Flemish Manufactures

Big-bearded William Morris, who did some of the first thinking about industry's impact on art, was fond of pointing out that the word "manufacturer" had lost all if its original meaning (hand-maker). Worcester, Mass, is one of the New England towns whose 19th-Century mills and streets bear witness to the loss. But Worcester has a fine Art Museum, and here last week New England scholars and art lovers gathered to ponder the art of mother great manufacturing region when art and manufacturing were one.

In Flanders (now Belgium) 600 years ago, painting was just another craft. Like brewers, dyers and weavers who were .hen bringing wealth to its free cities, painters were organized in solid guilds. They had rules of long apprenticeship, traditions of craft, stiff standards for 'masters." Flemings were lucky, because this medieval system lasted at least a century longer among them than anywhere else, led to the great technical discovery of oil painting and its first masters--Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, Hans Memling, Roger van der Weyden.

Generally known as "Flemish primitives," these 15th-Century artists were primitive in little but their religious sincerity. Modern painters marvel at the jewel-like permanence of color and patience of workmanship in their best pictures--two reasons why collectors short on verve but long on taste have made a safe hobby of Early Flemish masterpieces. The finest U. S. collection of Flemish primitives was formed by a lawyer, the late John Graver Johnson of Philadelphia.

The Johnson collection, now owned by the Philadelphia Museum, formed the nucleus of last week's exhibition at Worcester. Enriched by 44 pictures from public and private collections in Belgium, it was the first sizable, over-all show of 15th, 16th, and 17th-Century Flemish painting ever held in the U. S. Jointly responsible for it were the Worcester Museum's affable, oval Director Francis Henry Taylor and Assistant Director Henri Marceau of the Philadelphia Museum. They succeeded last summer in getting the help of Leo van Puyvelde, distinguished, bluntspoken* director of the Royal Museums of Belgium, who accompanied the show to Worcester.

Notable among the primitives at Worcester was Memling's Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, from Brussels; among the 17th-Century paintings, Rubens' Holy Family Beneath the Apple Tree, also from Brussels. Principal weakness of the exhibition in the eyes of modern students was the fact that it included only two pictures by Pieter Breughel the Elder, the dominant Flemish genius of the 16th Century. At time when the guilds were breaking up and Italian Renaissance influence wa; breaking in, Breughel painted mischievous magnificent scenes of everyday Flemish life. The Worcester exhibition left U. S students still obliged to go to Antwerp Brussels and Vienna to see his larger anc greater works.

* Famous for his hatred of varnish, Directo van Puyvelde has cleaned up many a Flemish masterpiece, disclosed last Christmas on nymph's leg and one baby's bottom in picture by Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678) which had been painted over in prudish generations. "Patina," he snorted, "used to be bought by the Belgian State for 100 francs a bottle. . . . It's called that 'Old Gold' tone. Pfui!"

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