457 



VRIES, HANS FREDUMAN DE. 



WAGE, ROBERT. 



453 



where he painted from memory, after a single interview, an excellent 

 portrait of the Sultan Achmet I. From Constantinople he went to 

 Venice, and from that place, in 1613, to Home. In Venice he was 

 attracted by the works of Paul Veronese, but in Rome he forsook for 

 a time his style for that of Carravaggio. Hia reputation procured 

 him a pension from Louis XIII. while he was in Rome, where he was 

 made president of the Academy of St. Luke; and in 1627 Louis 

 recalled 'him to Paris, gave him the title of principal painter to tha 

 king, aud apartments in the Louvre. In Paris he had so much to do 

 that he found occupation for a numerous school of young paiuters, 

 among whom were Le Brun, Le Sueur, Mignard, DuFresnoy, Testelin, 

 Perricr, the elder Dorigny, and several others. His commissions were 

 so numerous that he was obliged to entrust nearly the entire execution 

 of many of his works to these painters. He painted ceilings, galleries, 

 altarpieccs, small religious pieces and other easel pictures, as well as 

 portraits both in oil and in crayons. He painted with great facility in 

 a style peculiar to himself; it was gay, yet feeble in colouring, owing 

 to a want of harmony in the composition of colour : he was mannered 

 likewise in his drawing, especially in the hands and in the heads, 

 which he painted too frequently in profile ; he was also deficient in 

 invention and expression, and there is little merit in his compositions. 

 Yet notwithstanding these defects, Vouet greatly improved the French 

 school of painting, and he is allowed by the French historians of art 

 to have done as much for painting as Corneille did for the drama 

 in France. He is however more distinguished for the several excellent 

 painters who were educated by him than for his paintings. He died 

 in Paris in 1641. There are about 200 prints after his works, the 

 principal of which are the chapel aud gallery of the Palais Royal ; 

 some works in the Hotel de Bullion ; a ceiling in the H6tel de Breton- 

 villiers, &c. ; also altarpieces in St. Eustache, St. Nicholas des Champs, 

 St. Merry, and in the chapel of St. Francois de Paule, Place Royale : 

 there is likewise a good picture by him in the Academy of Painting. 



VRIES, HANS FREDEMAN DE, a Dutch architectural and per- 

 spective painter, born in 1527, at Leeuwaarden in Friesland. He was 

 bound for five years at Leeuwaarden, to a painter of Amsterdam, of the 

 name of Gerritsz, and designed becoming a glass-painter. He painted 

 some time at Mechlin, and settled for a time at Antwerp, where, in 

 1549, he was employed with other painters to paint the triumphal 

 arches erected in honour of the entry of Charles V. and his son Philip. 

 He afterwards visited many cities of Germany, in all of which he 

 added to his reputation by his works. De Vries was a complete 

 master of perspective ; he published a treatise upon the science, which 

 was afterwards enlarged by Samuel Marolois. His paintings, large 

 and small, are very true ; they consist of gardens, exteriors and interiors 

 of buildings ; and some of them are embellished with figures by other 

 masters. His drawings and designs were very numerous. There have 



been published twenty-six books of prints by him, illustrating various 

 styles of architecture, with views of buildings, villas, &c. He was a 

 great admirer of the works of Vitruvius and Serlio, which he studied 

 in the Flemish translations of Peter Koek. Hans had two sons, Paul 

 and Solomon de Vries, who painted in the same style as their father; 

 but though well, with less success. Solomon died in the Hague in 

 1604, before his father, tho date of whose death is not known ; the 

 date 1588, in Pilkington's 'Dictionary' (ed. 1829), is an error. Paul 

 executed some extensive works at Prague. When he died is also 

 unknown; he was living at Amsterdam in 1604, according to Van 

 Mauder; the elate therefore of 1598, given in Pilkington's 'Dictionary' 

 as the year of his death, is also an error. 



Hans de Vries is called sometimes Frisius. There ia a portrait of 

 him in Van Mander's work Lcven der Schilders, &c. 



VRIES, MARTIN GERRITZON, a Dutch navigator of the 17th 

 century. In 1643, Van Diemeu, at that time governor-general of the 

 Dutch possessions in India, gave him the command of an expedition 

 destined to examine the countries north of Japan, and the west coast 

 of Tartary as far north as the 56th degree of latitude. Vries hoisted 

 his flag on board the Kastricum, and had under him Henrik Cor- 

 neliszen Schaep, in command of the BreBkens. The two vessels sailed 

 from Batavia on the 3rd of February 1643. They were separated 

 on the 26th of May, in a storm off Niphon, and did not meet again 

 till September. During the interim, the Kastricum partially ex- 

 amined the islands in the vicinity of Perouse's Straits, and some were 

 accurately delineated by that navigator and Krusenstern. When Vriea 

 rejoined the Breskeus, he found the captain and part of the crew had 

 been imprisoned by the Japanese, on a suspicion of their having 

 smuggled some Portuguese priests into the island. The prisoners were 

 not released till the 24th of July 1644. A brief account of the voyage 

 of Vries was published at Amsterdam in 1646. Thevenot inserted an 

 abstract of it in his collection of voyages ; the instructions given to 

 Vries have been printed in the ninth volume of the ' Philosophical 

 Transactions.' D'Anville corrected a part of the coast-line of the 

 Jesuits' map of China from a large manuscript chart of the track of 

 the Kastricum which came into his hands. A copy of part of thia 

 chart on a reduced scale was published in the account of La Perouse's 

 voyage. Both Krusenstern and La Perouse speak with great respect 

 of Vries's talents as a navigator ; his astronomical observations are 

 wonderfully accurate, considering the state of instruments in his time. 

 The narrative of his voyage contains some graphic details respecting 

 the appearance of the country he visited and the customs of the 

 inhabitants. Buache, who was not acquainted with the Dutch lan- 

 guage, calls Vries by mistake Uries, and the error has been perpetuated 

 in the Voyage of La Perouse. Of the history of Vries, prior and 

 subsequently to his voyage, nothing appears to be known. 





w 





GUSTAV FRIEDRICH, an eminent German critic and 

 ' writer on art, was born at Hamburg in 1794. In that city 

 he prosecuted his early studies in art till they were for a time inter- 

 rupted by the war with the French. Afterwards he renewed his 

 favourite pursuits with fresh zeal in various places and especially in 

 Munich ; but he eventually settled in Berlin, where he some years 

 later received the appointment of Director of the Royal Gallery of 

 Paintings. As an author Dr. Waagen first made himself known by 

 the publication of a pamphlet ' Ueber die in der koniglich bair. Samm- 

 lung der Akademie der Wissenschaften befindlichen Mumien und 

 andere agypt. Alterthiimer ' (' On the royal Bavarian Collection of the 

 Academy of Sciences, particularly as to the Mummies and other 

 Egyptian Antiquities'), Munch., 1820. This was followed by a 

 monograph ' Ueber Hubert und Johann vanEyck,' Breslau, 1822 ; and 

 by a controversial work ' Hirt als Forscher iiber die Geschichte der 

 neuern Malerei ' (' Hirt as an Inquirer into the History of modern 

 Painting'), Berlin, 1832, in which he defended himself against an 

 attack by Hirt. But his most elaborate work, and that which made 

 him first generally known to English readers, was his ' Kunstwerke 

 und Kiinstler in England und Frankreich,' 4 vols. Berlin, 1837, of 

 which the first, relating to this country, was translated in 1838 under 

 the title of ' Works of Art and Artists in England.' A new and 

 greatly extended edition of this work, or rather a new work based 

 upon it, was published in English in 3 vols. 8vo, in 1854, under the 

 title of ' The Treasures of Art in Great Britain ; being an Account of 

 the chief Collections of Paintings, Sculptures, Drawings, Illuminated 

 MSS., &c.'; and a fourth and supplemental volume to be called ' Addi- 

 tional Art-Treasures in Great Britain, being an Account of Forty 

 Galleries, visited In 1854 and 1856, and now for the first time 

 described,' is announced as nowj (S'ept. 1857) nearly ready for publi- 

 cation. Dr. Waagen has had opportunities afforded him beyond any 

 other person of becoming acquainted with the contents of the Art- 

 Galleries of this country, which have been, both private and public, 

 laid open to him without reserve ; and he is familiar with the contents 

 of all the principal picture-galleries on the Continent. He has more- 

 over dedicated his lifo to the study of picture?, and he is regarded as 



one of the most accomplished living connoisseurs. His carefully- 

 conducted survey of the picture-galleries of England carries with it 

 therefore necessarily a great amount of authority, and his work is in 

 all respects the most complete and valuable which has been published. 

 As a critic in all technical matters he is eminently learned and 

 judicious ; in the higher mental, poetic, or aesthetic qualities he is, 

 though equally conscientious, less trustworthy : his point of view is 

 too exclusively that of the gallery-trained connoisseur. He has recently, 

 1857, published a useful little brochure, 'A Walk through the Art- 

 Treasures Exhibition at Manchester : What to Observe,' in which 

 these characteristics are strikingly displayed. The only other work of 

 his which requires to be particularly mentioned is his ' Kunstwerke 

 und Kiinstler in Deutschlaud,' 2 vols. Leipzig, 1843-45; but he haa 

 also written a sketch of the life of Rubens, and some other minor 

 works. As director of the gallery at Berlin, to Dr. Waagen was assigned 

 the task of newly arranging that noble collection, and this he did 

 upon a chronological plan, by which the progressive development of 

 the art in the various countries was sought to be as far as possible 

 illustrated. This method of arranging pictures, which Dr. Waagen 

 was the first to carry out to its full extent, has since been much 

 canvassed, but it is being followed more or less strictly in the various 

 galleries of the Continent. In England the plan has been adopted 

 with admirable taste and skill by Mr. Scharf in arranging the works of 

 the old masters in the Art-Treasures Exhibition at Manchester, and 

 where there is so fine a collection of works of a high class the plan is 

 unquestionably capable of producing a pleasing as well as an instruc- 

 tive result. Dr. Waagen was invited during one of his visits to this 

 country, by the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the future 

 management of the National Gallery, to state his opinion respecting 

 the arrangement of the pictures, and it is understood that his views 

 have found acceptance, but the present building quite precludes the 

 practical carrying of them into effect, if even the collection were 

 sufficiently complete to admit of such an arrangement. 



WACE, MASTER ROBERT. The name of this early Anglo-Nor- 

 man poet is variously written in different manuscripts of his poems:, 

 and in the ancient writings which make mention of him. The most 



