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Accordingly the one usually painted dead and the latter live birds. In other respects there is not much to distinguish their works. NICHOLAS BERCHEM was the only other pupil of Jan Baptist Weenix of whom we know anything. Berchem had other masters, beginning with his father, who was a painter of fish and tables covered with plates, china dishes, and such like.
JAN WEENIX, who was born at Amsterdam in 1649, though he succeeded in so far assimilating his father's style that his earlier works are often confused with those of "Giovanni Battista," did not acquire the energy or the dramatic force displayed by Melchior Hondecoeter in representing live birds and animals, though he sometimes surpassed him in the finish and the harmony of his decorative arrangements of dead game and still life.
Here the ancient and modern Dutch painters are seen at their best, and I know of no richer feast of this sort. Here Rembrandt is to be seen in his glory; here Van der Helst, Jan Steen, Gerard Douw, Teniers the younger, Hondekoeter, Weenix, Ostade, Cuyp, and other names as familiar. These men also painted what they saw, the people, the landscapes, with which they were familiar.
He was a painter of 'still life, and was especially famous for his dead hares, 'which in form and colour, down to the rendering of every hair, are marvels of execution. He painted sometimes, though rarely, a living dog in his pieces. A fine Weenix sometimes painted flower pieces. Pater Segers, so called because he was a Father in a Jesuit convent, which he entered at twenty-four years of age.
The names of Weenix and Hondecoeter are so inseparably associated in the popular mind as painters of birds, whose respective works are not readily distinguishable moreover by the casual observer, that a short excursion into their family histories is advisable, for the purpose of showing how it was that this particular branch of the art was so successfully practised by the two.
The usual tourist makes at once for the overrated Young Bull by Paul Potter and never looks at the magnificent Weenix across the room, the Dead Swan, with its velvety tones. The head of a young girl by Vermeer, with its blue turban and buff coat, its pearl earrings, is charming. And the View of Delft seems as fresh as the day it was painted.
Exuberance, plenty, fatness. As a painter of animals, again, Rubens opened out a new field for the energy of his fellow-countrymen, which was tilled so industriously by Frans Snyders and Jan Fyt, and in a lesser degree by the Dutchmen Jan Weenix, father and son, and Hondecoeter.
In Rome, however, he was so well received that he stayed there four years, and Italianized himself to an extent that may be seen in a picture in the Wallace Collection, a Coast Scene with Classic Ruins, which he signs Gio. Batta. Weenix. Though he returned to Holland and settled near Utrecht, his manner was sensibly modified by his sojourn in Rome.
Here the ancient and modern Dutch painters are seen at their best, and I know of no richer feast of this sort. Here Rembrandt is to be seen in his glory; here Van der Helst, Jan Steen, Gerard Douw, Teniers the younger, Hondekoeter, Weenix, Ostade, Cuyp, and other names as familiar. These men also painted what they saw, the people, the landscapes, with which they were familiar.
A. Planta, and a hunting scene by Geo. B. Weenix. The visitor should now advance into the fourth compartment of the gallery, the wall-cases of which are devoted to the specimens of Most interesting families of birds are included in this order.
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