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The Massacre of the Löwen Magistrates, was a still further departure from precedent, since--quite in Callot's manner--it mingled with the principal drama a mass of grotesque episodes. The born _genre_ painter was announced by these traits; and not less striking was the form of the art, which was a thorough departure from the manner of the
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Wedding in the Seventeenth Century --a rich display of gleaming hangings, golden plate, and red-plush furniture, amid which move handsomely dressed people, wedding guests, and violin players. The effort to approach Pieter de Hoogh or Jan van der Meer is apparent in the management of light; the treatment of drapery reminds one of Mieris and Metsu. Another pair of anecdotic pictures from the seventeenth century allow one to follow the progress by which Leys, under the influence of Dutch models, gradually developed that power and mastery of colouring, that completeness of pictorial effect, and that soft treatment of subdued light which were justly admired in his first works. In particular, certain works founded on the legends of painters and monarchs--Rubens, Rembrandt, or Frans Floris visited in their studio by some personage of high station--made him the lion of the Paris Salon. In 1852 he stood at the summit of his fame; he was recognised as one of the first of painters, both in Belgium and in other countries, and was everywhere loaded with honours. Then he cast his slough and entered on his
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During a tour through Germany, in 1852, he had become familiar with Dürer and Cranach; in Dresden, Wittenberg, and Eisenach there hovered round him the great figures of the Reformation period. Half-effaced memories of his countrymen, the brothers Van Eyck and Quentin Matsys, became once more fresh, and drove him decisively forward on his new course.
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The Festival at Otto Venius's and
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Erasmus in his Study were the first steps in this direction, and when soon afterwards he came forward with his costume pictures,
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Luther as a Chorister in Eisenach and
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Luther in his Household at Wittenberg, every one was enraptured with the exquisite truthfulness of his portrayal of archaic life. At the World's Exhibition of 1855 he had another magnificent success with three pictures executed in old German style. These were
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The Mass in Honour of the Antwerp Burgomaster Barthel de Haze,
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The Walk before the Gate, and
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New Year's Day in Flanders. His return from Paris, where he was the only foreigner except Cornelius who had received the great gold medal, took the form of a triumphal progress in Antwerp, where he was greeted with illuminations, torchlight processions, and laurel wreaths made in gold. He was held to be the most eminent master since Quentin Matsys, the Jan van Eyck of the nineteenth century. In the Brussels Salon he appeared as a prince of art, before whom criticism made obeisance, and for whose pictures special shrines were erected. He was striking, not merely as an artist, but as a man: his stately figure was known to every one in Antwerp, and was pointed out to strangers as one of the sights of the place. In 1867, when he again received the medal in Paris, the Antwerp Cercle Artistique had a medal struck to commemorate an event of such importance in Belgian art. His decease, on 25th August 1869, threw the whole town into mourning; the windows in the town hall, where he had painted his last pictures, were hung with black, and the announcement of his death pasted up on great placards at the street corners.