ART IN BELGIUM AND HOLLAND. Ixxiii

Meanwhile, however, an important new school of painting had
sprung up in Belgium, partly under the influence of contempor-
ary French art and partly inspired by a direct return to Rubens;
but this school found its ideals not in correct composition and pur-
ity of form, but in colour and motion; not in classic mythology
and history, but in the great deeds of their own country’s past.
It is remarkable that the first important work of this school — viz.
‘Burgomaster van der Werf at the siege of Leyden’, painted by
Gustav Wappers (1803-74) in 1830 (see p. 439) — commemorates
the heroism of a Dutchman, i.e. of a native of the country from
which Belgium tore herself free in the very same year. In 1833,
however, Hendrik Leys followed with an episode from the Spanish
oppression, and a storm of enthusiasm was raised by Wappers’s
‘Beginning of the olution of 1830’ (p. 149) in 1835 and
by Nicaise de Keyser’s ‘Battle of the Spurs’ (p. 80) in 1836. It
was felt that a truly national school of painting had arisen as in
the days of Rubens. But today we are so completely out of sym-
pathy with these historical compositions that we can hardly do
justice to the great amount of actual ability that was lavished on
them, or to the progress they display in yvivacity of conception
as well as in colouring and in the handling of light. Wapper
painting of the Revolution affects us like a skilfully arranged liy-
ing picture; and even the ‘Abdication of Charles V.’, by Louis
Gallait (1810-87), and the ‘Compromise of the Netherlandish
Nobles’, by Edouard de Biefve (1808-82), depend for their inter-
t almost entirely upon their subjects (p. 119). Yet these paint-
ings when exhibited in Germany in 1842 excited such enthusi-
astic admiration that for a time Antwerp challenged the artistic
supremacy of Paris in the eyes of German painters. Probably the
most striking picture of this se is Gallait’s ‘Guilds of Brussels
paying the last honours to the bodies of Counts Egmont and Hoorn’,
with its contrast between the waxen-white faces and the white
sheets and black cover of the bed (Tournai Museum, p. 85). To
Gallait we owe also some excellent portraits and some sympathetic
genre works. But his fame is now far outshone by that of Baron
Hendrik Leys (1815-69), who soon abandoned the lines followed
by the others and adopted as his models first the Dutch artists of
the 17th cent., then the early Netherlandish and German masters
of the 15th and 16th centuries. The quality that attracts us im-
mediately in Leys is his simplicity. The canvases of other artists
Suggest well-set and effective theatrical scenes; before the paint-
ings of Le we feel that we are actually beholding the life and
labour of ancient Antwerp. At the same time his archeological
accuracy and his sound sense of reality are combined with such a
refined feeling for colour and such charming light-effects that his
compositions are entirely satisfactory even from a purely artistic
point of view. Thus Leys offers a parallel to Menzel in more than