2. JOHN (Jan) VAN EYCK (? 1385-1440). The date of his birth is not more accurately known than that of his elder brother, but he was born much later than Hubert, who took charge of him and made him his "disciple." Under this tuition John learnt to draw and paint, and mastered the properties of colours from Pliny. Later on, Hubert admitted him into partnership, and both were made court painters to Philip of Charolais. After the breaking up of the prince's household in 1421, John became his own master, left the workshop of Hubert, and took an engagement as painter to John of Bavaria, at that time resident at the Hague as count of Holland. From the Hague he returned in 1424 to take service with Philip, now duke of Burgundy, at a salary of 100 livres per annum, and from that time till his death John van Eyck remained the faithful servant of his prince, who never treated him otherwise than graciously. He was frequently employed in missions of trust; and following the fortunes of a chief who was always in the saddle, he appears for a time to have been in ceaseless motion, receiving extra pay for secret services at Leiden, drawing his salary at Bruges, yet settled in a fixed abode at Lille. In 1428 he joined the embassy sent by Philip the Good to Lisbon to beg the hand of Isabella of Portugal. His portrait of the bride fixed the duke's choice. After his return he settled finally at Bruges, where he married, and his wife bore him a daughter, known in after years as a nun in the convent of Maeseyck. At the christening of this child the duke was sponsor, and this was but one, of many distinctions by which Philip the Good rewarded his painter's merits. Numerous altarpieces and portraits now give proof of van Eyck's extensive practice. As finished works of art and models of conscientious labour they are all worthy of the name they bear, though not of equal excellence, none being better than those which were completed about 1432. Of an earlier period, a "Consecration of Thomas à Becket" has been preserved, and may now be seen at Chatsworth, bearing the date of 1421; no doubt this picture would give a fair representation of van Eyck's talents at the moment when he started as an independent master, but that time and accidents of omission and commission have altered its state to such an extent that no conclusive opinion can be formed respecting it. The panels of the "Worship of the Lamb" were completed nine years later. They show that John van Eyck was quite able to work in the spirit of his brother. He had not only the lines of Hubert's compositions to guide him, he had also those parts to look at and to study which Hubert had finished. He continued the work with almost as much vigour as his master. His own experience had been increased by travel, and he had seen the finest varieties of landscape in Portugal and the Spanish provinces. This enabled him to transfer to his pictures the charming scenery of lands more sunny than those of Flanders, and this he did with accuracy and not without poetic feeling. We may ascribe much of the success which attended his efforts to complete the altarpiece of Ghent to the cleverness with which he [reproduced the varied aspect of changing scenery, reminiscent here of the orange groves of Cintra, there of the bluffs and crags of his native valley. In all these backgrounds, though we miss the scientific rules of perspective with which the van Eycks were not familiar, we find such delicate perceptions of gradations in tone, such atmosphere, yet such minuteness and perfection of finish, that our admiration never flags. Nor is the colour less brilliant or the touch less firm than in Hubert's panels. John only differs from his brother in being less masculine and less sternly religious. He excels in two splendid likenesses of Jodocus Vijdts and his wife Catherine Burluuts. The same vigorous style and coloured key of harmony characterizes the small "Virgin and Child" of 1432 at Ince, and the "Madonna," probably of the same date, at the Louvre, executed for Rollin, chancellor of Burgundy. Contemporary with these, the male portraits in the National Gallery, and the "Man with the Pinks," in the Berlin Museum (1432-1434), show no relaxation of power; but later creations display no further progress, unless we accept as progress a more searching delicacy of finish, counterbalanced by an excessive softness of rounding in flesh contours. An unfaltering minuteness of hand and great tenderness of treatment may be found, combined with angularity of drapery and some awkwardness of attitude in the full length portrait couple (John Arnolfini and his wife) at the National Gallery (1434), in which a rare insight into the detail of animal nature is revealed in a study of a terrier dog. A "Madonna with Saints," at Dresden, equally soft and minute, charms us by the mastery with which an architectural background is put in. The bold and energetic striving of earlier days, the strong bright tone, are not equalled by the soft blending and tender tints of the later ones. Sometimes a crude ruddiness in flesh strikes us as a growing defect, an instance of which is the picture in the museum of Bruges, in which Canon van der Paelen is represented kneeling before the Virgin under the protection of St George (1434). From first to last van Eyck retains his ability in portraiture. Fine specimens are the two male likenesses in the gallery of Vienna (1436), and a female, the master's wife, in the gallery of Bruges (1439). His death in 1440/41 at Bruges is authentically recorded. He was buried in St Donat. Like many great artists he formed but few pupils. Hubert's disciple, Jodocus of Ghent, hardly does honour to his master's teaching, and only acquires importance after he has thrown off some of the peculiarities of Flemish teaching. Petrus Cristus, who was taught by John, remains immeasurably behind him in everything that relates to art. But if the personal influence of the van Eycks was small, that of their works was immense, and it is not too much to say that their example, taken in conjunction with that of van der Weyden, determined the current and practice of painting throughout the whole of Europe north of the Alps for nearly a century. Entry: 2
The political incompetency of the reactionaries was fated never to be corrected by the intelligence of its princes or of its chiefs, and the year which saw Thiers dismissed to make way for a restoration saw also that restoration indefinitely postponed by the fatal action of the legitimist pretender. The comte de Paris went to Frohsdorf to abandon to the comte de Chambord his claims to the crown as the heir of the July Monarchy, and to accept the position of dauphin, thus implying that his grandfather Louis Philippe was a usurper. With the "Government of Moral Order" in command the restoration of the monarchy seemed imminent, when the royalists had their hopes dashed by the announcement that "Henri V." would accept the throne only on the condition that the nation adopted as the standard of France the white flag--at the very sight of which Marshal MacMahon said the rifles in the army would go off by themselves. The comte de Chambord's refusal to accept the tricolour was probably only the pretext of a childless man who had no wish to disturb his secluded life for the ultimate benefit of the Orleans family which had usurped his crown, had sent him as a child into exile, and outraged his mother the duchesse de Berry. Whatever his motive, his decision could have no other effect than that of establishing the Republic, as he was likely to live for years, during which the comte de Paris' claims had to remain suspended. It was not possible to leave the land for ever under the government improvised at Bordeaux when the Germans were masters of France; so the majority in the Assembly decided to organize another provisional government on more regular lines, which might possibly last till the comte de Chambord had taken the white flag to the grave, leaving the way to the throne clear for the comte de Paris. On the 19th of November 1873 a Bill was passed which instituted the Septennate, whereby the executive power was confided to Marshal MacMahon for seven years. It also provided for the nomination of a commission of the National Assembly to take in hand the enactment of a constitutional law. Before this an important constitutional innovation had been adopted. Under Thiers there were no changes of ministry. The president of the Republic was perpetual prime minister, constantly dismissing individual holders of portfolios, but never changing at one moment the whole council of ministers. Marshal MacMahon, the day after his appointment, nominated a cabinet with a vice-president of the council as premier, and thus inaugurated the system of ministerial instability which has been the most conspicuous feature of the government of the Third Republic. Under the Septennate the ministers, monarchist or moderate republican, were socially and perhaps intellectually of a higher class than those who governed France during the last twenty years of the 19th century. But the duration of the cabinets was just as brief, thus displaying the fact, already similarly demonstrated under the Restoration and the July Monarchy, that in France parliamentary government is an importation not suited to the national temperament. Entry: 1872
A quaint tribute has been paid to the literary talent shown in Du Maurier's inscriptions to his drawings by Mr F. Anstey (Guthrie), author of _Vice Versa_, and Du Maurier's colleague on the staff of _Punch_. "In these lines of letterpress," says Mr Anstey, "he has brought the art of précis-writing to perfection." They are indeed singularly concise and to the point. It is the more curious, therefore, to note that in his novels, and even in his critical essays, Du Maurier reveals very different qualities: the précis-writer has become an _improvisatore_, pouring out his stories and ideas in full flood, his style changing with every mood--by turn humorous, eloquent, tender, gay, sometimes merely "skittish," sometimes quite solemn, but never for long; sometimes, again, breaking into graceful and haunting verse. He writes with apparent artlessness; but, in his novels at least, on closer examination, it is found that he has in fact exerted all his ingenuity to give them--what such flagrantly untrue tales most require--verisimilitude. It is hard to say which of the three stories is the more impossible: that of Trilby, the tone-deaf artist's model who becomes a _prima donna_, that of Barty Josselin and his guardian angel from Mars, or that of the dream-existence of Peter Ibbetson and the duchess of Towers. They are all equally preposterous, and yet plausible. The drawings are cunningly made to serve the purpose of evidence, circumstantial and direct. These books cannot be criticized by the ordinary canons of the art of fiction. They are a _genre_ by themselves, a blend of unfettered day-dream and rose-coloured reminiscence. For the dramatic version of _Trilby_ by Mr Paul Potter Du Maurier would accept no credit. The play was produced in 1895 by Herbert Beerbohm Tree, at the Haymarket, with immense popular success. Entry: A
HELIOZOA, in zoology, a group of the Sarcodina (q.v.) so named by E. Haeckel, 1866. They are characterized by the radiate pseudopods, finely tapering at the apex, springing abruptly from the superficial protoplasm, containing a denser, rather permanent axial rod (figs. 1 (1), 2 (2)); protoplasm without a clear ectoplasm or pellicle, often frothy with large vacuoles, like the alveoli of Radiolaria; nucleus 1 or numerous; skeleton absent, gelatinous or of separate siliceous fibres, plates or spicules, rarely complete and latticed; reproduction by simple fission or by brood-formation, often syngamous; form usually nearly spherical, rarely changing slowly. This group was formerly included with the Rhizopoda; but was separated from it by Haeckel on account of the character of its pseudopods, and its general adaptation to a semipelagic existence correlated with the frothy cytoplasm (fig. 1 (1)). _Actinophrys sol_ and _Actinosphaerium eichhornii_ (fig. 2), known as sun animalcules to the older microscopists, float freely in stagnant or slow-flowing waters, and _Myriophrys_ is able by an investment of long flagelliform cilia to swim freely. The majority, however, lurk among confervae or the light débris of the bottom ooze; and come under the head of "sapropelic" rather than pelagic organisms. The body is usually of constant spherical form in relation to the floating habit. _Nuclearia_, however, shows amoeboid changes of general outline. The pseudopods are retractile, the axial filament being absorbed as the filament grows shorter and thicker and disappearing when the pseudopod merges into the ectoplasm, to be reformed at the same time with the pseudopod. There is often a distinction, clear, but never sharp, between the richly vacuolate, almost frothy ectoplasm and the denser endoplasm. One or more contractile vacuoles may protrude from the ectoplasm. The endoplasm contains the nucleus or nuclei. The nucleus when single may be central or excentric: in the latter case, the endoplasm contains a clear central sphere ("centrosome") on which abut the axial filaments of the pseudopods. The ectoplasm contains, in some species, constantly (_Raphidiophrys viridis_) or occasionally (_Actinosphaerium_), green cells belonging to the genera _Zoochlorella_ and _Sphaerocystis_, both probably--the latter certainly--vegetative stages of a Chlamydomonad (FLAGELLATA, q.v.) and of symbiotic significance. Entry: HELIOZOA
DRESS (from the Fr. _dresser_, to set out, arrange, formed from Lat. _directus_, arranged, _dirigere_, to direct, arrange), a substantive of which the current meaning is that of clothing or costume in general, or, specifically, the principal outer garment worn by a woman (see COSTUME). The verb "to dress" has various applications which can be deduced from its original meaning. It is thus used not only of the putting on of clothing, but of the preparing and finishing of leather, the preparation of food for eating, the application of cleansing and healing substances or of bandages, &c., to a wound, the drawing up in a correct line of a body of troops, and, generally, adorning or decking out, as of a ship with flags. In the language of the theatre the "dresser" is the person who looks after the actor's wardrobe and assists him in the changing of his costumes. For the printer's use of "dresser" see TYPOGRAPHY. Entry: DRESS