the fact that he collected (photographic)postcards and photographs of vanished or changed places in the city, his membership of the Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Ge- nootschap (Royal Society of Antiquities), etc. We can speak of a strong commitment of the painter to the preservation of the old Amsterdam. Chapter 4, The nude, demonstrates that Breitner’s portrayal of the female nude is also based on the same, previously mentioned, ideas on nature and natural quali-

 ties. Breitner’s main merit is that he reintroduced this genre to Dutch painting, and removed the mythological, biblical and literary context in which it had figured for centuries. Because he portrayed the nude realistically and not in an idealised way, the painter could not avoid that eroticism and, following naturally, sexuality, started to play a role. In accordance with the beliefs of naturalism, he aimed for objectivity and tried to avoid associations by leaving out narrative titles, context or a chastened pose. At least, that is what is noticeable in the exhibited works. When the entire oeuvre of paintings, photographs and drawings with this theme is inspected, it seems that the painter was very conscious of the boundaries between ‘Le nu’ and ‘La nudité’, and experimented with them in an innovative way. The fact that the nudes were exhib- ited or sold rarely and were absent in his review exhibition of 1901/02 must have been related to the 19th-century bourgeois morals. Chapter 5, Girls in kimono, is devoted to Breitner’s series of paintings of young women dressed in Japanese clothes, created in the first half of the 1890s. They take up a separate place within the oeuvre and show a very different image of the painter. The main question is what the ‘kimono girls’ actually say about Breitner’s interest in Japanese art. A direct thematic or stylistic influence of Japanese prints, illustrations or hanging scrolls on the series of girls in kimono is hard to prove. I will suggest that stylistic characteristics that are often connected to the Japanese woodcut, such as the two-dimensional, decorative treatment of the plane, the attention to detail and co- lour, unusual viewpoints or abrupt cuts of the view, should perhaps be related more to Breitner’s city and street views rather than to these series of figures, which because of the kimono theme immediately evoke associations with Japan. It will become clear that Breitner treats an exotic theme such as a girl in kimono in a similar way as an erotic theme. We could say there is a disguised form of eroticism, but the girls in kimono have a different, much more aesthetic appearance than his re- alistically portrayed nudes. Breitner’s naturalist view of the female nude comes close to reality, to life as it is and as it is lived. Geesje Kwak, on the other hand, Breitner’s favourite model for the series of kimono girls, exudes the unspoiled quality and in- nocence of a child in her beautifully decorated kimono with budding blossom sprigs. The purity and beauty that characterise these paintings refer to an unspoiled nature, to a dream world. This flight in the studio and the dream of an exotic paradise was probably preceded by a period of contemplation, as Breitner’s contemporaries already assumed. The themes that are discussed in this thesis will be used to demonstrate that the image of Breitner as it is generally painted, that of the passionate impressionist who is only interested in the fleeting moment and external appearance, is not correct. His selective choice for certain themes, his composing method and investigative at- titude towards his subject, prove the opposite. Breitner’s city and street views are not impressionistic ‘mood’ images that are purely based on feeling, where every engage- ment with society is missing, as has been claimed before. He is not a painter who only has the great feeling of life within him, and in addition, does not know any social or ethical considerations, or cherishes no sentimental feelings for his motifs, as has been

 stated. His work can be seen as a document humain, which does actually carry a vision on man, society and life. The term impressionism that is often connected to the work of Breitner and his generation has given many people the wrong idea. It has been established many times that Breitner’s work was different from that of the French impressionists. Both his choice of subject matter and his investigative method are based on a naturalist belief about art. If one only looks at the loose way in which the brush is used, the expres- sive use of colour or the interest in light, one could conclude that the artist painted in an impressionist style, or, if one prefers, a style inclining towards . However, through the years too much emphasis has been put on the specific picto- rial qualities of the painter and too little on the innovation in subject matter and the contents of his work. As has been said before, art critics and historians have had different thoughts about the movement Breitner should be included in. Until shortly after the Second World War, they categorised Breitner’s work under naturalism or impressionism, sometimes under both. Even though the opinions were divided or uncertain, and a clear moti- vation or argument was often lacking, they also added subtle distinctions. Art critic G.H. Marius (1903) quite rightly connected Breitner’s sketchy way of working with impressionism and his urban subject matter with naturalism. There was a richer vi- sion in the past, which has been lost over the years. This study demonstrates that the painter was certainly open to new impulses such as naturalism, but he handled this in a different style from that used in countries such as France. Breitner was aware of important 19th-century theories that were related to naturalism, such as the deterministic thinking of Taine and the thinking in terms of evolution of Charles Darwin. It influenced his work from the Amsterdam period to a high degree, but always ‘vu à travers un tempérament’. Breitner shared his interest for man in the city as a subject for art with Isaac Is- raels, but he stood alone in his choice for (large scale) demolitions and building pits as subjects for paintings, and was special in that way. His naturalist vision carried a new form of beauty. A contemporary, modern beauty that the painter found in a dark evening on Dam Square, a Jordaan girl on a bridge, a naked lower class woman or a couple of labourers on a break next to a building pit. This was definitely innovative, not only compared to the painters of the Hague School, but also compared to his contemporaries.

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