The Jewish Bride and The Regents of the Old Mens’ Almshouse
To explore some of the conventions of portraiture mentioned in Part I, I have selected two portraits that capture opposing sides of Dutch culture of the time: Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride and Frans Hals, Regents of the Old Mens’ Almshouse. The two ekphrastic poems in this section explore different aspects of the paintings: from their aesthetic value to their sociological significance.
Rembrandt’s ‘Jewish Bride’
The Jewish Bride, Rembrandt van Rijn (1667). The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The wealth of reds and golds of Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride has captured the imagination of viewing public and poets alike. Living near the Rijksmuseum has provided me with many opportunities to sit in front of the painting, and (if the crowds aren’t too big) can spend some time just looking and discovering something new each time. The painting has often been praised as one of the few real expressions of love created by Dutch Realist artists during the Baroque era. The identity of the couple is a bit of a puzzle, but the general consensus has it that it depicts a couple posing as Isaac and Rebecca. According to his letters, Vincent van Gogh was ‘reduced to tears in front of it, writing that he would gladly give up ten years of his life to sit in front of the painting for two weeks, eating only a stale crust of bread.’*
This painting, which could bring even van Gogh to tears, is focussed on the bride in her luxurious red dress and a richly-dressed groom, who holds the bride in an intimate embrace. What is interesting about their positioning is the apparent shyness of the couple. Indeed, they do not look at each other, at the painter, or at the viewer: this is a private moment. The tenderness within a domestic setting is typical many of Rembrandt’s paintings – which carry his sense of humanity even within the intimate trappings of the home.
Also important to consider is Rembrandt’s use of light. In this painting, there are many reflections created by … something ….perhaps candles. Notice how the light is reflected from the couple’s rich dress to their faces. The rest of the scene lies behind them in darkness. It has been suggested that Rembrandt used light in this way to reflect the the inner state of the couple – a happiness shared with the viewer in a brief moment captured by the artist.
The Dutch poet, Pierre Kemp, has equally captured this moment and its ephemeral beauty. ‘The Red of the Jewish Bride’ is celebration of the painting and a likening of the courtship that is presented here as the poet’s own courtship with the painting.
‘The Red of the Jewish Bride’
Pierre Kemp
I have loved the Red of the Jewish Bride
from the first time I saw it,
not realizing yet
what kind of courtship I began that day.
I went there also when the sky was grey,
or the sun’s light showed for a moment only
and flowed away in an unsteady line,
and then I sought the nuance that so tenderly,
yet never with passion enough,
asked me to stay a long time.
I saw the Bride with her left hand
play the piano on the right hand of
her husband made diffident by time
and I was not jealous. That was their bond.
I did not come to intrude upon their loving,
I am concerned with the Red of her dress
and with nothing else,
not even their entourage in golden-green.
Just to see that colour as a colour of today,
as though Rembrandt were beside me playing with it
amidst the bronzes of the background scene
and, whatever other colours he painted in,
still found that one colour for all time.
Whether or not the maulstick was used in her making,
it’s his Red in which he sang the young Bride’s dress;
it is my Red, surrounding her right hand,
not jewels, no, not fringes or lace,
it is only red, the Red, that I adore,
above all when I sit by Rembrandt in the sun.
Kemp’s poem is a love lyric from beginning to end, stressing his love in the first line and his long-lasting ‘courtship’ in line 4. But we soon learn that he is not in love with the lady herself, but with Rembrandt’s red, which, in lines 5-7, is a welcome relief from the greys of Dutch climate. It is not the bride who gently asks the speaker to sit awhile, but the painting; he is not jealous of the couple’s intimacy, but only concerned about ‘the red of her dress/ and with nothing else’. Indeed, this is a love lyric to the artist, and like many love poems, is mostly about the lover’s response to the beloved. (Note, for example, that there are 13 lines given to Rembrandt’s use of colours and, very interestingly, 13 lines that are ‘self-reflexive’, ie: contain ‘I’ or ‘me’. ) The lovely final lines seems a consummation of that love: when poet and painter at last sit together ‘in the sun’.
Ekphrastically Speaking:
Kranz categories: I think that we can agree from the outset that, in terms of Kranz’s categories (and in poetic terms in general) Pierre Kemp’s poem is a panegyric (poem of praise) if there ever was one. It is not really rhetorical, as the speaker is focussed inward, on his own reflections. It is moderately descriptive, as the colours are emphasized and just a few details from the painting (the hands of the couple). It is meditative (personal refection) and (in Kranz’s terms) associative (personal experience). 1
Differential Model: In my ekphrastic model, we can see straight away that the poem is highly attributive: it both names the painting in the title and the artist in the body of the poem. It is moderately depictive, as it describes colours and a few details. But it is highly associative in addressing the artistic technique of the painter/ the painting, and the tools of his trade -the maulstick.(a light stick with a padded leather ball at one end, held against work by a painter to support and steady the brush hand.
1. Note: from here on, I will conflate these two categories under Meditative. Not only do they overlap in Kranz, but the Associative category is used differently than in my own Differential Model. Conflating the two in Kranz’ categories helps avoid confusion. In my model, associative refers to topics that have to do with related artworks, artists, styles, (etc) which serve as markers that bring the image of that particular artwork to the mind of the reader. Personal experience and other unassociated reflections are not ekphrastic, under my model
Group portraits became a popular genre in The Netherlands during the Golden Age (the ‘Night Watch’ is a good example of this genre). The paintings were usually very large and intended to impress, as they portrayed leaders of organizations (government, guilds and charities), military officers, and so on. ‘The portraits often depict the sitters in the midst of a meeting or a meal, emphasizing that members’ shared responsibilities, personal interactions, and civic-mindedness and were usually displayed in public space where the sitters’ status and good deeds could be recognized’.**
The portrait of the Regents of the Old Men’s Almshouse (Oude Mannenhuis) in Haarlem, is one of these group portraits and was painted when Hals was already in his 80’s. This is also the period when Hals had turned away from his earlier, more flamboyant paintings to depictions of ‘dignified’ images of Calvinist Holland. Since Hals painted the Regents when he had reached old age, he must have been keenly aware of the fact that he was facing the same fate as the inmates of the almshouse. According to David Galeneson, ‘the prospect of facing [such a] group, as in the course of being admitted to the old men’s home, must have been very daunting, and Hals makes this real for us: he not only captures the dour appearance of these functionaries, but also the chilling sensation of coming before them as a supplicant. (Hals may well have been able to imagine this feeling, for although he never lived in the almshouse, he was very poor in his final years, and may have considered entering the home.) The impact of these paintings is heightened by the startling realization that the building in which we see them today is the same one in which these officials sat in 1664: the 17th-century old men’s home is today the Frans Hals Museum’.*** . This somber painting—dominated by blacks and grays set against the women’s starched, white collars – has evoked varying responses. One quite sympathetic critique of the Regents puts the blame for their austere faces on the heavy burden of their profession:
‘The women are quiet and austere. Perhaps they are weary from their responsibility in caring for the elderly poor, or perhaps they are simply serious about their task of governing the almshouse. Regardless, there is a dignity in the figures and a clear intention to individualize them, both through their likenesses and different poses.’ ****
In the following poem, ‘The Guardians of the Poor’, David Gill has no sympathy for the ‘weariness’ of the regents nor allows them any sense of dignity. Instead, he takes the sense of the ‘dour’ to the extremes, focussing on the harsh-looking women as the antithesis of ‘care-givers’, insisting that ‘these dames are no angels’:
‘The Guardians of the Poor’ (David Gill)
Was it the centenary of the foundation?
The kroners of some fur-lined merchant from the prosperous wharves
paying off God by paying the artist?
The ancient guardians of the poorhouse sit like a congress of widows,
each with a loss on her dead white hands.
Not a smile between them
Only suspicion of the painter
whose even more ancient eye glints
as he reads in their papery faces
a story of tyrannized paupers,
kneeling pawns in the chessboard corridors,
scrubbing flagstones, gnawing turnips,
sipping the thin grey gruel
of the scant allocation.
Suspicion in their lard-white faces,
lips tight-lidded just now on boiling cabbage
of rough Dutch syllables,
and their dead white hands:
a scatter of sea-bleached crabs.
One dead white hand
crooked nastily to confiscate the last small coin
of an old man’s means.
The white-winged collars mock images of angels.
These dames are no angels,
their small cold eyes are keyholes let into the meanest
of Dutch interiors.
In his gripping depiction of the almshouse, Gill leaves no doubt about his own feelings toward the institution of poorhouses and their ‘guardians’. From the title itself, we sense that the word ‘guardian’ will be used ironically, the ‘white-winged collars’ a very mockery to the meaning of guardians, or of ‘angels’. We sense that the poorhouse is a death house, in the ‘care’ of ‘dead white hands’, (which is repeated three times in the poem for emphasis) as well as the metaphor likening these hands to ‘crabs’, a sinister image of grasping greed. The artist, the aged recorder of this group, is also present in the picture painted by Gill. Here he stresses Hals’ age and perhaps the insight that comes with age, the ‘glint’ in his eye as he records the scene: ageing and its effects on the human spirit (note that ‘suspicion’ is mentioned twice in the poem, again for emphasis). In the final metaphor, Gill turns the table on a commonplace (‘eyes are windows to the soul’) and offers instead eyes that are, ‘keyholes’ to empty houses. Indeed, adjectives carry the meaning of the poem. From the dead and decaying images (dead, grasping, lard-white, small cold, mean , tight-lidded, sea-bleached hands, paper faces) to tyrannized paupers forced to eat ‘thin, grey gruel’, the poem brilliantly stresses, from first line to last, a revulsion at the inhumanity of the almshouses, which were so much a part of 17th century Holland.
Ekphrastically Speaking:
Kranz categories: First of all, the entire tone of Gill’s poem is pejorative (disapproving), not toward the painting or the artist, but toward the subject itself. It is highly descriptive (one can form an image of the painting in one’s mind by the details given in the poem). It does seem to be directed at another viewer of the painting, as the first line ask the question of the reason for the painting, who commissioned it; in the final lines, there is a reference to ‘these dames’. In this case, we could say that it is rhetorical.
Differential Model: The poem is slightly attributive by means of allusion. The title describes the duties of the sitters (Regents). There are several of these kinds of paintings, and some of the sitters (or ‘guardians’) are men. But I think that Gill’s descriptions of every detail of the painting are designed to lead us to this particular group portrait. I think that we can agree that the poem is highly depictive and slightly associative, with its reference to the stance of the artist.
The two paintings discussed here are part of a vast body of portraiture that represents the rich heritage of the Dutch Golden Age. From Vermeer, to Rembrandt, to Hals, to name just a few, these portraits have captured the imagination of many writers and offer enough material to create volumes of poetry. We could spend more time and space on this topic (and may do later on), but for now, we will go on to our next subject:
The Art of Still Life (Friday, 9 February)
Notes:
*https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/monarchy…/rembrandt-the-jewish-bride
** Museum Press Release, 9 March, 2012: :Civic Pride: Dutch Group Portraits from Amsterdam”, 10 March 2012-11 March, 2017.
*** huffingtonpost.com/david-galenson
**** idem