;l^:;:^rl"';; i'i* ^'i Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2Q07 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/figurepaintersofOOgowerich ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF THE GREAT ARTISTS THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND L 1 ij It UNI OF ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF THE GREAT ARTISTS. THE FOLLOWING BIOGRAPHIES ARE NOW READY:— LEONARDO. From recent researches. By Dr. J. Paui RiCHTEK, Author of " Die Mosaiken von Ravenna." With i6 Illustrations. THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. By LORE Ronald Gower, Trustee of National Portrait Gallery. With 19 Engravings. HOGARTH. From recent researches. By AUSTIN Dobson, Author of "Vignettes in Rhyme." With i6 Illustrations. RUBENS. From recent authorities. By C. W. Kett, M.A., Hertford College, Oxford. With 16 Engravings. TURNER. From recent investigations. By CoSMO MONK- ii.)i;sE, Author of " Studies of Sir E. Landseer." With 20 Engravings. THE LITTLE MASTERS, From recent authorities. By W. B. Scott, Author of " Lectures on the Fine Arts." With 16 Engravings. *** An Edition dc luxe, containing 14 extra plates from rare engravings in the British Museu.n, and bound in Ro.xburgh style, may also be had, price los. 6d. HOLBEIN. From the text of Dr. A. WOLTMANN. B\ Joseph Cundall, Author of "Life and Genius of Rembrandt." With 2< Engravings. TINTORETTO. From recent investigations at Venice. B\ W. RoscoE OsLEK, Author of " Occasional Essays on Art." With manj Engravings. RAPHAEL. From the text of J. D. Passavant. B> N. D'Anvers, Author of " Elementary History of Art." With 20 Engravings. VAN DYCK and HALS. From recent authorities. B> Percy R. Head, Lincoln CjUege, Oxford. With 16 Engravings. TITIAN. From the most recent authorities. By Richare Fo:^D Heath, M.A., Hertford College, Oxford. With 16 Engravings. REMBRANDT. From the text of C. Vosmaer. By J. W MoLi.ETT, B.A., Brasenose College, Oxford; Officier de I'lnstruction Publiqu< (France). With 16 Engravings. { LIBR/ GERARD DOU. I'"kom a Painting by Himself. In the Dresffeti Cn/lery. The 7vhoIe world without Art 7vould be one great ivilderness. THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND BY LORD RONALD (J^OWER Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery t LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON CROWN BUILDINGS, FLEET STREET 1880 N r h {All rights reserved.) london: r. cr.ay, sons. and tayloi!, brkad street hill, E.C. V\^ yXA. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction 1 Gerakd van Honthoest 5 Adriaen Brouwer 9 Gerard Ter-Borch 14 Adeiaan Jansz, van Ostade 21 Ferdinand Bol 27 Bartholomeus a^\n deu Helst 31 Gerard Doit 35 Philips Wouweeman 40 LsACK Jansz, van Ostadr ... 45 Jan Steen 49 Gabriel Metsu 57 iS^icoLAAs Maes 61 Jan vee Meee, of Delft 65 Pietee de Hoocii 69 I 5^ VI CONTENTS. FrANS van MlEllIh CAsrAii Netscheu Lists of the Princii'Al Paintings of the Dutch Figure Painters 81 Bibliography 117 Index 119 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PACK 1. Gerard Dou. From a Paixting by himself . Front is2nece 2. The Dentist. By Gerard van Honthorst G 3. The Topers. By Adriaen Brou-wer 12 4. The Lute Player. By Gerard Ter-Borch 14 5. Paternal Advice. By Gerard Ter-Borch 17 0. Adriaan van Ostade. Prom a Pad^ting by himself ... 22 7. The Hunchback Fiddler. By Adriaan van Ostade ... 24 8. A Philosopher. By Ferdinand Bol 28 9. Syndics of the St. Sebastian Company. By Van der Helst . 32 10. The Inn Stable. By Philips Woitwerman 40 11. A Village Scene. By Isack van Ostade 46 12. Jan Steen. From a Painting by himself 50 13. The Dancing Dog. By Jan Steen 55 14. The Vegetable Market at Amsterdam. By Gabriel Metsu 58 15. The Idle Servant. By Nicolaas Maes 62 16. A Dutch Family. By Ver Meer, of Delft 66 17. Morning Toilet. By Pieter de Hooch 70 18. Frans van Mieris in his Studio. From a Painting by himself 74 19. The Music Lesson. By Caspar Netscher 78 FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND, INTRODUCTION". LORD BACON'S definition, " Ars est homo additus ^ naturcB,'^ applies, we think, more to the painters of Holland than to the artists of any other school. Out of the sixteen chosen for this volume as representative men, two only, Honthorst and Yan der Heist, are fi^gure or portrait painters only. The fourteen others — although we think only of Terborch's and Mieris's courtiers and ladies, of Steen's and Brouwer's peasants and yokels, of Maes's and Don's kitchen-maids and children — were, one and all, artists not only proficient in the delineation of faces and figures, but also excellent in the more difficult qualities of the painter's art : their talent in the representation of lights and shades has rarely been equalled, and never been surpassed At first sight it may appear that any account, however slight, of the Dutch figure painters without including the names of Rembrandt,* the most celebrated of them all, * Biographies of Rembrandt and Frans Hals have already appeared in this series. F P H B 2 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. and Frans Hals, perhaps the most original of the Dutch Masters of portrait painting, would have but little interest ; and when the writer first took the task in hand, he felt as if he had been asked to speak of our English portrait painters without mentioning Reynolds and Gainsborough, or of the English landscape painters without including Turner and Constable. But the Dutch School of painting is quite an exceptional one, and the great interest attaching to these artists of Holland is that they were something much more remarkable than merely painters of figures. Isack van Ostade's out-of-door scenes would be delightful land- scapes, even if the peasants that enliven them were omitted, and Wouwerman's breezy skies and soft distances, even if the huntsmen and hounds could gallop out of his pictures, would remain among the best landscapes that liave ever been painted. It is this almost universal power of painting nature, a nature animated by human actors, that makes the works of these old Dutch artists so precious to the collector and amateur, and so valuable to the student and artist, and it is that which elicited from our greatest artist, Joshua Reynolds, the opinion that ''painters should go to the Dutch School to learn the art of painting, as they would go to a Grammar School to learn languages." There is nothing more instructive or curious in the history of art than to trace the rapid rise of the Dutch School, its wonderful rpign, and its rapid decline. The Dutch figure painters did not appear till after the War of Independence, when the portion of the Netherlands, now Belgium, became the Spanish Netherlands, as distinct from the Northern Netherlands, which then proudly took the name of the United Provinces. Freed from the tyranny of the Bomish Church, this newly enfranchised INTRODUCTION. 3 country produced, as it were by magic, a fresh and a national art, one that was essentially domestic. We can trace even iij the works of the early Flemish painters, such as Massys of Antwerp, and Lucas van Leyden, a tendency to paint domestic subjects ; and when once freed from the obligations of painting for the clergy and the church, the true bent of the national art among the Dutch at once declared itself. While Kubens was buying indulgences from the priests by painting pictures for churches, Rembrandt would take some old Jew from out the slums of Amsterdam, and paint a portrait of the old Shylock with as much care as Rubens would have bestowed on St. Peter or St. Paul. No more priests, no more church pictures for the painters of the Dutch United Provinces ! Portraits, indeed, were to be executed of huge proportions, sometimes of four-and-twenty life-size figures in one canvas, as we see in Yan der Heist's great banquet scene ; but these great groups were ordered for the hospitals and town-halls, and not by the churches ; and Dutch art was principally confined to small paintings for the small rooms of the merchants of Amsterdam and the Hague, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Samson and Delilah, Judith and Holofernes, all these old favourites of earlier Flemish painters gave place in freed Holland to the old cobbler and his spouse, the housewife and her child, the gallant and his lady love, and such domestic scenes. Rembrandt, indeed, would now and again paint pictures from Holy Writ, but in a manner that no artist had ever dared to do. He represented the Man of Sorrows, as one poor among the poorest, miserable among the wretchedest, as one, indeed, a sufferer and acquainted with grief. They are pictures full of the divine compassion that fills the principal figure with more divinity than all the glories 4 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. of nimbuses and crowns in the works of the Italian schools could bestow; but Rembrandt's sacred paintings were not intended to decorate the walls of»a church. Few indeed even of Rembrandt's pupils attempted to paint sacred sub- jects ; they knew the national taste, and took their models from the life and the scenes around them. It is sufficient to recall the names of Terborch, of Bol, of the Van Ostades, and half-a-dozen others, to illustrate this. With Rembrandt in Holland — as with Rubens in the Netherlands — passed away the greatness of his school ; both left pupils and imitators in plenty, but none of these attained the excellence of their masters. In Holland, with the greatness and independence of their country the Dutch painters had risen and flourished, and with its decline and decay they also declined and decayed. The art had been a national and a spontaneous growth, born with the independence and freedom of its native soil : when that independence had lessened and the freedom was diminished, the native art, like the foliage on the parent tree, suffered with its lack of health. This was the history of art in ancient Greece and in Italy. It repeated itself in Holland in the seventeenth century. Surely such a history points a moral, and this is how we read it : — No national art can exist without libeity and inde- pendence. The more liberty (constitutional, not democratic) and in- dependence there is in a country, the more will art flourish and expand. R. G. f ■ ^m t ^^^ J^^sw m >^ ^1 ^^^^ 1^*^ % K^m W\_ *^ ^-^-^ m^ ^» " IJ^^ W-^^^ ^^^0 1 ^^Jb^^ l^w li3 l^^p \ ^^^^53 ^F^ s^t^^ ^^ > ^ ijS^HS 1 fttff ^aC^^ ^Su ihs^. as— = \-^ . G\ ife ^ ^— ^ mJS GERARD VAN HONTHORST. Born 1690.— Died 1656. IN the gallery at Stafford House there hangs a painting in which the figures are the size of life ; it represents a scene of tragic interest, and is so grand in feeling, and so truly pathetic, that this picture, once seen, is not easily forgotten. Beside a table sits an old, bearded man, before him stands a prisoner ; both figures are seen only in profile, and but one candle placed on the table lights the two faces. All is dark around the principal figures; faces, only dimly seen in the background, gaze in wonder and silence at the old man, and at the one who with pinioned hands looks down so patiently and wearily at the other. The old man is the High Priest, Caiaphas ; the "visage" of the other, '* so marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men," the Saviour's. From early childhood this painting had always deeply impressed the writer, and when later in life he found how inferior the other works of the painter of Our Saviour before Caiaphas are, the disappointment was great. Let us quote what an English and a French writer on matters of art say with regard to this painting. First, 6 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. Mrs. Jameson, who writes of it, " The profound, the abandonment of resignation in the head and figure of the Redeemer, cannot be regarded without emotion ; " and Charles Blanc, in his Lives of the Dutch Painters, says, " I shall never forget the extraordinary impression that this picture made on me ; at first one can not distinguish the subjects of the painting; the principal figure, poorly clad in a white serge dress over a red shirt, appears at first sight to be but a common malefactor, brought up in the night to be questioned by the magistrate; the eye can not, owing to the vivid light of the candle and the darkness around, take in for some time the meaning of the work ; but soon the subject seems to stand out and disclose itself, the face of the accused seems impregnated with an ineffable gentleness and a sublime resignation, the divinity is present, the handcuffed prisoner is the Son of God." This painting of Gerard van Honthorst has also been praised by Sandrart, and it caused Lanzi to write of the artist that he was " degno di rappresentare un decor o ancJie le sacre storie." Gerard van Honthorst was born at Utrecht in 1590. He studied under Abraham Bloemaert, but he visited Italy when about twenty, and settled in Rome, where he soon became known from the surprising ability he showed in imitating the manner of Caravaggio. On first visiting the Vatican he is said to have been greatly struck by the effect of the three- fold light in Raphael's fresco of the Delivery of St. Peter — a triple light, partly from the torches, partly from the angel, and partly from the moon ; henceforth, tradition says, he resolved to distinguish his painting by similar effects, and he carried this fancy to such an extent that he earned for himself the nickname of " Gherardo delle UNIVE GERARD VAN HONTHOEST. 7 Notti."* It was during his stay in Kome that he painted the great picture already mentioned; it was done for his patron, Prince Giustiniani ; he also executed many works of a religious character, and decorated the Church of Santa Maria della Scala with frescoes, one of which, representing the Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, has been greatly admired. On his return to Utrecht Honthorst was elected dean of the Guild ot" St. Luke in 1623; he then set up a school in which he taught many pupils; these appear to have been of a very aristocratic class, and, according to Horace Walpole, Honthorst had the " greatest honour " of giving lessons to the Queen of Bohemia and her children. One of these, Prince Rupert, did credit in after years to his master; probably it was through the Queen, his sister, that Charles I. heard of Honthorst. In 1628, the painter paid a visit of a few months to England, when Charles employed him to paint the Palace of Whitehall with alle- gorical subjects. Honthorst also while in this country painted several portraits ; the best of these we believe to be that of the Countess of Bedford, at Woburn Abbey ; his group of the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham and their children, in the Boyal Collection, is also very fine. On his return to Holland, Honthorst decorated the Palace of the Hague ; the House in the Wood ; and Ryswick ; with his allegorical paintings, which, to judge from those we saw in the House in the Wood, were not of much merit. In 1636 he married Sophia Coopmand, and in the following year he was enrolled among the members of the Painters' Guild at the Hague; from 1645 to 1650 he received many commissions from Frederick Henry and William II., Princes of Orange. * "Gerard of the Night." ^ THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. Later in life Honthorst was employed by ihe King of Denmark, and many of his paintings are still to be seen in the palaces of Denmark. Honthorst died at Utrecht on the 27th of April, 1656. Two of his sons followed in their father's profession : one of these, "Willem Honthorst, was much in vogue as a portrait-painter ; he was employed by the Princess Louisa of Orange, who married the great Elector, and many of Willem Honthorst' s portraits are in Berlin, whither he went in the train of that Princess in 1650. The Louvre contains seven of Gerard Honthorst's works, but none of them are of first rate quality. There are many of his portraits in the Gallery at Amsterdam; there are three in the Dresden Gallery ; and several in that of Munich ; and in the galleries of Florence, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, where there is a poor replica of the Stafford House picture. But in no place is there a larger collection of his portraits than in Lord Craven's country seat, Coombe Abbey. All of these are portraits of the House of Stuart, and were brought over to England by the Queen of Bohemia ; but nowhere has the writer seen any painting by this artist to compare to his Christ before Caiaphas at Stafford House. For List of Honthorst's Principal Paintings — See Appendix. M 3 i-j^^y^^ ^^^y^'/m ' M ADRIAEN BROUWER. Born about 1Q05— Died 1638. THAT the works of an artist who seldom painted any scenes but such as he found in taverns and ale- houses, of drunken peasants fighting in their anger over their cards and dice ; that such paintings as these and similar subjects should, during two centuries, have been esteemed among the treasures and rarities of the world of art, proves that the man who created them must have had extraordinary talent. It seems a strange chance (when we remember how little is known regarding the lives of better painters and men among the Dutch artists than the subject of this sketch) that any details at all of the life of Adriaen Brouwer, the representative painter of brawls and drunken orgies, should be known. As told by Houbraken and Descamps, his life is indeed but a sad record of the career of a man gifted with genius which was wasted on most degrading objects ; of a man so hopelessly wrong-minded and pro- fligate that he preferred the company of boors and clowns to the society of the prince of painters ; of one who almost literally threw his talents into the gutter — a career which ended in a hospital. But later researches have discovered sufficient to do more than throw doubt 10 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. even on these statements ; and in all pi-obability Adriaen Brouwer was one of the many Dutch painters whose characters suffered much at the hands of their historians. No one, we think, who looks at a fine etchirg of "Van Dyck's, representing a handsome courtier, wearing his long love locks and upturned moustache, of refined features and a handsome person, with his cloak so negli- gently, but yet so gracefully, thrown across his shoulders — no one can believe that this attractive gallant was the boon-companion of the hideous bloat-faced rustics and drunken rufiians that he has immortalised in many an etching and painting, and with whom his days were said to have been passed. Adriaen Brouwer* was born about the year 1005, probably at Oudenaerde.f His mother made dresses, and cut out patterns for these dresses, for the peasant women of Haarlem. He early showed his artistic bent when assisting his mother at her work, and drew the patterns and flowers with which she ornamented her clients' gowns. One day, it is related, Frans Hals saw little Brouwer at this work : struck by his skill, he offered to make a painter of him, provided he was lodged, fed, and clothed by Hals. The mother of Brouwer had no objections to make to this proposition, and Adriaen went away with Hals, full of delight at the thoughts of at last becoming a painter. Poor little Brouwer was, however, to be cruelly disappointed. Hals was as avaricious as he was gifted, and his wife was avaricious without being gifted ; they worked the poor little fellow almost to death, and starved him into the bargain. » It is sometimes written **de Brauwere" or " Brauvver " — but the way given above is the most correct. I Haarlem is by some considered to be his birthplace. ADRIAEN BROUWER. 11 -"Such at least is the account given by Houbraken, which Descamps colours atill more vividly. He states that the child would have probably died of this cruel treatment had not some of Hals' s pupils relieved him ; but at length Brouwer could stand his life with Hals no longer, and escaped, taking refuge in the cathedral, and hiding under the great organ, which Handel was to render so famous a century after the poor half-starved little painter had crouched under its massive pipes. Here he was discovered by a compassionate stranger, who engaged him to return to Hals's studio on the condition of his meeting with kinder treatment there. But not long did he remain there. Adriaan van Ostade persuaded him again to make his escape, and assured him that he had sufficient talent to earn a living without the assistance of others. Brouwer took this advice, and again decamped. On this occasion he went further than the cathedral of Haarlem, not resting till he found himself in Amsterdam, where, at the sign of the " Ecu de France," he fell into good hands, the landlord and his son being both fond of art and artists. In a few days he had painted a picture, for which he was paid a hundred ducats ; these he lost no time in spending. Whenever he got any money, he spent it immediately in drink, and, as may be imagined, this system had its disadvantages. It would be unnecessary to enter here into any further details of this artist's short and wasted life, as related by Descamps. Let it be sufficient to add that, having lost all he had gained at Amsterdam, he bethought himself of trying what success he might find at Antwerp ; but not having provided himself with a pass, he was arrested and thrown into prison as a spy. Luckily for Brouwer, in the same prison the Duke of 12 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. Arenberg was also detained, on political grounds ; to him Brouwer appealed, and the Duke, who was a good judge of a picture, having sent to Rubens for colours and brushes, got Brouwer to paint him one : the subject was all ready to be taken — a group of guards at their cards. Brouwer surpassed himself : the Duke was delighted with his fellow-captive's talent, and sent for Rubens, who, on seeing the work, exclaimed that no one but Brouwer could have painted the picture. That picture is still, we believe, in the Arenberg Gallery at Brussels. Rubens having succeeded in getting Brouwer out of durance vile, invited him to his house ; but Sir Peter Paul led too stately and well-regulated a life for Adriaen Brouwer, who afterwards declared that he could not tell which was the worst to stay in, the prison or Ruben s's palace. We next hear of our artist teaching Yan Craesbeeck how to paint ; making love at the same time to his pupil's wife. Existing documents show that in 1631 Brouwer was received into the Guild of St. Luke at Antwerp, and three years afterwards was made a member of the Society of Artists called " The Violet?' These facts are strangely at variance with Descamps's account of this painter's vagabond life. Brouwer died at Antwerp in 1638, and was buried on the 1st of February in the church of the Carmelites.* That both Rubens and Rembrandt thought highly of * M. Van der Willigen discovered in the Mortuary Register of Haarlem, with the date 31st March, 1640, the following note : — "For opening a grave in the great church, for Adriaan Brouwer: the bells sounded half an hour, / 8," which was then thought to refer to the painter's death ; but Dr. Wilhelm Schmidt has discovered that the "Schilder Brouwer" died towards the end of January, 1638, at Antwerp, and was buried by the Carmelites on the 1st of February. It is supposed that the second date has reference to the re-interment of the body by Rubens. THE TOPERS. By Adkiaen Brouwer. ADRIAEN BROUWER. 13 Brouwer's talent is shown by the fact that the former had seventeen of Brouwer's paintings, and the latter a similar number, and a large quantity of his drawings also. This artist's chief excellence was the harmony and brilliancy of his colours. His works are full of rich warm shadows and mellow half-tones. Owing to this charm of colour, and their rarity, Brouwer's paintings are as eagerly bought by wealthy amateurs as the works of Teniers or of Dou. The Louvre has only one Brouwer. Our National Gallery has not a single specimen. The Hermitage at St. Petersburg but few ; but there are Brouwers to be met with in the galleries of the Hague, at Amsterdam, and at Florence. By far the richest collection of Brouwers in any public gallery is that of Munich, which contains nine ; six of these, Waagen tells us, are masterpieces. There is a beautiful little Brouwer at Dresden ; one of his favourite scenes of a drunken quarrel between peasants. Sir Richard Wallace has a good example, and Lord Bute has two. The finest Brouwer we have seen in any private collection is one at Bridgewater House, a picture only ten inches high by seven broad; subject, a party of drunken peasants singing and shouting in a most uproarious manner. But uninviting as is the sub- ject, and though ugly the actors, this little painting is as brilliant as a gem ; and it is certainly one of the most valuable of the Dutch paintings contained in that noble col- lection. M. Blirger remarks that so rare are this painter's works in the art-markets of Europe, that Correggio's and Eaphael's are oftener to be met with than Brouwer's. For List of Brouicer's Principal Paintings — See Appendix. GERARD TER-BORCH. Born UOS—Died 1681. IN his Art Ramhles in Belgium, Holland, and Italy, Mr. F. W. Fairholt writes, ''Imitative art can never be carried further than it was by Terborch in his famous picture known as The Satin Gown," a picture which has been made more celebrated by the notice it has received from Goethe in his Wahlverwandtschaften. He describes it as representing a noble, knightly-looking man, who sits with one leg over the other addressing himself to the conscience of his daughter, who stands before him. She is a majestic figure, in a full and flowing dress of white satin; her back only is seen, but the whole attitude shows that she is struggling with her feelings. The mother, too, seems to be concealing a little embarrassment, for she looks into a wine-glass out of which she is sipping. The extra- ordinary qualities it possesses as a transcript of nature are unrivalled, and the satin gown of the principal figure is reality itself. With all due deference to the great German poet's description of Terborch's "satin-gown " picture, we cannot but think that he has magnified a very clever portrait group into a work of pathos, and coloured with his poetical sense a group in which the painter had only IHE LUTE-PLAYER. By Gerard Terborch. Jn the Cassel Gallery. GERARD TERBORCH. 15 wished to show his marvellons power of rendering the quality and texture of a white satin gown on a grace- ful female form, relieved by the black dress of another lady and by the buff jerkin of a cavalier, who neither appears old enough to be the father of the lady in the satin gown, nor does his attitude or his expression convey in the least the idea of correction. It is in fact merely one of the many genre pictures (or as the old art books called them, tableaux de modes) which the Mierises and the Metsus were wont to paint. Gerard Ter Borch * was born at Zwolle in 1608. His father, who had visited Italy, taught him how to paint. He was then sent to Haarlem for further instruction, and he visited Germany and Italy while still a youth. In his early years he painted portraits on a small scale, with great success. Happening to be at Miinster in 1646, at the time of the peace congress, and having made the acquaintance of the Spanish minister, the Count de Penaranda, he was commissioned — probably by the latter — to paint the extraordinary little picture representing the scene,' which, having successively passed through many of the finest private collections in France, has, thanks to the munificence of Sir Kichard Wallace, found a final resting-place in our National Gallery. This picture — The Peace of Miinster (No. 896) — is certainly of its kind the most perfect that exists. Had Terborch painted nothing else it would have rendered his name immortal in the annals of art. It is painted on copper ; and signed G, T. BORCH. Terborch visited the courts of Spain, France, and Eng- land. It is singular that neither in Spain nor England have * Or "Terhorch" — the common form "Terhnrg" is wrong. 16 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. any paintings been discovered that he executed during his stay in these countries. In Spain Philip IV. received Terborch right royally, knighting him and loading him with gifts and honours. What success he had in England is not known, nor the length of the stay he made in this country ; even Horace Walpole is silent regarding these points. What a treasure would it not be if one could discover the portrait of Cromwell painted by this artist 1 . It seems that Terborch soon tired of foreign courts and countries, and longed to return to his native country — Ower-Issel, which, according to Houbraken, was the pleasantest of all the United Provinces, and was then regarded as the Garden of Holland. On Terborch's return to Holland he probably resided for a short time at Haarlem, for his name is mentioned in the records of the Guild of that town ; he finally settled in Deventer, where he married one of his cousins, and became a member of the town council. In a little portrait by him- self in the Hague Museum, we see the artist in his costume of "regent," or town councilloi', not, as Biirger says, in that of a burgomaster, for Terborch never attained to that elevation in the rank of citizenship. He wears a most majestic wig, the curls of which shade a long and somewhat melancholy visage ; over his shoulder is flung a dark cloak, which falls as far as the knees in heavy folds ; black knots are tied below the knees, beneath the long grey stockings ; he wears high- heeled shoes, square-toed, with large black rosettes on the instep, such as we see worn by Molicre's characters at the Come die Fran^aise. Although this portrait is but two feet high by one foot five inches across, one feels that were one to meet this Taternal Advice. By Gerard Terborch. Jn the Amsterdam Museum. F P H 18 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. individual in the street, he would be recognised as the painter immediately : the face, as we have already said, is a somewhat sad one; the nose well shaped and long; a firm mouth is shaded with a moustache already grey, for when the painter stood for this picture he was fifty years of age. The date is about 1660. As Biirger remarks, he often introduces into his genre pictures individuals like himself. Terborch had the honour of portraying William III.'s harsh features^ harsh already, although he was then only two and twenty, on the occasion of that Prince's visiting De venter in 1672. William is reported to have barely given Terborch time to paint more than a sketch ; but this was considered such a wonderful likeness, that an amateur at Amsterdam got it in exchange for a coach. We do not know what has become of this most interesting work. What a precious addition it would be were our National Portrait Gallery able to obtain it ! It appears that our artist lived on quietly at Deventer till his death, which occurred in 1681 ; he had then attained the respectable age of seventy-three. He left no children. Terborch's pictures are among the great rarities of Continental and English Galleries. Only eighty of his pictures have been classified. Of these, four are at the Louvre ; the finest of these is a picture of an oflScer offer- ing a handful of money to a lady who is seated at a table laden with fruit, the inevitable wine glass in her hand. Of this painting Kugler writes : — *' The animation of the heads, the drawing, the finely-balanced silvery tone, and the equally careful and fine treatment, render this a chef-d'oeuvre of the master." GERARD TERBORCH. 19 At Amsterdam, in the Museum, are portraits of him- self and his wife ; and a fine group of a boy and a dog in the Van der Hoop Gallery ; there were two in the Van Loon Collection.* In the Museum at the Hague are two ; one of these is the painter's portrait, the other the famous Trumpeter ; this Kugler thinks " especially admirable for the fine chiaroscuro and the delicate harmony of the broken colours." In the Berlin Museum are eight Terborchs ; one of these is the famous " satin gown " picture — Paternal Advice, a work of which there are many repetitions ; one of the best of these is in the Bridgewater Gallery, and is a better specimen than either the one at Berlin or that at Amsterdam. At the Gallery at Cassel are two good examples — one a lady playing on a lute. This is a charming little picture ; the face is prettier than Terborch usually painted, and the satin gown has all the marvellous sheen and brilliancy in which Terborch has never been rivalled, with perhaps the one exception of Millais's lady in the Black Brunswicker. The Dresden Gallery has four Terborchs ; the best of them are a lady — of course in white satin — washing her hands in a silver basin, and an officer writing a letter for which a trumpeter is in waiting. There are good specimens at Munich, Lyons, Montpellier, and at Florence, as is generally the case vtdth the Dutch school. In the Hermitage Gallery at St. Petersburg, Terborch is richly represented by half a-dozen fine examples. Our National Gallery contains, besides the matchless little (small in size but great in treatment) picture of the Peace * This valuable collection is now dispersed. c 2 20 THE FIGURE PATJfTERS OF HOLLAND. of Miinster, recently mentioned, a charming little work called the Guitar Lesson, for which the late Sir Robert Peel gave 920 guineas. Terborch had a sister, Gezina, who was an excellent copyist of her brother's works ; many of her copies, according to Smith, having been retouched by Terborch, have since passed for original works. Among the most distinguished of Terborch's pupils and imitators may be mentioned Caspar Netscher, Metsu, and G. van den Eeckhout, born in 1621 at Amsterdam, some of whose pictures, generally of soldiers gambling, are almost as fine as Terborch's. We know one at Stafford House which, were it not for its somewhat too brown tone and dark shadows, might easily be taken for a Terborch, so clever is the grouping and so masterly the workmanship. ADRIAAN JANSZ, VAN OSTADE. Born \Ql^.~Died 1685. AT the beginning of the seventeenth century there was settled at Haarlem one Jan Hendriex, who, driven away possibly by the fear of military strife and religious persecutions, had come from the town of Eyndhoven, a neighbourhood famous for the production of cloth ; he was in all probability a weaver. Early in 1605 we find him settled at Haarlem, and married to Janneke Hendericdr,* of Wonsel,t a village near Eyndhoven. The marriage was a fruitful one ; they had eight children — four girls and four boys — whom they were able to bring up in ease, if not in luxury. Their eldest child, Marijte, married Barent Bosvelt, of Warendorp (a village near Miinster), who was Secretary of Haarlem. In 1610 their eldest son — the third child — was born, and on the 10th of December of the same year he was baptized, receiving the name of Adriaan. This was Adriaan van Ostade ! The sobriquet, Yan Ostade, was adopted by the children at various times in their several careers. We do not find it mentioned in connection with Adriaan Jansz until 1636, in which year he is recorded as a member of the Civic Guard, in the company known as the '* Oude Schuts." The name, Ostade, was derived from * Daughter of Henry. t i.e, Woensel. I'li THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. a small hamlet of that name,* probably the birth-place of their father, near Eyndhoven. As Adriaan signed himself Yan Ostade t on almost all his works, it has, not unnaturally, been looked upon as a surname. Adriaan left to his brother Johannes the trade of weav- ing, while he and the youngest child, Isack, adopted the profession of art. He entered the studio of Frans Hals, and was there a fellow student of Adriaen Brouwer. On the completion of his apprenticeship he set up as a painter in his native town, and there he lived in good circum- stances, laboured with industry, and died respected. In 1638 he married Machtelgen Pietersen, a young lady, a native of Haarlem ; but fate did not permit him to enjoy many years of unalloyed happiness. Sorrows fell fast upon him. In 1640 his mother died; in the following year he lost his father; and in 1642 his young wife was taken from him, after a short wedded life of but little more than four years. That he married again has been ascertained, though history is silent as regards the name of his second choice. Again he was left a widower, in 1666. On the 27th of April, 1685, in the Nieuwe Kruysstraet, Adriaan Jansz died ; and on the 2nd of May he was buried in the Church of St. Bavon, where he had previously laid the remains of his two wives. In the June of the same year a sale took place of the works of art left at his death — they included, besides the paintings of other masters, two hundred pictures by his own hand, his etchings, drawings, &c. His son-in-law, Dirk van der Stoel, surgeon of Haarlem — the husband of his only child Johanna Maria — appears to ha,ve bought the etchings, for in the July he held a sale of them. * Now called Ostedt. t He occasionally, iii early life, signed " Ostaden." ADRIAAN VAN OSTADE. From a Painting by Himself. \» ADRIAAN VAN OSTADE. 23 Until the researches of M. van der Willegen brought to light many details concerning the life of Van Ostade, much misinformation had been written, from Houbraken downvs^ards. He was wrongly called a native of Liibeck, and it was stated, without sufficient foundation, that he painted much at Amsterdam, and that he died there. Yan Ostade has left a name which — although he seldom painted subjects more ambitious than peasants and scenes from out " the short and simple annals of the poor " — is among the most distinguished of the Dutch figure painters. That able French art critic whom we have quoted more than once in these sketches, says happily of Adriaan van Ostade, that he is a kind of "Eembrandt in little." Certainly he approaches nearer to the great masters, as a colourist, than even Gerard Dou himself, and also in the management of his transparent shadows ; occasionally even he produces in his pictures those deep golden tones for which Kembrandt is celebrated, and his power of grouping his figures is also Rembrandtesque. Adriaan worked at a period when the Dutch school had reached its zenith, when Gerard Dou was making those wondrous gems which have been the envy and despair of his imitators, when Wouwerman and Lingelbach were producing charming hunting scenes and hawking parties, when Paulus Potter was giving more life to his horses and cattle than any artist had till that day attempted, and which no animal painter equalled until Edwin Landseer came; and high above all these lesser lights blazed the prodigious genius of the son of the Ley den miller, the greatest master of light and shadow that the world of art has produced. The affinity between some of Van Ostade's interiors and those of Rembrandt have not unnaturally made writers en 24 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. Dutch art suppose that Adriaan worked among the Great Master's pupils. This, however, was not the case. Van Ostade certainly caught somewhat of the magic power ; some of the splendid colouring of Rembrandt. In many of Yan Ostade's interiors the lights and shadows are as subtly managed as even in those of Eembrandt ; look, for instance, at a picture of the old hall in which Van Ostade has shown us himself at work before his easel ; how the darkness of this cloistered apartment can be felt ; only one window admits the light through its narrow panes of glass, to fall brokenly in a hundred chequers on the old stone floor ; in the dim distance beneath the winding staircase an apprentice is grinding the artist's colours. Is not Rembrandt's influence strongly marked in such a work 1 Or look again at the interior of this old barn, in which peasants are carousing. Was ever such a common old building made to glow with light and shade as this does, and is it not almost worthy of Rembrandt's brush 1 M. Charles Blanc, in his Lives of the Dutch Painters, has noticed that although Van Ostade — owing probably to the taste of his patrons more than to his own inclination — nearly always painted scenes of ruffianism and drunken- ness, of boors fighting over their cups, etc., his own life was essentially a gentle and a decent one ; in this respect he resembles Teniers. To judge by the portrait he has left us of himself, painted when in middle life, he resembled rather a Covenanting preacher or a Methodist parson than the painter of brawls and junketings. He wears his hair long, falling over a plain deep collar : and his countenance is more grave than gay. Of Van Ostade's pictures Smith gives a list of nearly four hundred ; besides this great number of oil paintings, THE HUNCHBACK FIDDLER. By Adkiaan van Ostade. ADRIAAN VAN OSTADE. 25 he executed an unknown number of water-colour paint- ings, as well as a vast quantity of pencil- drawings and etchings ; of the latter, Bartsch has made a list of fifty. A fine collection of them is in the Teyler Museum, at Haarlem. These are much appreciated by collectors, and in their department are as excellent as his paintings, full of character and cleverness. Of these etchings, mostly scenes of peasant life, studied among the lanes and villages in the neighbourhood of Haarlem, Mr. Hamerton, in his Etching and Etchers, writes : — " Early states of Van Ostade's etchings are now of great value, and have risen much in the market during the last twenty years. In 1838, Mr. Wilson's set was sold for 105^. Mr. Seguier afterwards gave 159^. 15s. for the same set, which eventually fetched 500^. It is now worth a thousand guineas, ten times its value twenty years ago ! " Of Van Ostade's paintings the Louvre possesses seven fine examples ; among the best of which is the one where the painter has represented himself surrounded by his family. In the Munich Gallery are also fine Van Ostades ; and there are six in the Gallery at Dresden. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, is particularly rich in his works, containing no less than twenty. Our National Gallery has but one ; there are four in the Amsterdam Gallery, including the well-known Baker blowing a Horn, and two in the Hague Museum, besides some in the Six Collection. The public galleries of Antwerp, Brussels, and Madrid contain works by Adriaan ; and in the Bridgewater House Gallery are some fine examples of this master. Two are especially good ; both represent an old man — probably a lawyer — in whom Yan Ostade seems to have had a special 26 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. delight as a model. There are also paintings by Yan Ostade in the Eoyal Collection and in Lord Bute's Gallery. Besides his younger brother Isack, Adriaan had the following pupils : — Dusart, Cornelis Bega, Michiel van Musscher, Richard Brakenburgh, and Jan Steen; these all closely imitated Adriaan's manner, and of them his brother Isack was the most talented. It is worthy of remark that in his early manner Adriaan van Ostade, while under the influence of his master Hals, had more dash and bravura in his style of painting, which latterly became more laboured and more elaborately finished ; but he never degenerated into the " tea-tray " painting of Mieris or Metsu. FERDINAND BOL. Born IQll— Died 1681. THE earliest and best of Eembrandt's many pupils was undoubtedly Ferdinand Bol. Of his life we know little. He was born at Dordrecht in 1611 ; went when a child with his parents to Amsterdam, his future home ; studied under Rembrandt ; was made a citizen ; married, in 1653, Elisabeth Dell; and died there in 1681. In the town-hall of Amsterdam hangs a large painting representing, on a canvas eight feet long by six high, the Burgomaster of the town, seated with three other "Regents" or Governors of the Lepers' hospital. The maintenance of this institution was finally done away with in 1862 ; and the paintings were then removed from the building to the town-hall ; and among them went Bol's Four Regents. These worthy and reverend signiors are clad in black, and wear large broad- brimmed hats ; the solemnity of their garb is relieved by the rich Persian covering of the table round which they are grouped ; they appear as distinguished as any of Van Dyck's sitters, and are as solidly painted as any of Rembrandt's portraits. ^>- -^^ An attendant leads in a poor child whose disfigured head,"'^ Ap^ tells the story and motive of the work. '-^ ^ i* 28 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. Charles Blanc mentions that on the occasion of an exhibition of paintings for some charitable purpose, this painting, which had been hung, almost forgotten and unnoticed, for two centuries in the old Leper House, created quite a sensation ; and that during the exhibition Rem- brandt was neglected for the sake of this fine work by his pupil. A Philosopher in Meditation. By Ferdinand Bul. Another life-size group of portraits, which was formerly in the same building, representing the lady patronesses of the establishment, is equally fine ; and as Burger remarks, when one has seen these two works, one places Bol above Van der Heist himself, and only second to liembrandt. However to our thinking, Bol was a most uncertain FERDINAND BOL. 29 painter, and, although, while under the influence of Rem- brandt, he produced works that may have passed as being the work of the master himself, he latterly degenerated into a bad imitator of Rembrandt, and appears even to have exagger- ated the faults of his manner and style without retaining the power of giving the superb effects of light and shade which, while in that master's studio, he certainly once possessed. This change is apparent in those paintings of Bol that bear a later date than 1660, when he had probably left Rembrandt. With Flinck, he loses himself completely in attempting to affect the Italian style of art, and in his allegorical paintings he seems even to caricature the faults of his great master. After the great geniuses come the little ones ; after the great masters, the small painters ; such has been the case in all the Italian, Flemish, and Dutch schools. After the glory of Raphael and Michelangelo, the decadence of the Italian school rapidly approached ; and as it was in Italy, so it was to be in Flanders and in Holland — the sun once set, darkness spread over the world of art. Ferdinand Bol has left a score of etchings of scriptural and other subjects, which are much sought after by collectors. The principal of these are Abraham's Sacrifice ; Sacrifice of Gideon ; Saint Jerome in his Cave ; The Astrologer ; A Philosopher in Meditation ; An Old Man with a curled Beard ; The Woman with a Pear ; An Old Man's Head in an oval (this is an extremely rare etching, and, according to C. Blanc, is as fine as any of Rembrandt's), and The Hour of Death, which Bartsch has placed among the etchings of Rembrandt. In the Louvre are four paintings by Bol — two of these are portraits, the others imaginary subjects. At the Museum of the Hague are three fine portraits by Bol, one 30 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. that of Admiral de Riiijter, and at Amsterdam there is another of the Admiral, besides a fine portrait of the sculptor, Arthur Quellinus. The Berlin Gallery has a fine example of this painter, and there are also two at Munich ; but the galleries wealthiest in his works are those of Dresden, where there are three superb specimens ; and St. Petersburg, which contains ten fine portraits. In our National Gallery there is a picture by him, called the Astronomer. In Lord Northbrook's collection are a fine pair of portraits of a man and his wife by Ferdinand Bol. BARTHOLOMEUS VAN DER HELST. Born 1613 {1)—I)ied 1670. THERE is no one who, however little he may have studied the Dutch school of painting, has not heard of Paulus Potter's famous life-size figure of a Bull, of Rem- brandt's School of Anatomy, or of his so-called Night Watch ; nor, having heard of these, is it likely that the fame of Van der Heist's great banqueting scene has not reached him. " Perhaps," writes Sir Joshua Reynolds of this great group of portraits, "perhaps this is the first picture of portraits in the world." How Sir Joshua could have made this statement after having seen Rembrandt's Syndics, his Dr. Tulp and pupils, and above all the Night Watch, is not within our comprehension. We may here quote what we wrote, soon after seeing this great group of portraits in the Trippenhuis, at Amsterdam, in the same room with Rembrandt's masterpiece : " You have but to turn your back on the Night Watch to see before you another of Holland's most renowned historical paintings, the chef d'oiuvre of Bartholomeus van der Heist, his Schutters- maaltijd, the banquet given by. the arquebusiers of this town to celebrate the peace of Westphalia and the end of the long war between their country and Spain. All the world has seen prints and photographs of this work, and to judge by their number it is a more popular picture than 32 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. the one by Rembrandt that hangs opposite. Art critics have fought over the comparative merits of it and of The Night Watch, not that there is any comparison necessary or possible between such entirely different works, the one being only a very splendidly painted group of portraits which, though executed with extreme care and minuteness, has several faults and weaknesses — for instance, the want of any shadow, or consequent depth — while the other is filled with a life and light of its own. . . . Every detail of this banqueting scene is most carefully finished, down to the lemon-rinds and knives on the table — forks were apparently not used, except by the carver, in Van der Heist's time. The fault of this picture seems to be its total want of repose : the heads are quite bewildering, and one cannot fix one's attention on any individual face ; the eye runs along the row nearest to the spectator, and then follows the line of heads on the further side of the table. Many of the heads are full of expression and life, especially that of stout old Banning, sitting with crossed legs, and a blue banner in his hand." We have entered into some length of description respecting this remarkable group of twenty-four portraits, it being undoubtedly one of the most famous works of the kind in existence ; painted when the artist was but five-and-thirty, it shows that he had early attained the highest place in his profession. We find hardly anything regarding this painter's career, and what we do find is of uncertain report. He was probably the son of Severinus van der Heist and Aaltje Hendricx, of Grave, and was born, it is thought, in 1613, at Haarlem, where he passed his youth. He is supposed to have studied under Pinas; and Frans Hals has also been suggested as his instructor in art. By 1636 we find him settled at Amsterdam, and he was L I B li A K Y ^ I BARTHOLOMEUS VAN DER HELST. 33 'par excellence the fashionable portrait painter of the day, and, strange as it now seems, he received much larger sums for his paintings than Rembrandt did for his. In the museum at Rotterdam is a picture painted by Van der Heist in 1656, representiDg a life-size group of a gentle- man, his wife, and two children, for which he leceived 2,000 florins ; it has been ascertained that whereas Rembrandt was glad to part with works for thirty and forty florins apiece — and we know that at the sale of his effects, forty of his pictures were sold for less than five thousand florins — Yan der Heist never had less than 100 ducats for a half-length portrait. Sandrart tells us that Yan der Heist married, in advanced life, Constantia Reijnst, of an ancient family of Amsterdam, and left one son, Lodewijk, who, Houbraken says, followed his- father's profession. Bartholomeus van der Heist died at Amsterdam in the year 1670, and was buried on the 10th of December, in the Walloon Church. Among an immense number of portraits he has left one of himself, in which he appears as a grand-looking man of fifty, lolling back in his chair and holding a miniature in his hand. Naturally, little individual interest attaches to Yan der Heist's large corporation pictures, and we would prefer, had we the choice, the single portrait by him of Paul us Potter, said to have been taken three days before that artist's death, now in the museum at the Hague ; a most pathetic and interesting little picture, and more to be desired than all the huge canvases at the Trippenhuis. In the Six van Hillegrom collection a Amsterdam, are a couple ot beautiful little portraits of the painter and his wife ; they are miniatures in size and are as full of life as the largest of his portraits. In the Town Hall at F P H D 34 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. Amsterdam is an immense painting by Van der Heist in which thirty life-size portraits are painted with great power ; it seemed to us to be worthy to form a pendant to his banqueting picture in the Trippenhuis; this fine work was, when we saw it, miserably hung in a narrow room and in a bad light. The galleries and museums of Holland are full of this great portrait painter's works. At the Louvre is a superb little group of figures : there are also examples in the galleries of Munich, Brussels, and St. Petersburg, and in our National Gallery is a fine portrait of a lady. No one who saw the superb half-length of a Dutch Gentleman, dressed in black, exhibited in the Winter Exhibition of Old Masters, at Burlington House, in 1879, belonging to M. de Zoete (No. 68), will withhold from Van der Heist the right to rank among the great portrait painters of the seventeenth century. GERARD DOU. Bw-ri \^U—Died 1675. DESCAMPS, who, in his Biographies of the Flemish, German, and Dutch painters, has saved from oblivion so much matter of interest concerning their lives, and who, with Houbraken, has done for them the same oflSce that Yasari did for the Italian artists, tells us all that is recorded of the life of the greatest of the *' Little Masters" of the Dutch School, Gerard* Dou.t If taking infinite pains is a proof of genius, Gerard Dou was a true genius ; it is recorded of this patient painter that he bestowed the labour of five days on the hand of a lady — a finger a day ! that he passed more than three days of toil in copying a broom-stick, and that although he commenced painting when only fifteen years old, and worked incessantly until his death, at the age of sixty-two, only two hundred pictures of his are known in the various public and private galleries of Europe. He was born at Ley den in 1613, in the same year and the same town which had the glory of claiming Rembrandt as citizen ; and his father, Douwe Janszoon de Yries van Arentsvelt, who was a glazier, sensibly allowed his son to Or Gerrit, or Gerhard. + The form Dov is wrong. D 2 36 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. follow the path to which the boy's instincts led him, and apprenticed him, in 1622, to the studio of the engraver, Bartholomeus Dolendo. Here young Gerard spent some time in mastering the art of drawing. After quitting the engraver's desk he entered, in 1624, the studio of Pieter Kouwenhoven, a painter on glass. In a couple of years young Dou was a better artist than his master, and his father, delighted with his son's talent and rising repu- tation, and fearing to risk his life by allowing him to mend windows and repair stained glass in the churches- placed him, in 1628, in the studio of the great Kembrandt van E-ijn. That an artist gifted as was Dou should have borrowed so little of his master's style and manner, proves that he had strong individuality; indeed it is difficult to under- stand how any painter, studying with, and under the eye of, Rembrandt, could have had so little of that great master's influence forced upon him. But Dou's talent was all his own ; his pictures, though small, are superb specimens of the art of finish and care, and of what is of still greater consequence, truth to nature. After setting up for himself, Dou is reported to have worked at portrait painting ; but his manner was too slow and laboured to please his sitters, and he soon saw that success in this line was not to be obtained in representing the Mynheers and Fraus of the Hague; but in immortalis- ing traits of domestic life, in painting the scenes of humble industry that the neighbouring Market Place contained, and the interiors graced by buxom maids of his own or neighbours' homes. No details have been handed down to us of Dou's life. It was probably passed happily and quietly at his beloved work. He resided— with the exception of two gaps, of from GERARD DOU. 37 1651 to 1G57, and again from 1668 to 1672 — in his native city. That he was a prosperous gentleman is to be in- ferred from the large sums for which he sold his paintings. The wealthy connoiseur Yan Spiring gave Dou an annual donation of a thousand florins merely to be allowed to have the first choice of the pictures that the artist had completed at the close of every year. Besides this annual grant, Van Spiring paid the ordinary price of the pictures he chose, like any other purchaser. Gerard Dou died at Leyden in 1675, and was buried in the Church of St. Peter on the 9th of February. It is recorded that when Charles II. returned to England the States-General could think of no more precious gift to present to His Majesty than one of Don's works, and this is said to have been one of his beautiful little interiors, in which a mother is nursing her child. Some chroniclers say this painting was not presented to the King by the States-General, but by the Directors of the Dutch East Indian Company. The price of the work is said to have been 4,000 florins. Dou ruined his sight by the minute finish of his paint- ing, and was consequently obliged to wear glasses when only thirty years old. Descamps gives an exact descrip- tion of an instrument in which a diminishing-glass was placed which enabled Dou to see what he was copying on the same scale as the picture on which he was at work. The privileged few he admitted to his studio did not fail to notice the precautions he took to prevent a particle of dust from settling on his brushes or his can^vas ; so far did he carry this precaution, that his studio was protected as much as possible from that earthy element by a large ditch filled with water. He mixed his own colours and made his own brushes, and prepared the varnishes which 38 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. have preserved his exquisite little paintings with such wonderful freshness for hundreds of years after the careful hands that executed them had returned to that dust which he so much dreaded, i Dou delighted in painting his own portraits, in which he appears a bright-eyed, frank, and intelligent-looking man. There are two of these works in the gallery at Bridgewater House ; in one of these, perhaps the most perfect of Don's pictures in the world, we see him sitting in his studio : he has taken up his fiddle, and laid aside his brushes ; his costume rather affects the cavalier, for he is booted and spurred, and wears his velvet cap, with its jaunty feather, on one side of his comely head ; but the surroundings proclaim the artist and the student, although a riding cloak and a rapier are slung on the wall ; a folio volume lies spread open on the green baize table, and a globe of the world stands behind ; in a niche beneath the spiral staircase beyond is another globe, probably that of the heavens ; while the empty flagon on the floor, and the, doubtless not entirely unfilled, barrel of beer looks as if the painter thoroughly appreciated the good things of this life. Holland is still rich in Don's works. In the Gallery at Amsterdam is one of his most celebrated performances. This represents a school at night ; unfortunately it has much darkened by age. Another of his well-known works is that called the Femme Ilydropique, which is one of the treasures in the salon carre ,ol the Louvre. This painting has also some- what darkened. Another, said to have been as good, went down with the ship which sank, laden with rare paintings, when on its way to St. Petersburg, in the reign of the Empress Catherine II. GERARD DOU. 39 However, St. Petersburg, in the Gallery of the Hermit- age, can boast of a very fine show of Don's paintings. It contains no less than twelve. (See Appendix, page 97.) The Gallery at Dresden is also one of the richest as regards Don's works. In our National Gallery are three examples : there are also some fine specimens in the private galleries of England ; but . none more charming than those already alluded to at Bridgewater House. There is a fine Dou at Grosvenor House. We cannot but think that Sir Joshua Reynolds was rather hard in his criticism on Dou when he said of his paintings, that one looks at them " with admiration on the lips, and indiffer- ence in the heart." That a little picture no bigger than the palm of one's hand does not make the pulse beat faster, as the creation of a Titian or a Kembrandt may do, is doubtless true ; but that the perfection of finish and the beauty of workmanship in Dou's paintings are a delight to the eye and a pleasure to the mind, is unquestionable. Gerard Dou was not only in his special line of art a consummate master, but he formed other painters, several of whom, although they did not attain to his extraordinary skill of finish, left many fine works to posterity. Among these followers, Frans van Mieris holds a foremost place. But mention must also be made of Godfried Schalcken, Gabriel Metsu, and Pieter Cornelisz van Slingeland. Another proof of Dou's talent as a painter is, that the engravings of his pictures are remarkable for the subtle beauty of their light and shade, and have been among the finest works in black and white with which the Dutch school has enriched the world of engraving. PHILIPS WOUWERMAN. Born U19—Died 1668. OF Philips Wouwerman, Sir Joshua Reynolds says, "He is one of the few painters whose excellence in his particular department is such as leaves us nothing to wish for." But what is Wouwerman's "particular department"? Is it in figure -painting, or as an animal painter, or as a landscape-artist that his excellence is so great 1 We would answer, in all three departments — for Wou- werman was one of those very rare geniuses who painted figures, animals, and landscapes with equal facility, a com- bination of talent as extraordinary as it is rare. There is a superb collection of engravings from this gifted artist's works ; a large folio of some hundred plates, in which, although the subjects are similar, there is no repetition in any. In this work, which might be called Wouwerman's Liber Studiorum, the wonderful talent and variety of the artist are better seen than in any gallery in which his paintings appear. We know very little of Wouwerman's * life. He was the son of Paulus Joosten Wouwerman, of Alkmaar, and * "Wouverman, Wouwermans, and other forms, are also found in the biographies of this painter. L i U ii i' :■ ■/ PHILIPS WOUWERMAN. 41 Susanneke van den Bogaert, of Croffc, his third wife. Philips was born at Haarlem in 1619, and was baptized on the 24th of May. He first studied under his father, who was a second-rate historical painter. Later on, he worked in Wijnant's studio. At the age of nineteen he made a run- away marriage at Hamburg, where he studied a short time under Evert Decker. He returned, however, to Haarlem, where he entered the Guild in 1640, and where he lived in comfortable circumstances. He died in 1668, at the early age of forty- nine, and was buried in the New Church on the 23rd of May — the day before the anniversary of his birthday. He left a larger number of works than any of his contemporary fellow artists ; paintings in which it is not easy to know which most to admire, whether the beauty of their composition and grouping, the brilliancy and clear tone of their colouring, or their wonderful variety. What a charm there is even in the name of Philips Wouwerman ! It brings before the mind's eye pictures and scenes of the brightest and most animated kind ; of cavaliers and their dames hunting the deer or hawking the heron ; cantering across the pleasant sunny fields, under the shadowy woods, and adown the cool glens ; or pacing slowly by the reedy ponds or sedgy streams. Of halts of cavalry beneath gay pavilions, and tents spread below the leafy branches of ancient oaks and hoary elms ; of wild charges and forays in which the fiery Eupert would have felt at home ; here and there the smoke has cleared, showing the varied fortunes of the fight ; a dozen pistols are levelled towards that pennon that still remains the centre of the combat; rideiless horses plunge madly away, and one feels as if one heard all the wild turmoil of the hand-to hand encounter. Or, again, in another and more 42 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. peaceful scene, we enter with some troopers the vast barn which they have converted into a stable. Or, again, a view opens full of pomp and of pleasure : it is a wide landscape, in the foreground a palace with terraces and fountains, beyond, a luxurious champaign. The furthest distance, bounded by a range of soft blue mountains ; on the terraced slopes, ladies in splendid dresses animate the scene, attended by pages who bear aloft huge parasols ; in the courtyard below, a gay cavalcade is preparing to join another mounted party that is winding down the avenue ; thirsty dogs are quenching their thirst in the marble fountains, and a huntsman is blowing his bugle to collect the stragglers of the pack. Where could the Haarlem painter have seen such fairy scenes and palaces 1 — not in Holland. This must have been an artist's dream, perhaps a vision of a castle in Spain. In another picture we are transported from the sparkling skies and castled slopes ; the scene is less gay, the sky less bright, and here the tragic predominates ; a gloomy path, half lost in the skirts of a dark forest, out of which a heavily-laden wagon has crept, dragged by four wretched- looking cart-horses, ridden by panic-stricken peasants. A sudden attack by banditti has caused this unplea- sant surprise, and, to judge by the number and appear- ance of the highwaymen, these poor peasants would fare badly were it not that two mounted cavaliers, who seem well armed, are gallantly riding up to the rescue. These, and a hundred similar scenes — similar, but always differently treated — are recalled when the name of Philips Wouwerman is spoken ; whether he painted pictures gay or sad, of peace or war, he always painted as if his whole heart and mind were in his work. Every picture that we know by him is a complete, and often a perfect, work in PHILIPS WOUWEKMAN. 43 ifcself. Out of the prodigious number, Smith, in his Cata- logue Raisonne, hag enumerated over seven hundred. Wouwerman's pictures never repeat themselves, nor are his favourite white horse, or sorrel mare, his dappled grey, or strawberry-roan, the same in any two of his paintings. Never surely was a painter who confined himself to similar subjects so infinitely varied. As is often the case in artistic biographies where little is known regarding a painter of such celebrity as Philips Wouwerman, foolish tales and worthless anecdotes are repeated concerning them in order to help the writer to fill up space. Not con- tent with the certain but very meagre facts we know regarding Wouwerman, a legend has been repeated, even by the most recent of his biographers, to the effect that he destroyed all his studies and sketches shortly before his death in order that his brothers and son — who were also artists — should not make money by them. We can- not believe that Philips Wouwerman had so sordid a mind. Connoisseurs pretend that they can detect three different styles or manners in this painter's works : the first, rather foxy in colour and awkward in drawing ; the second, less so ; and the third, of that silvery grey tone of colour which lends so much charm to the artist's simplest scenes, and to his plainest landscapes. Wouwerman sometimes, but very rarely, painted Scrip- tural subjects ; two such are in the Gallery at Dresden : one represents the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the other St. John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness. They are both refined in treatment and beautiful in execu- tion, but one certainly prefers the unsoriptural works, in which he is more at home. It is impossible that all, or even a large portion of the paintings that pass as original works by Wouwerman can be from that master's hand. 44 THE FIGUKE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. The Dresden Gallery alone contains a number of works sufficient to have engrossed half his lifetime ; there are almost as many at St. Petersburg, in the Gallery of the Hermitage;- at Munich there are seventeen; in the galleries of his native land Wouwerman is also very largely represented. At the Louvre are at least half-a-dozen good examples, and seven are in our National Gallery. In Buckingham Palace are ten of his pictures, of which the one known as the Coup de Pistolet is one of his finest works. We cannot do more here than allude to those private collections in this country in which this delightful painter's works are conspicuous. The Bridgewater Gallery has some fine specimens, so has Grosvenor House ; Lords Ashburton, Overstone, and Fever- sham and Sir Richard Wallace possess good examples, as well as Mr. Morrison, Mr. Walter, and many others. Both Wouwerman's brothers, Pieter and Jan, painted similar subjects. Of these brothers, Pieter was the better, and, according to Waagen, his works often approach those of Philips ; " the essential difference between them," adds the German critic, "lies in Pieter's heavier tone of colouring and inferior freedom and spirit of handling." Nicolas Ficke, Jacob Warnars, A. de Haen, and Koort Witholt, a Swede, were also imitators of Philips Wouwer- man, and some of their pictures have been probably often passed off by dishonest dealers on the ignorant or unwary art purchaser as original works by Philips Wouwerman. i i ^^g W^M^^^^m m&M^^ ^^^m ISACK JANSZ, VAN OSTADE. Born 1621.— Died 1649. *'A T /"E derive the pleasure of surprise," writes the V V painter, John Constable, " from the works of the best Dutch painters in finding how much interest Art, when in perfection, can give to the most ordinary subjects." This pleasure of surprise is especially given by the unpretending scenes of rural life that the brothers Yan Ostade depicted with such consummate taste. In one, a frozen canal is shown with boys skating across ; in another, a market woman is vending her wares ; in a third, peasants are drinking and singing under the trellised porch of a rustic cottage : out of such every-day scenes and occupations Adriaan and Isack * van Ostade drew pictures worthy to hang by the side of the creations of the greatest masters. *' Otez moi ces magots," exclaimed Louis XIV., when some of those Dutch figure -pictures were laid before him ; but how surprised his periwigged Majesty would be could he revisit his Palace of the Louvre, and see places of honour given to these same magots, and to find that the most artistic of people had placed these and similar * Or Izaak ; but the above is the more correct form. 46 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. paintings in the salon carre itself, and that Yan Ostade, Teniers, and Dou rubbed frames with Leonardo and Raphael, Titian and Correggio. Isack van Ostade was not appreciated, nor his merits descried until the close of last century ; probably his more famous brother's reputation made that of Isack pale before it. In Descamps's Lives of the Flemish Painters Isack is dismissed with but one line of notice, and the same is the case in Balkema's work, where Isack is merely alluded to as having been a pupil of his brother Adriaan, and that his pictures were inferior to those of the latter, but he adds that some of Isack's works are admired. John Smith, a much later writer on Dutch art than the authors just mentioned, pays a fairer tribute to the qualities of Isack van Ostade's talent, for he says that the excellence of some of Isack's pictures places him in the same rank with his brother Adriaan, and he adds his belief that had Isack's life been prolonged he might have acquired an equally extended reputation. As in the case of Jan Steen and others of the great Dutch painters, it was the English who first appreciated Isack van Ostade's delightful little pictures, which have the rare merit of combining in almost equal measure both landscape and figure-painting. It is difficult to know which to admire the most,. the truth of his winter scenes, wayside landscapes, and luminous skies, or the admirably grouped and perfectly drawn figures that animate them. As a colourist Isack is inferior to his brother Adriaan ; he indulged too much in deep brown shadows and his flesh tones are somewhat yellow, and occasionally his figures are painted in rather a hard style ; but these defects sink into insignificance compared to this painter's sterling merits both as a landscape and a figure-painter. A VILLAGE SCENF. By Isack van Ostade. ISACK VAN OSTADE. 47 Isack, who was nearly eleven years younger than his brother Adriaan, was born at Haarlem in 1621. Very little has been recorded regarding Isack' s industrious life ; we only know that he studied under his elder brother, whose style he imitated, and whose same subjects — the interiors of alehouses and taverns, crowded with gambling, drinking, fighting boors — he also painted. He, too, adopted the name of Yan Ostade, and so signed himself on his paintings. Luckily for his fame Isack soon discovered that he could do little good if he only painted similar scenes to those of his brother Adriaan, and he struck out a fresh path for himself. A craving seems to have taken him to leave the heated, tainted air of the beer-houses, and to breathe a better and a purer atmosphere. In his second manner, he takes us out of the tobacco-smoke of the taverns into the green fields and under the bright skies ; the air is redolent with brine as we watch him painting the sands and boats at Scheveningen, or glide over the frozen canal alive with skaters ; and fresh and clear and full of life we watch the heavily-laden yan with its living freight as it stops by the wayside inn : a merry group of peasants dance to the accompaniment of a pipe and a blind fiddler : the old grey horse is being cared for," and is drinking his fill from out the lichen- covered old trough : dogs scamper yelping over the common, while fresh arrivals jog in, some on foot, some on horseback, some in covered carts — eagerly hurrying on to enjoy their much longed-for mid- day rest. One might write chapters about these delightful pictures, each a little idyl in itself ; they prove that the man who painted them must have been by nature a poet, a true and fervent lover and worshipper of nature. "Would that 48 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. we knew more about this painter's career ; probably he lived a quiet, uneventful life in Haarlem, where, too soon, he died, in 1649.* Isack van Ostade's pictures are very scarce. As has already been said, he was first appreciated as he deserved in this country : hence there are more of his works in the private collections of England than in the public galleries of Europe. The Louvre contains four examples : two of these are travellers halting at wayside inns, the two others are winter subjects. There are only two of his works in the Am- sterdam Gallery ; only single specimens at the Antwerp and Vienna Galleries; the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, however, has five ; and there are two in the Gallery at Brussels. We have in our National Gallery three fine examples of Isack's talent ; one, a winter scene, is a splendid specimen. In Lord Ashburton's Collection is a fine picture of an evening effect, and there is a painting by this artist in Lord Northbrook's Collection. In the Royal Collection are a pair, there are also two in the Bridgewater Gallery ; and in Lansdowne House is another — one of his many winter scenes. * M. van derWilligen and other authorities give 1657; but Dr. Meyer and Dr. Bode, in their catalogue of the Berlin Gallery (1878), say 1619. JAN STEEN. Born lQ2(j.— Died 1679. FEW painters have suffered so much at the hands of their biographers as Jan Steen. He has been represented as more of a drunkard than a painter, as a keeper of a tavern frequented by low, dissolute persons, in whose company he is said to have wasted his time rather than employ it in the execution of his ai-t. But the number of authentic works by him — about five hundred — is alone sufficient to refute the charge. The circumstances of his life are enveloped in hopeless confusion. By some writers he is said to have been a brewer only, and not a keeper of an ale-house ; by others, that he had a brewery is denied, while his ownership of an ale-house is upheld. And, again, the scene of his labours in various years is the subject of much controversy. Bub all modem writers agree in denouncing the great injustice done to the memory of Jan Steen by early chroniclers in 1 epresenting him as a drunken profligate. The true facts of his life — so far as they are known — are due to the pains- taking researches of M.M. Yan der Willigen, Christiaan Kramm, and Bammelman- Elsevier ; but, above all, to those of M. T. van Westrheene, who has published an excellent monograph on him. F p H E 50 THE FIGUEE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. Jan Havicksz Steen was born at Leyden in 1626, the year following the marriage of his parents. His father, Havick Jansz Steen, who was in all probability a brewer, was of respectable family, and in good circumstances. Jan's mother was Elisabeth Wijbrantsd Capiteijns. Noticing the precocious talents of the young Jan, his father sent him to study under one Nicolas Knuffer (or Knupfer), a German painter of historical subjects, settled at Utrecht. Jan then probably went to Haarlem and entered the studio of Adriaan van Ostade, the influence of whose style is, at any rate, perceptible in many of his works. Adriaan Brouwer has, without sufficient reason, also been mentioned among the names of his instructors in art. Steen's last master was Yan Goijen, of the Hague, whose daughter, Margaretha, he married there in 1649 ; he had been inscribed in the Painters' Guild at Leyden in the previous year. Four, if not five, children were the result of this marriage. Steen, it appears, was absent from Leyden from 1649 to 1653, from 1653 to 1658, and from 1658 to 1672, during which period many of his best works were painted. Perhaps some years after 1649 were spent at the Hague. That he resided at Haarlem at various times from 1661 to 1669 is more than probable, for M. Yan der "Willigen has found the records of the birth and early burial there of an infant daughter in 1662, of the burial of his wife there in 1669, and another record to the effect that poor Steen had some of his pictures seized and sold by an apothecary in pay- ment of a debt of "10 florins, 5 sous, and 8 deniers," contracted for medicine during his wife's illness. The same writer tells us that Steen agreed to give— in payment of one year's rent (1666-1667) of 29 florins — 3 portraits "painted as well as he was able," from which we are led to assume that he was not in the habit of getting very JAN STEEN. From a Painting by Himself. v^^" «*^' JAN STEEN. 51 large sums for his works. M. Yan der Willigen also tells us that in 1667 Steen was carrying on the trade of a brewer at Delft. But M. Yan Westrheene has searched through all the registers of the Corporation of Brewers of that city for the name of Steen without success. Nor was he more successful in his endeavours to find him mentioned among the painters of Delft. In 1672 we find Steen back again in Ley den — returned, it is said, to obtain possession of the property left him by his father, who had died in 1669 — and in that year, 1672, he applied for and obtained permission from the magistrates to open a tavern, which he established at Langebrug. In 1673 he married for a second time — his choice being Marie van Egmont, widow of one Nicolas Herculens. A son was born in 1674 : five years later, in 1679, Jan Steen died, and was buried in the parish church of St. Peter at Leyden on the 3rd of February, leaving his house, which he had inherited from his father, to his widow and his children. " What a singular thing it is," writes W. Biirger in his notice of the Museums of Holland, " that it should be the English who have done most to raise the reputation of the dissipated painter." The French critic supports this assertion by giving a list of the different English owners of works by ce peintre debraille — in which occur the names of Lords Ashburton, EUesmere, Bute, Dudley, Overstone, and half-a-dozen others ; among the number he remarks that le grand Lord Welli7igton surtout adorait les /Steen. At the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester, Biirger counted no less than eleven Jan Steens, more, he says, than the united galleries of Yienna, Dresden, Munich, and Berlin put together then possessed of this painter's works, and it is more than they possess now. Were Jan Steen's paintings merely representations of E 2 52 THE FIGUKE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. ale-house scenes it would indeed be strange that he should have been so popular among the amateurs and collectors of England, but they are a great deal more than this ; and although one can not understand what Sir Joshua Reynolds saw in Steen's paintings to make him write that astounding statement that Steen's style "might become even the design of Eafaelle ! " no intelligent observer of the Dutch painter's works can fail to acknowledge that in humour, technical skill, and originality, Steen has a right to a foremost place among the greatest painters of his country, and deserves the high praise bestowed on him by our painter, C. K. Leslie, who has left on record his opinion that Jan Steen " was the greatest genius of the Dutch painters of familiar life." Take, for instance, that Interior of a School in the Bridge- water Gallery, or the Invalid Lady at Apsley House, or a Musical Party in the Royal Collection, or above all that marvellous picture, said to represent the Comedy of Human Life from its earliest to its latest stages, in the Gallery at the Hague — pictures such as these have rightly claimed for Jan Steen the highest fame among the greatest masters of the Dutch school. If we compare poetry to painting, Steen is to Rembrandt what Molicre is to Shakespeare. Steen, like Moliere, is often coarse, but always witty. As a draughtsman, Steen is as correct as Terborch, in colour equal to Metsu, and as happy in grouping his figures as Van Ostade or De Hooch ; and although our minds may not be elevated by Steen's pictures, it is impossible not to laugh with the merry painter as he brings before our eyes the humours and drolleries of that serio-comic drama, human life. In one of his numerous pictures of tavern life he has represented a scene that reminds one of a similar event in JAN STEEN. 53 the Eake's Progress, in which husband and wife appear the morning after a night of cards and dissipation. Steen's picture is less dramatic than Hogarth's, but more real ; we see the jovial painter and his no less jolly wife Margaretha in a tavern, everything in confusion, the furniture upset, the children allowed to romp unchecked, the cat making olf with a rasher of bacon, while Steen looks calmly on, tankard in hand, with an expression on his face as if he wished to show his friends the blessings of family life. In scenes such as these, he did not spare himself more than his associates. All his paintings are full of satire, and he lashed his own and his countrymen and women's pleasant vices all alike with that terribly severe brush of his. Steen resembled Moliere in often introducing on his stage, scenes in which the doctor is the hero. How well he has drawn them, those pompous, empty-headed old quacks, with their sombre garb, peaked hats and long gold-topped canes ; and however coarse such scenes and others that he delighted to paint are, there runs, as Leslie remarks, through all Steen' s works a something that proves that there must have been good in this eccentric painter. How true to nature are his children ; no one has painted the scenes of childhood with a tenderer or kinder brush. Look at his Feast of St. Nicholas, in the Rotterdam Museum ; it is a subject he was very fond of depicting, for here he could find a laige field for the ex- pressions of delight and disappointment in the little faces he painted so well. He who could paint such pictures had doubtless a kind, loving heart, and much good-nature. Steen deserves a place by the side of Hogarth, whom he strongly resembles in many ways. Both painted the follies and vices of their day ; both lashed these follies and 54 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. vices as no other artists of their respective countries did before, or have been able to do since ; both illustrated the comedy of human life, showing strongly its dark shadows. Hogarth's object was more pointed ; and although Steen never attempted such a series of works as the Harlot's or the Rake's Progress, there is almost as much satire in many of his scenes as in those of the great English humourist. They are also alike in never showing any morbid dislike to poor human nature in their paintings, although Steen, like Hogarth, must have felt how mean, and how trivial, and how sordid much of humanity is. Like Hogarth also, Steen failed miserably when he attempted higher flights in the regions of art, and tried to illustrate sacred or profane history ; the least bad of these attempts is a picture in the Arenberg Gallery at Brussels, in which Steen has represented the Miracle of the Water turned into Wine ; it is probable that the subject appealed strongly to the imagination of the painter. In trying to paint such scenes as Esther and Ahasuerus, or the Continence of Scipio, or Anthony and Cleopatra, Steen was as much out of his element as was Hogarth when he painted Paul before Felix, or Moses and Pharaoh's Daughter. Steen has painted himself in various characters. Once we see him leaning back in a chair playing the guitar, and singing as though there were no such things as troubles or cares in the world, and he looks for all time in that picture what he was, the most jovial, careless Bohemian that ever quaffed a bowl or wielded painter's brush. Although Jan Steen died comparatively young, in 1679, aged fifty-three, he left a large number of works be- hind. The museums of Holland, as well as some of the private galleries of England, contain a great number of his paintings. As we have already said, Steen was a The Dancing Dog. By Jan Steen. Vv X V^ .• \ ^ 56 THE FIGURE PAINTEES OF HOLLAND. most unequal artist ; some of his paintings are worth great sums, while others, owing both to their subjects and the carelessness with which they were painted, are hardly worthy of finding a better home than the walls of a tavern. In the Louvre there is only a single painting by Steen. It represents a feast of peasants ; Charles Blanc valued it at 30,000 francs. In the Gallery of the Belvedere, at Vienna, are two Steens, and the same number are in the Munich Gallery. Dresden has three. The Amster- dam Gallery has eleven ; among them, the painter's own portrait. There are seven Steens in the Hague Museum. In the Gallery of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg there is a good specimen, one of the many pictures in which Steen has introduced a doctor and a fair patient. The Galleries of Berlin, of Frankfort, of Antwerp, Brussels, and Florence have each and all examples of this master, and even in the provincial French museums, such as Bouen, Nantes, and Montpellier, Steen' s pictures are to be met with. There are also many in the private French galleries. In our English private galleries Jan Steen takes a high place, notably at Apsley House and in the Bridgewater Gallery. There is a fine Steen in the National Gallery which was formerly in the Peel Collection. Many of Jan Steen's drawings exist, scattered among private collections ; they are full of cleverness and spirit, and prove that he was as ready with his pencil as with his brush. M. van Westrheene gives a list of 482 works by Steen, of which 201 are in the public and private collections of Europe. The whereabouts of the rest he has been unable to discover. GABRIEL METSU. Born 1630 — Livirig as late as 1667. BXJRGEK remarks, in his Dutch Galleries, that those who have studied the paintings of Metsu, Terborch, or Caspar Netscher will be able to form a better idea of the manners and customs of the Dutch in the seventeenth cen- tury than could be obtained by poring over a whole library of books of archaeology, history or biography. The Yan Ostades, Jan Steens, and the Brouwers show us what may be called the vulgar side of this Dutch seventeenth century life, while Terborch, Netscher, Mieris, and Metsu take us into the dwellings of the rich and the refined. With the latter we see the inner life of the fair dames and their admirers, all in rich and rare costumes, rustling in satins and brocades. We admire the hangings and furniture of their dwellings, the walls all aglow with stamped leather relieved by the black ebony frames of the mirrors, the great carved marble chimney, the brocaded bed-hangings, and richly-decorated cabinets and wardrobes. How polished are those cavaliers, in their long locks, steenkirk cravats, and golden baldrics ; how clean and neat the close fitting cap of the maid ; how trim the page, with the silver salver on which the cut lemon is waiting to be squeezed into the embossed tankard. Or still, accompanied by these refined 58 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. folk, we take an airing under the limes of the '* Maliebaan," or Mall; or visit the busy market-place, and stroll along the sides of the canal alive with boats and barges ; the heavy- gables of the red-brick houses on the other side throwing their bright reflections in the still waters below. Thus, these magicians of the palette and the brush take us back two centuries and more, and show us the way these people lived in that little land reclaimed from the sea, which behind its artificial dykes bred and nourished so warlike and so valiant a race — a race of men that defied all the might and power and wealth of Spain and the Indies ; that held its own against the arms of the Grand Monarque ; a race whose fleets swept the seas of two hemispheres j of men who for one short century seemed to combine the qualities that had made Greece the mother of the arts, and Rome the mistress of the world. Leyden, that town that may well be called the cradle of Dutch art, claims, amongst her illustrious sons, Gabriel Metsu."^ Of his life we know but little. Born at Leyden in 1630, he was the son of Jacques Metsu, a native of Belle, in Flanders, and of his third wife Jacomina Garnijerns, widow of a painter Willem Fremault. Gabriel's first instructor in art was probably his father, who was a painter of no great note : he then studied under Gerard Dou ; and from his works we gather that the style of Terborch must have, more or less, had an effect upon Metsu's manner. He was admitted into the Guild of Painters at Leyden in 1648, but he left that city two years later and went to Amsterdam ; there he settled, and there he probably spent the greater part of his life. From an inscription t on a picture, of the year 1662 (No. 1307 in * Sometimes written Metzu. -f- Vrilje (vrijwillige), Verkoping-Hofstede-Maerseii. b IBR .NT I VET-?!- GABRIEL METSU. 59 the Dresden Gallery), it has been suggested that he some- times passed the summer months at Maarsen, a village between Utrecht and Amsterdam. In 1658 "^ he married Isabella Wolff, and in the following }ear he obtained the right of citizenship of Amsterdam. The dates on his pictures prove that he was still living in 1667. Research has failed to find any record of his death. Smith, in his Catalogue Raisonne of Dutch artists, has compared Metsu to Yan Dyck; but as Metsu scarcely ever painted any scene but those taken from domestic life, and always on a small scale, the comparison seems to us rather far-fetched. Metsu's figures certainly are full of grace and refinement, and his colouring is free and brilliant. In some respects, Metsu' s paintings are equal to Gerard Dou's ; they often surpass those of Mieris both in gracefulness and in expression. No one (Terborch excepted), could better paint a silk or a satin dress. Metsu' s works have always commanded a great and wide popularity, and this is easily understood, as his subjects are always refined and pleasant to look upon and to live with. His pictures are found in all the principal European public galleries, and many are present in our collections. There exist between 120 and 130 of his paintings. In the Louvre there are eight ; the best of these is a view of the Vegetable Market at Amsterdam, which was sold, more than a century ago, for 28,000 livres. One of the others at the Louvre represents the Woman taken in Adultery, and is interesting from being one of the very few Biblical subjects that Metsu attempted, and which, it is scarcely necessary to add, is a decided failure. The Dresden Gal- lery contains i seven Metsus, all of good quality. In the * The year formerly given for his death. 60 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. Belvedere at Yienna there is a fine specimen ; lie has also several works in the galleries of the Hague and at Amster- dam ; there is also a fine Metsu in the gallery at Cassel. In the Hermitage Gallery are three superb specimens, and in the Suermondt Collection in the Berlin Museum there is a remarkably fine life-size portrait of a lady by Metsu, which is said to represent his mother. The National Gallery has three of his works. Among the finest specimens in our private galleries we would espe- cially mention four in the Queen's Collection at Buckingham Palace ; one of these represents a man playing on a violon- cello, and in another the painter has drawn his own por- trait. Lord Northbrook's fine Metsu, and two of his works at Bridgewater House, show his different styles : the Stirrup Cup, dark in tone, and the Fishwife, wonder- fully brilliant in colour ; the fish it seems almost possible to smell and touch. There is also a Metsu in Lord Bute's Collection. Formerly, many Metsus existed in French private col- lections, but most of these have left France in recent years. There was a famous picture by this artist in Cardinal Fesch's Gallery, which was sold at Bome, in 1845, for more than 74,000 francs. M. Delepert has also a fine work by this master. At Copenhagen, the Count A. G. de Moltke has a superb picture by him. It is uncertain whether Metsu had pupils ; but for a fact the mysterious Yer Meer, of Delft, imitated Metsu's manner closely, painting also similar subjects, but in a bolder and larger manner. Uchterveldt and Michiel van Musscher were both pupils of Gabriel Metsu. NICOLAAS MAES. Bom IQ32.— Died 1693. WE should feel puzzled if we had the choice given us between a good example of Pieter de Hooch and one of Nicolaas Maes's pictures. There is much like- ness in the subjects which these two charming painters placed on their canvases ; much resemblance between them also in the superb colouring and perfect grouping of their^ figures ; these two artists, with Ver Meer, of Delft, have in their way never been surpassed, and it would be no easy question to answer which is the greatest of the three. It is a matter of doubt whether De Hooch and Yer Meer were pupils of Kembrandt, but it is certain that Maes studied under him. During his lifetime, and until the end of last century, Maes was chiefly known as a portrait painter. When he visited Jordaens at Antwerp, he was questioned by that artist what manner of painting he prac- tised. Maes replied, " I am but a portrait painter." His reputation is, however, not now maintained by his por- traits, which are inferior to Honthorst's, but rests on the superb little pictures of scenes from every-day life — a Dutch housewife nursing her child ; or surprising her maid asleep over her pots and paDS ; a girl leaning out of window, or 62 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. listening to a group of lovers who imagine they are un- watched and unheard ; an old woman saying grace, or peel- ing potatoes ; a child knitting a stocking ; an old man reading a book ; and other similar subjects. To these simple scenes Maes gave a charm and a beauty that only two or three painters have ever equalled ; as Charles Blanc observes, his colouring is as fine as that of Rem- brandt and of Titian. Nicolaas Maes* was born at Dordrecht (or Dort) in 1632. Aalbert Cuyp, Ferdinand Bol, and Godfried Schalken were all born in or near this most artistic town. There is, we believe, but one of his works in his native city, but his fame has slowly spread wherever true art is appreciated. We know little about his life. M. Burger imagines that his best works were produced while he worked in Rem- brandt's studio, between his twentieth and twenty-fifth year; it is certain that the withdrawal of the influence of the master had a most unfortunate effect on his later works. Until 1660 all that he painted bore a firmness of touch, a rich impasto, a splendour of colour, that in later years he seems to have lost or forgotten. So remarkable is this change, and so great is the falling-off in his later works, principally portraits, as compared with his early genre pictures, that it has been supposed that portraits of more recent date are not by the same artist, but are the performances of some other Maes, a name not at all un- common in Holland, and which not unfrequently occui's among the artistic records of that country, as in the case of, for instance, Dirk Maas, a pupil of Mommers, and another, one Godefroid Maes of Antwerp. After quitting Kembrandt's studio Maes left Amster- dam and went to Antwerp, probably about 1660-1665. * Or Maas. THE IDLE SERVANT. By Nicolaas Mahs. NICOLAAS MAES. 6o The great painters of the Flemish School — those giants of colour and composition, were all dead — Kubens in 1640, Yan Dyck in the following year, Snyders in 1657 ; and when Maes went to Antwerp the Flemish School was rapidly declining. Jordaens and Teniers were almost the only survivors of the great days of the art of Flanders. According to Descamps, Maes was a most successful portrait painter ; he had found out the secret of success in that branch of art — an infallible one — that of flattery. Like Netscher, Maes was a martyr to the gout ; he died of this complaint in his sixty-first year, in 1693, at Amsterdam, to which city he had returned and settled in 1678. Extremely rare are Maes's pictures; only about fifty are known to exist in the public and private galleries of Europe. Our National Gallery is fortunate in possess- ing three very fine specimens — The Cradle, The Dutch Housewife, and The Idle Servant. Two of Maes's por- traits are in the Munich Gallery, two in the Museum at Amsterdam, and other examples exist in the Six and Van der Hoop collections. In the Gallery of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, are two ; and there is a fine life-size por- trait, named The Philosopher, in the Berlin Gallery. There are some fine examples of Maes's talent in our private collections ; in the royal collection at Buckingham Palace is a very good one ; in the Bridge water Gallery also there is a charming work by Maes — representing a girl knitting — of intense depth and brilliant tone of colour. Sir Richard Wallace has a fine Maes in his splendid collec- tion; at Lansdowne House is likewise a good specimen of this gifted artist's talent. The painter C. B. Leslie says on the subject of Maes's 6i THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. paintings, "There are few pictures in our ISTational Gal- lery before which I find myself more often standing than the very small one by him, the subject of which is the scraping a parsnip. A decent-looking Dutch house- wife sits intently engaged in this operation, with a fine chubby child standing by her side watching the process, as children will stand and watch the most ordinary opera- tions, with an intensity of interest as if the very existence of the whole world depended upon the exact manner in which that parsnip was scraped. It is not the light and colour of this charming little gem, superlative as they are, that constitute its great attraction ; for a mere outline of it would arrest attention among a thousand subjects of its class, and many pictures as beautiful in effect might not interest so much; but it is the delight at seeing a trait of childhood we have often observed and been amused with in Nature, for the first time so felicitously given by Art." JAN VER MEER, OF DELFT. Born 1632,— Died 1696. THE little we know respecting the mysterious painter whose name stands above — an artist of extraordinary talent — we owe to the researches of a French critic, who under the nom de plume of Biirger * wrote a most interesting work on the Museums of Holland. Up to the time that Biirger's book was published, but few even of those who had studied Dutch art appeared to know that in Yer Meer of Delft the Dutch school pos- sessed a master almost equal in effect to De Hooch, and equal, if not superior, to Nicolaas Maes and Gabriel Metsu. Descamps, in his Lives of the Dutch Artists, makes no allusion to Ver Meer ; this seems strange, for it is certain that his paintings wei'© sold for consider- able sums in his lifetime. The artist's name is, in itself, a difficulty and a cause of confusion, for at the same time as he lived, flourished two other painters bearing the same, or very nearly similar, names. These were Yer Meer, or Yan der Meer, of Haarlem, and Yer Meer of Utrecht ; the former called of Haarlem, that being the place of his birth, the latter * His real name was Thore. F P H F 66 ' THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. of Utrecht, that town being the place of his adoption ; he was born at Schoonhoven. Our painter was known to his fellow-countrymen as the " Delftsche Yan der Meer," having been born in the town of Delft in 1632. Tradition asserts that Yer Meer* studied with Karel Fabritius ; and after that painter's death in 1654, he visited Amsterdam and worked under the eye of Kembrandt. He was certainly at his native city of Delft in the years 1662, 1663, 1G70; and in 1671, as his name appears among the members of the Painters' Guild for that year, by the side of those of Palamedesz and others ; he had been elected as a master painter in 1653 : but these are all the meagre scraps of information that we can find concerning one of the most remarkable painters of the Dutch school. His death probably took place at Delft in 1696, for in that year a sale took place of twenty-one of his works. No one who has visited the Hague Museum can fail to have admired a large landscape of astonishing force, evidently the work of a master hand. This long landsca23e is a view of the artist's birthplace — picturesque old Delft, with its red brick buildings reflected in the still waters of its canals : it is a landscape, or rather a townscape, that puts one in mind of some of Millais's wonderfully vivid transcripts of nature; we feel we are looking, not at a picture, but at a real view. It is by Yer Meer. Another landscape, of a very different scene, by Yer Meer, is a recently acquired treasure in the Suermondt Collection, in the Berlin Gallery. This painting represents a wild tract of open country, and is remarkable for the * Commoiily, but incorrectly, written Van der Meer. He is inscribed in the register of the Guild of St. Luke as Verraeer ; and so — or sometimes J. V. Meer— he signed his name. A DUTCH FAMILY. By Jan van dek Meer of Delft. hi the Gallery of the Academy at Vienna. \ ,\* JAN VER MEER, OF DELFT. 67 fine feeling and broad treatment displayed by the artist. Here, in this again, one is put in mind of Millais ; Ver Meer of Delft seems to have been capable of painting everything he saw ; with the same success he could repre- sent either the long sweep of a distant horizon, the bricks of a house, the lace of a gown, or the lights and shades on a woman's face, and the expression of her mouth and eyes : he could represent all these different objects with equal truth to nature, and equal skill in their portrayal. In the Arenberg Gallery at Brussels is a girl's head, worthy of Rembrandt ; it is the work of Yer Meer of Delft. In the Queen's Collection at "Windsor Castle is a little genre painting, a lady playing on a harpsichord, as exquisite in colour, tone, and finish as a Gerard Dou, a Metsu, or a Mieris ; this is the work of Jan Yer Meer. At the Gallery of the Hermitage at St. Petersburg is a picture of still life — dead game, fruit, etc., painted in a manner worthy of Snyders; this also is a work of Yer Meer. Only about a dozen of this painter's works are known, and these are scattered in the different galleries of Europe ; besides the large view of Delft at the Hague Museum to which we have alluded, there are two fine specimens by Yer Meer in the Six Collection at Amsterdam, another in the Yan der Hoop Gallery. In the Gallery at Dresden are a couple ; one of these is a life-size group of half a dozen half-length figures ; it is the only life-size painting that exists by Yer Meer, and we must confess to having felt some disappointment when we saw it; it is coarse as compared to his former works. The subject of this painting is what, for want of a better term, is called a *' conversation piece," a scene such as Yalentin delighted in portraying, and is certainly equal in vivacity and spirit F -2 68 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. to the works of that artist. The other — a smaller work — shows a young woman reading a letter at an open window, somewhat too blue in the flesh tones ; this strange love for blue in the flesh tints is also shown in a little cabinet picture by Yer Meer in the Gallery of the Louvre, of a Woman making Lace; and this is also the case with a picture by him in the Berlin Gallery, a Girl dressing before a Mirror. Perhaps this blueness is the result of injudicious cleaning and restoring; but this painter had a great partiality for bringing in two colours in all his pictures, a deep blue and a lemon yellow, and nearly all his female figures are clad in one or both of these, his favourite colours. A very few of Yer Meer's pictures are in the private collections of England and the Continent. Within the last year or two I^ord Powerscourt was fortunate enough to secure a beautiful little picture by Yer Meer at a sale at Christie's. We believe it highly probable that there are still many pictures by Yer Meer still to be discovered, hidden away in some neglected gallery, or some old country-house ; and perhaps if search were made, a picture that has passed for generations as the work of Metsu or Maes, might prove to be by the mysterious old painter of Delft. Unfortunately M. Biirger no longer exists to search for, and gather fresh, information regarding his favourite Yer Meer— ^ "a sphinx" as he not inappropriately calls him. PIETER DE HOOCH,. J3orn IQ3'2 (1).— Died 16S1 (1). THAT eminent painter, C. R. Leslie, says that De Hooch is, with the exception of Rembrandt, the most original painter of the Dutch School. One might add that not only is De Hooch, one of the most original of Dutch painters, but one of the most original artists of any time, school, or country. Pieter de Hooch* was born at Rotterdam, apparently on the 12th of June, 1632. His style was formed from a study of the works of Karel Fabritius and of Rembrandt. He worked at Delft and at Haarlem, where he died it is said in 1681.t What his outward man was like we can tell by the portrait he has left of himself, in the Amsterdam Gallery ; in which we see a young man with a pale, thoughtful countenance of the Calvinistic type, with long straight hair lying low on a wide turned-down collar. This youth with the deep sad eyes is De Hooch in his twentieth year. Two other Dutch painters of signal merit — Aalbert * Or Hoocli^ Hooghe, Hoogh, or Hooge. + ** His biography can only be gathered from the occasional dates of his pictures extending from 1656 to 1670." — Kdgler's Handbook, edited by J. A, Crowe, 70 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. Ouyp and Meindert Hobbema shared the fate of De Hooch in not being appreciated in their lifetimes, nor indeed for nearly a century after their deaths. It seems passing strange now that the picture dealers of a century ago should have erased the signatures from the immortal paintings and substituted the names of other artists, in order that what De Hooch and Hobbema had painted should not take up needless space in their sale rooms. In his able work on the Dutch Galleries, Burger calls attention to the likeness evident in Adriaan van Ostade's paintings and those of De Hooch to Eembrandt's style, and infers from this resemblance that both studied under that great master. Whether or not De Hooch was a pupil of Hembrandt's can add little to our admiration for the rare talent that his few, and now almost priceless, pictures dis- play. Claude himself does not convey with greater power the idea of sunlight than do many of De Hooch's works. In our National Gallery are a couple of this artist's finest paintings ; the subjects are simple enough, merely the interiors of two Dutch houses, but painted with such wondrous truth that when one looks at them one is con- vinced that never was sunlight more marvellously rendered, and one feels almost willing to forget that only a painted surface is before one's eyes, and not a veritable scene in a quiet old Dutch house. Out of Holland, De Hooch's paintings are extremely scarce ; and even in that country they are among the rarest art treasures in the public and private galleries. At the Louvre there are but two examples ; one of these represents a richly decorated room, in which by the side of a superbly sculptured fire-place a group are engaged over their cards ; it isasplended picture, a delight and a wonder — how full this rich chamber is of light, yet how much more Li ±> ii UN I YE K M.TF i PIETER DE HOOCH. 71 seems to be kept out by that heavy curtain beyond the card- players, near which a couple are eagerly conversing ! How delicately every detail is painted, down to the lady's little foot so gracefully placed on the black and white marble of the floor, how skilfully the light is reflected on the golden stamped leather of the walls, how noiselessly the page enters from the outer room, with his salver and glass and flask of wine. This is a picture of *' high life:" De Hooch's representations of " low life " are equally beautiful, but it can hardly be said that De Hooch, like Brouwer or Steen^ ever painted really low life, all that his magic brush touched, however humble, he ennobled. Look at that modest little red-brick paved courtyard of a Dutch house in our National Gallery — the people who live here are poor ; here are no pages, on the walls no stamped leather, but this matron with her household duties and the clean red tiles and whitewashed walls are, owing to this artist's genius^ as beautiful and as delightful to look on as that richly furnished room and the aristocratic company in the high life picture at the Louvre. What a feeling of peace and comfort the humbler home conveys ! how neat and trim the housewife looks as she sits in the cool shadow of the yard, half busied with some domestic task, half watching her little girl at play on the red tiled floor ; while out in the sun-lit court an old man passes, throwing a heavy shadow across the whitewashed wall. In these pictures by De Hooch, it seems always afternoon. Kemark how this painter conquered what to many other artists has been an insur- mountable difficulty, namely, the rendering of the different gradations of light — first a cool darkened room is shown, then beyond this a passage in which the light is bright and warm, but how different to the glare beyond, outside in the quiet and sunny old street, the trees along the slow 72 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. canal look cool and shady ; but how hot the tall red gables, all aglow with the strong light of the setting sun, sinking in the western sky. Sometimes, but very rarely, De Hooch takes us out of doors, as in a picture showing us a couple seated in the sunshine ; but whether within or out of doors we feel at home and at peace with this pleasant, good- natured painter, whose pictures are so well known to us, but of whose personal life we know so little. In looking at this artist's works one feels certain that he who painted these sunny, happy, innocent pictures must have been a refined and gentle man, a man fond of children and flowers, of music and of sunshine, one who could see and also convey to others by his rare talent, the happy truth that to a pure mind and a good heart nothing under God's Heaven need be unsightly or useless, and that in all things that He made, something of beauty is to be found, to those who look for it with reverent and thankful eyes. The indefatigable Smith in his Catalogue Raisonne of the Dutch painters, notes sixty-eight of De Hooch's paintings, most of those are in private collections. Besides those already mentioned at the Louvre, and in the National Gallery, the Museum at Amsterdam has two, one the painter's portrait, the other known by the title of the Buttery Hatch.^ The Van der Hoop Gallery rejoices in five De Hoochs : there are also examples in the Six Collection. At Buckingham Palace there are two superb De Hoochs, but not superior to the three in the National Gallery, which are in themselves enough to have made this painter im- mortal. Sir Bichard Wallace has a fine De Hooch, and there are others which are reckoned with reason among the gems of our private galleries. We English were the first to appreciate this great artist, whose tardy recognition in his own country bears out the scriptural adage. FRANS VAN MIERIS. Born m^.—Died 1681. GERARD DOU'S best pupil, a jovial, stout, and honest-looking Dutch burgher, was almost his rival, when, in the year 1665, at the age of thirty, he painted his wife's and his own portrait, still to be seen in undimmed colours in the Museum at the Hague. Mieris was born in 1635, in the quaint old town of Delft, which has given not a few first-rate artists to Holland. He was one of twenty-three children. His father was Jan Bastiaensz van Mieris, a lapidary, and his mother Curina van der Kok. Like his master Dou, he was in early youth apprenticed to a glass-painter, one Abraham Torenvliet. He soon left the glass-painter's studio for that of Gerard Dou, when he gained the title from that painter of the Prince of his Pupils ; and this name he fully merited, for some of Mieris's works are as finished in manner as those of Dou. Later on, he studied historical painting under Abraham Tempel ; but Dou's influence was triumphant, and when, thanks to the patronage of the Archduke Leopold William, Mieris began to work inde- pendently of any teacher, he proved the power of his 74 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. brush by painting a work that ranks among the chefs d^oeuvre of the Dutch school, La Marchande de Soieries, a comely young damsel showing silks and satins to a some- what forward gallant. The light and shade in this paint- ing are equal to a Dou. Pictures of similar subjects quickly followed. Mieris soon became the most popular painter of genre pictures in Holland. Amateurs competed eagerly for these highly- finished little cabinet pictures. No less a potentate than the Grand Duke of Tuscany, finding that no owner of a Mieris would part with one, even at the most extravagant price, went himself to the painter's studio, and chose an unfinished study. We know little of his personal history and can only add that Mieris died at Ley den on the 12th of March, 1G81. Mieris was essentially a prince's painter; he loved to represent silks and satins, velvets and brocades, massive plate and rich jewels. He shows us the refine- ments of wealth in which the Dutch of the seventeenth century revelled. No other people understood better than they how to make their homes beautiful. We wonder if the gallants of Whitehall or Versailles lived more luxuri- ously than these cavaliers of the Hague and Amsterdam, or if the beauties of Hampton Court and Marly wore larger pearls or more costly silks than the fair ringleted dames whose forms Mieris's brush has preserved for all time 1 In seeking beautiful forms and splendid objects, Mieris was unlike the generality of the other figure painters of his day in Holland, for whereas Dou and Steen preferred to paint an old market-woman or a dirty child, the courtly Mieris scarcely ever left the polished floor of a saloon hung with stamped leather, and bright with marbles, gilding, and paintings. FRANS VAN MIERIS IN HIS STUDIO. Fkom a Painting by Himself. In the Dresden Gallery. ^ \ \ FRANS VAN MIERIS. 75 Looking at these brilliant little pictures of refined life, at these velvet-clad cavaliers, and at these ladies in their satins and swansdown, at the lovely children blowing soap- bubbles across a damask curtain, at these rooms filled with great wine coolers and silver flagons, one would imagine that the painter, who loved to represent these scenes of soft living and voluptuous ease, would have himself been like one of the fine gentlemen he so often painted. Tra- dition, which is probably most unjust, tells us that Mieris was not at all that sort of man; but we can not believe that one who did not attain the age of fifty, and who has left so many and such finished works, could have been, as some of his contemporaries state, a debauchee ; yet, from his being a friend and companion of that marvellously clever, but terribly abused, Jan Steen, Mieris contracted an evil reputation, which has not been removed by a fable of his having tumbled one night into a canal from which he was with difficulty rescued — an immersion tha.t, it is said, led to his death I Mieris was a successful portrait painter, and, like his master Dou, was fond of painting his own portrait. He appears in different costumes ; in one as a cavalier, as a trumpeter in another, and in his studio with his wife and maid in a third. Some confusion has arisen respecting Mieris's pictures, for his sons, Jan and Willem, copied his style, and his grandson ( Willem' s son) was also named Frans, and closely imitated his grandfather's style ; but after carefully study- ing such a work of the elder Mieris as the exquisite little portrait of a young woman at her toilet in the Bridge- water Collection, or the same lady, probably the painter's wife, feeding a parrot, in the National Gallery, we can not fail to see the superiority of the elder Mieris's skill compared to that of his sons and grandson. 76 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. Florence is rich in this painter's works, nine of the elder Mieris's paintings being in the Uffizi Gallery. In the Museum at the Hague are three of his works, a Boy blowing Soap-bubbles, a portrait of Dr. Schuijl, and por- traits of the painter and his wife together. Dresden has one of the largest collections of his paintings ; in that Gallery there are no less than fifteen. The Louvre contains a fine portrait ; and at Munich are some ex- quisite specimens of his work, including a portrait of him- self. And at Buckingham Palace are four of his paintings, one of which is a portrait of the artist and his wife. One solitary etching is ascribed to Frans van Mieris : it represents a sleeping dog. Besides his sons Willem and Jan, Frans van Mieris had distinguished disciples in Karel de Moor and Arie de Vos. CASPAR NETSCHER. Born 1639.— Died 1684. WE think it would be easy for the eye to tire of this painter's works, and to feel that, like some tooth- some dishes, a picture by Netseher may go a long way ; perhaps it is as well for the artistic gastronome that there are but few Netschers in the collections of England and the Continent. Caspar IsTetscher was essentially the painter of what in old-fashioned English art-books are described as ''con- versation pieces," in which richly costumed men and women, in all the heavy gorgeousness of the fashions of the time of William and Mary and the court of Versailles, are engaged in the social banalities and cour- tesies of their artificial lives. In one picture Netscher has given us the elaborately curled gallant superintending a young lady's lesson in the double-bass ; a page attends, with hat in hand. Again, in another painting, we see a pair of lovely children seated at an open window, laughing as they shake their soft curls out of their eyes, and in- tently watching the soap-bubbles as they mount all green and purple and lilac in the air; on the carved stone 78 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. window-sill, on which the children place their little dim- pled hands, there is a sculptured frieze of frolicsome goats and tricksy cupids frightening each other with huge bearded masks. And in a third, the painter has grouped himself and his buxom wife, in a long stomacher, her ample neck girt with a necklace of pearls, and between them, with apple in hand, sits their child. The artist is a somewhat sad, sickly-looking man, of some forty years : Netscher was all his life an invalid, and died of the illness that killed Samuel Pepys, and which had then no Sir Henry Thompson to crush it. What an art this of painting is, which allows the painter and his family to look out at us from this little picture, only a few inches square, as if they lived again, although they have been dust and ashes for nearly two hundred years ! Netscher was born at Heidelberg in 1639 ; he appeared at a time and in a place all distraught with that most terrible of calamities, a religious war. According to the place of his birth, he was properly not a Dutchman, but a German; but, like Lingelbach and Abraham Mignon, he was only German by birth, and, like them, lived the greater part of his life and made his fame in Hol- land, and ranks with these others as one of the great Dutch painters. Netscher' s father, who had been a sculptor at Stuttgardt, died young ; his mother was Elizabeth Vetter, the daughter of a burgomaster of Heidelberg. Forced to fly before the Swedish army, the poor woman, who was a Koman Catholic, fled for shelter with three young children to a fortress which, surrounded by the enemy, yielded at length to famine. When the siege was over, the poor creature had but one of her children left; this was Caspar: the others had perished from starvation in her sight. THE MUSIC LESSON. By Caspar Netscher. CASPAR NETSCHER. 79 We next hear of the poor refugees at Arnheim, where a humane doctor of the name of Tullekens took pity on the unfortunate mother and little Caspar, whose education he undertook to provide. Although the good man hoped that young Netscher would follow his profession of medicine, the boy evinced so strong a turn for drawing, that Tulle- kens sent him to study art with a local painter, of still-life, named Koster ; and from Roster's studio Caspar eventually betook himself to the famous portrait painter Terborch, at Deventer. The influence exercised by that great artist on Ketscher is evident in all his best works; although he lacked the breadth and life-likeness of Terborch, ISTetscher has much of his master's pure colouring and refined feeling; often, however, in his case degenerating into weakness from over-finish and over-glazing. When only twenty, Netscher was sufficiently skilful with his brush to set up for himself. According to Horace Walpole, N^etscher, on the invita- tion of Sir William Temple, paid England a visit ; but Houbraken is silent as regards this event in the artist's career, and it is almost certain that he never came to this country ; however, we know that Netscher intended to visit Italy, for on his way thither, when at Bordeaux, in 1659, he wooed and won Marie, the daughter of a mathe- matician of that town, Godin of Liege ; and, renouncing his intention of seeing Rome, he returned to the Hague, when family cares kept him from thinking of further travel. One son, Theodoras, who afterwards became a painter, had been born>in 1661, before they left Bordeaux. Caspar was elected a member of the Society of Painters at the Hague in 1663. As a portrait painter I^etscher had great fame. William III. especially esteemed him, as we know by 80 THE FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. the answer that prince made to the magistrates of Deventer when they asked him to sit for his portrait to Terborch: *'I have sat to ISTetscher ; and no one can beat him at a portrait." Netscher, who, as we have already said, suffered from bad health, died in 1684, at the early age of forty-one, leaving a large fortune to his wife ; and what was of still more im- portance, sons who worthily upheld the art and fame of the father. The younger — Constantijn — so closely imitated the style of his father, that his paintings have often been mistaken for those of the elder Netscher ; but to the con- noisseur they lack the marvellous refinement of Caspar's. It is related of Netscher that not even the gout hindered him from painting, and that he would receive his sitters and paint their portraits even when kept to his bed by pain. Netscher's paintings are very rare. The Gallery of Dresden has the largest collection of this painter's works, but they only amount to eight. The Louvre contains but two ; in our National Gallery are three fine examples. At the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, are six portraits by him ; and there is in the Bridgewater Gallery a superb little picture by him, supposed to represent the Duchess of Mazarin with St. Evremond. Besides his two sons, Eglon van der Neer studied under, or at any rate was a close imitator of, Netscher, both as regards the subjects he painted and also the manner. Owing to their great scarceness, Caspar Netscher's pictures, when they come into the market, command prices nearly as high as paintings by Terborch, Mieris, Metsu, or Gerard Dou. THE PEINCIPAL WORKS OF THE FIGUEE PAINTEES OF HOLLAND. The following short lists of the works of the Figure Painters of Holland have been compiled, for the most part, from the official catalogues of the public galleries of Europe ; and the compilers of these catalogues must be held responsible for the authenticity of the works. The pictures are placed in the lists in the order in which they are mentioned in the catalogues. GERARD HONTHORST. f VLIFO} Amsteldam. Portrait of 'Williain II. G. hondhorst. Museum. Portrait of William 11. g. honthorst. f. 16 — Portrait of Priace Frederick Henry of Orange. G. honthorst, 1650. Portrait of Princess Amalia van Solms-Braunfels, wife of Prince Frederick Henry, g. honthorst, 1650. {The G wnid the H blended as above, as icas his usual custom.) The Happy Musician. Tovni Hall. Portrait of Marie de Medicis. {Painted in 1638.) Berlin. J/wscwm. The Liberation of St. Peter. G 82 GERARD HONTHORST. Berlin. Museum, Esau Selling his Birthright. The Backgammon-players. G. honthorst, Ff 1624. ( Jassel. Gallery. An Old Woman Weighing Gold. St. Cecilia. A Satyr and Nymph. A Musical Party. Combe Abbey. Portrait of the Queen of Bohemia. Portrait of the King of Bohemia. Portrait of Charles I. Portrait of Prince Rupert. Portrait of Gerard Hanthorst. {A bust. ) Copenhagen. A Family Concert. Museum. Diana and her Nymphs. G. honthorst fecit, ] 650. Female Portrait. . . . horst. Dresden. Gall: The Dentist. Portrait of an Old Woman, with a piece of gold in her hand. Portrait of an Old Woman. {Bought as a Remhrandt.) Florence. Uffizi. Several Persons at Supper A Gipsy Telling Fortunes. A Supper. The Virgin and Child and St. Joseph. Adoration of the Shepherds. His own Portrait. Hampton Court. Duke of Buckingham and Family. Christian, Duke of Brunswick. Hague. Gallery. Portrait of William II. of Nassau, Prince of Orange. Portraits of Two Young Princesses. {Probably the daughters of Prince Frederick Heni'y of Orange.) G. honthorst, 1653. A Child Gathering Pears. London. Stafford House. Buckingham Pal : Madrid. Gall: Munich. Pina- kothek. Wife, Louisa Henrietta of Nassau. {From the MawritsMiis.) Christ before Caiaphas. The Duke and Duchess of Buckingham and Children. The Incredulity of St. Thomas. The Deliverance of St. Peter. Ceres Transforming the Peasant into a Lizard. The Roman Charity. The Prodigal Son. gerart van honthorst, fecit, 1625. Christ Teaching in the Temple. The Prodigal Son. ADRIAEN BROUWER. 83 Paris. Louvre. Pesth. Gallery. Rotterdam. Museum. St. Petersburg. Hermitage. Home. Borghese P. Vienna. Belvedere. WoBURN Abbey. Pilate Washing his Hands. {Engraved in Landon.) Concert, g. iionthorst. re. 1624. Triumph of Silenus. Portrait of Charles Louis, Count Palatine of the Rhine. G. HONTHORST, 1640. Portrait of Prince Rupert. The Lute-player, g. honthorst. f. 1614. A Young Shepherd. An Old Man Reading. A Soldier Lighting his Pipe. Head of an Old Man. — (1647 and with monogram.) Christ before Caiaphas. {Called " Christ before Pilate " in the catalogue.) The Concert. Portrait of Charles Louis, Count Palatine of the Rhine. Painted in England. Portrait of Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine. Painted in England. Portrait of a Man with a Glass and a Violin. Portrait of a Young "Woman Playing the Mandolin and Singing. Portrait of a Woman with a Spinning-wheel. Portrait of Young Woman, Singeing her Hair. Portrait of an Old Woman, Praying. Lot and his Daughters. Christ before Pilate. A Boy Teasing a Dog. St. Jerome. Portrait of the Countess of Bedford. ADRIAEN BROUWER. .^ Amsterdam. Museum. Berlin. A Village Revel. Peasants Fighting. {More like a work of Joos van CraesheecTc. ) The Toilet. Engraved in the Series of *' The Seven Sins " as *'Superbia." G 2 84 ADRIAEN BROUWER, Berlin. Museum. A Moon-lit Landscape. A Dance of Peasants. {Doubted. ) The Smoker, [Perhaps by David Ryckaert, the younger.) The Smoker. {Perhaps by Joos van CraesbeecTc.) [A II five of the above came fromi the Suermondt Collection ., and are given as doubted in the Official Catalogue.] A Fight in a Cabaret. Interior of a Tavern. Peasants Playing Cards. Peasants in an Ale-house. Two Peasants Fighting. Two Peasants Sitting at a Table. A Caricature. {A study.) A Caricature. A Peasant with a Child. Interior of an Ale-house. Peasants Drinking in a Tavern. The Topers. A Peasant doctoring the foot of another Peasant. Etched by J. Eissenhardt. A Peasant having his back doctored. A. b. Etched by J. Eissenhardt. A Man Taking Medicine, a. b. Etched by J. Eissenhardt. Peasants Singing. A Sleeping Peasant. The Comic Trio. Music in the Kitchen. The Conversation. Peasants Playing Cards. Spanish Soldiers Playing at Dice. Three Peasants smoking. A Peasant Playing the Fiddle while others sing. Two Peasants Fighting separated by a third. Peasants Fighting in an Ale-house. A Village Doctor Dressing a Peasant's Arm. Peasants Singing. A Peasant with a Lame Foot. Paris. Louvre. Interior of a Smoking-room. The Smoker, {Engraved by Gaujean.) Pesth. Gallery. Peasants Drinking, Brussels. Mus: Arenberg Coll: Cassel. Gallery. Dresden. Gall: DuLwicH. Gall: Florence. Uffizi. Frankfort. Stddel. London, Bridge- ivater House. Hertford Coll: Madrid. Mus: Munich. Pina- Tcotliek. GERARD TER-BORCH. 85 Pesth. Gallery. St. Petersburg. Hermitage. Three Peasants Drinking. The Drinker. ( With monogram.) Peasants in an Ale-house. Peasants Quarrelling. The Flute-Player. Interior of a Peasant's Cottage - two men smoking and one singing. Vienna. Belvedere. A Peasant Sitting on a Cask with a Mug and Pipe. CzerninColl: Peasants. GERARD TER-BORCH. & Amsterdam. Portrait of Gerard Ter-Borch. ( TFith monogram.) Museum. Portrait of his Wife. ( WitJi monogram.) Paternal Advice. {Similar pictures are in the Berlin MuseuMy and in the Bridgewater House Oallery, London; and a study for it in the Dresden Gallery. ) The Treaty of Miinster in 1648. {A copy of tJie picture in the National Gallery, London.) Sir. Coll : The Duet. A Girl Writing. Van der Hoop C. A Boy and a Dog. Antwerp. Mils: The Mandolin -player. Berlin. Museum. Paternal Advice. {Engraved by J. G. Wille.) Portrait of Herr van Marienburg. Portrait of Gertrud van Marienburg, his loife, aunt of Gerard Ter-Borch, { With monogram, ) The Consultation, g. t. borch, 1635. Portrait of a Man. Portrait of a Young Man. The Smoker. The Family of the Knife-grinder. ( With monogram.) Cassel. Gallery. The Lute-player. A Lady and Gentleman Playing. 86 GERARD TER-BORCH. Copenhagen. Gallery. Deventer. Town Hall. Dresden. Qallery. Florence. Ujffizi. Frankfort. Hague. Gallery. Steengracht Coll: London. Nation- al Gallery. Ashhurton Coll: Bndgewater Ho : Buckingham Pal : Eastlake Coll: [iYONS. Museum. Montpellier Munich. Pina- kothek. Paris. Louvre. St. Petersburg. Hermitage. Portraits of a Gentleman and his Wife. Portrait of a Lady. Portraits of Twenty Members of the Town Council of Deventer. 1667. The Trumpter. {With monogram,) A Lady in a Satin Gown Washing her Hands, g. t. borch. The Lute-player. {With moTwgram given above.) Paternal Advice. {Study for the Berlin Gallery Picture.) A Dutch Lady. Portrait of a Lady. With monogram. {In the Stddel. ) The Message (or "The Trumpeter"). {With monogram, and date 1655.) Engraved by Audouin, Lerouge, Beveil, and Zeelander, and lithographed by Last. Portrait of Gerard Ter-Borch. {Lithographed by F. B. Waanders.) A Mother and Child. The Guitar Lesson. {Engraved in tJie Choiseul Gallery.) The Peace of Miinster. G. t borch, f. monasterii, a. 1648. {Engraved by Jonas Suijderhoef.) A Musical Party. Paternal Advice. A Girl Reading a Letter to her Mother. Portrait of a Gentleman. The Messenger. A Girl Seated Pouring out Wine. {Li tlie Musee Fabre.) Interior of Peasant's Cottage. A Boy with a Dog. ( With monogram. ) A Trumpeter Bringing a Letter to a Lady. G. T. borch. An Officer Offering Money to a Young Lady. ( With mono- gram. ) Engraved by Avdouin and in Filhol. The Music Lesson, burg. f. 1660. {Engraved by Mons and Lavallee, and in Filhol. ) The Concert, t. burg. {Engraved in Filhol.) An Ecclesiastical Assembly. A Cavalier presenting a Glass of Wine to a Young Lady. An Old Jew with a Violin. A Lady in a Satin Gown Standing Reading a Letter, just presented to her by a Page. A Lady in a Satin Gown Sits Reading a Letter, just pre- sented by a Peasant. The Musicians. ADRIAAN VAN OSTADE. Si St. Petersburg. A Soldier Offers Money to a Servant-maid, who holds a Jug Hermitage. and a Glass. {Signed.) Vienna. Belvedere. A Young "Woman Peeling an Apple for a Child. iechtenstein C. Portraits of Herr van Marienburg and his "Wife, Gertrud, aunt of Gerard Ter-Borch. {Portraits of these ^persons are also in the Berlin Gallery.) ADRIAAN VAN OSTADE. J' /^ Amsterdam. A Painter's Studio. A. v. o. {as above, i.e. left hand). Etched Museum. by linger and by L. Lowenstam. Travellers Resting, a. v. ostade, 1671. EtcJied by J. A. Boland. The Charlatan, a. v. ostade, 1648. The Baker. Etched by A. van Ostade. Six Collection. The Fish-wife. J''an der Hoop C. Peasants round a Hearth. {Dated 1661.) Aniwerp. Mus: The Smoker, a. v. ostade, 1655. Berlin. Gallery. Portrait of an Old "V\^oinan. A. v. ostade, 16— The Lyre-player before an Ale-house, a. v. ostade, 1640. The Smoker, a. v. ostade, 1667. Brunswick. Gall: Annunciation of the Birth of Christ. A Peasant Smoking. Brussels. Gall: Man Eating Herrings. {Lithogra2)hed by Madou and by Fourmois.) Arjnberg Coll: Interior of a Tavern. Cassel. Gallery. Peasants in an Arbour of an Ale-house, a. v. ostade, 1676, Peasants Drinking in an Alehouse, a. v, ostade, 16 — . Peasants Playing Cards, a, v. ostade, 1659. Dap.mstadt. Gall: Peasants Dancing. Dresden. Gall: Peasants in an Ale-house, a. v. ostade, 1639. The Painter's Studio, a, v. ostade, lb6Z. 88 ADRIAAN VAN OSTADF. ])ULWICH. Gall. Fi.OKENOE. UtJizi. Frankfort. Hague. Gallery. DuESDEX. Gall : Two Peasants Eating at a Table. A. v. ostade, 166.?. Two Peasants before an Ale-house, one Lighting a Pipe. a. v. OSTADE, 1664. Interior of an Ale-house, with Men and "Women, a. v. OSTADE, 1679. Peasants Playing Cartls. ad. ostade, rt. Boors Making Merry. A. v. ostade, 164 — Man and "Woman in Conversation. A Man Smoking. A. v. ostade. A Woman with a Jug. A. v. ostade. A Man at a Window. Interior of a Shed. A. v. ostade, 1656. {Tn the Stddcl.) Peasants in an Inn. a. v. ostade, 1662. {Engraved hy Bovinet, Chataigner, Bernmef C. C. A. Last, and by A. L. Zeela-ndcr.) The Fiddler. A. v. ostade, 1673. [Engraved hy Chat- aigner, Bovinet, Boutrois, and by A. L. Zeelander, arid lithographed by C. C, Last and hy J. J. Mesker. Ploos van Amstel made a fac- simile engraving from a dravnng by A. van Ostade, dated 1673, exactly similar to this painting.) London. iVai.-G^aZ; The Alchymist. a. v. ostade, 1661. Apsley House. A Company of Peasants. {The drawing for this picture is in the British Museum.) Ashbnrton Coll : Peasants Playing and Singing. {Dated 1661.) A Village Scene. {Dated 1676.) Bridgewater Ho : Peasants Playing Skittles. A. t^. ostade, 1676. Portrait of an Old Man, probably a lawyer, 1671. BucTcinghamPal : Peasants Conversing, a. v. ostade, 1650. An Interior, with Peasants Smoking. A. v. ostade. 1665. Northhrooh Coll: Four Persons Playing at Cards. {Dated 1648.) Madrid. Gallery.. A Concert. Peasants Feeding. A Toper. Munich. Finn- Interior of a Peasant's Cottage. A. v. ostade, 1647. kothek. Peasants Quarrelling, a. v. ostade, 1656. Peasants Playing and Dancing. A. v. ostade, 1647. A Toper, a. v. ostade. Peasants Carousing. A. v. ostade. Peasants in an Ale-house. A. v. ostade, 16 — . Peasants in an Ale-house, with a Woman and her Children. Paris. Louvre. The Family of Adriaan van Ostade. {Engraved in Filhol.) ADRIAAN VAX CSTADE. 89 PARI!*. Louvre. The School-m .aster. A. v. ostade, 1662. [Engraved hij Bovinet, and in Landon.) The Fish-market. [Engraved hy Claessens and in Filhol.) Interior of a Cottage. A. v. ostade, 1642. A Man Reading in his Cabinet. A Smoker. [Engraved hy Diqyreel and in Filhol.) A Toper. A. v. ostade, 1668. [Engraved by David, as " Le Vieillard Joyeux,'^ and in Filhol.) Pesth. Gallery. Interior of a Peasant's Cottage, a. v. ostade. Interior, with Peasants. Peasants Drinking. Interior, with Peasants. A Man Mending a Pen. Interior, with Peasants. A. v. ostade. Rotterdam. Mils: A Man Reading, a. v. ostade. A Village Tavern. St. Petersburg. A Village Fete. Hermitage. A Peasant Family. The Violin-player. [Signed and dated 1648.) An Old Woman Seated on a Window-sill, surrounded hy a Vine. A Village Minstrel playing a Hurdy-gurdy. The Baker. [Sigmd.) The Village Concert. Peasants Smoking. Peasants, while Smoking and Drinking, listen to a Woman who Reads a Letter. A Peasant Family. Peasants in an Ale-house. The Touch. [Signed.) The Sight. [Signed and dated 1651.) The Taste. Peasant in a Cottage. Landscape. Vienna. Czernin Peasants. Collection. A Smoker. A Drinker, 90 FERDINAND BOL. FERDINAND BOL. 0^ Amsterdam. Portrait of Ferdinand Bol. {In a carved, wooden, ornamental Museum. frame of the same date as the picture.) Portrait of Arthur Quellinus, Sculptor, bol, 1663. Portrait of Admiral Michiel Adriaansz de Euijter. f. bol FECIT, 1677. (Engraved by W. van Senus and etched hij '■ J. A. Boland.) A Mother with her two Children, f. bol fecit. {Formcrhj over a chimney-piece in tlie house which is knoum as the Trip- penhuis, and which at present contains the picture gallery : it probably represents members of the Trip Family.) The Instruction, f. bol, 1663. {Formerly over a chimney- piece in the house which at present contains the picture gallery : it probably represents members of the Trip Family. ) Town Hall. Four Regents of the Leprosy Hospital. Van der Hoop C. Portrait of Admiral de Ruijter. Berlin. Museum. Portrait of an Old Lady. r. bol fecit, 1642. Brunswick. Gall: Portrait of a Man. Brussels. Gall: Portrait of a Man. f. bol f. 1660. TheF andtJie B inter- laced as given above. [Formerly called a Rembrandt .) Portrait of a Woman, f. bol f. 1660. (Formerly called a Rembrandt. ) Portrait of Saskia van Ulenburgh, wife of Reinbrandt van Rijn, A Philosopher in Meditation. (A somewhat similar picture is in the Louvre. ) Cambridge. A Portrait. {In the Fitzwilliam Museum.) Copenhagen. The Holy Sepidchre, f. bol fecit, 1644. • Gallery. Portrait of a Lady. f. bol, 1656. Portrait of Admiral de Ruijter. r. bol, 1668. Dresden. Gall: Rest on the Flight into Egypt, f. bol fecit, 1644. Jacob's Vision, f. bol fecit. Joseph Presenting Jacob to Pharaoh. Portrait of Ferdinand BoL FERDINAND BOL. 91 )UBLIN. Gall: 'rankfort. jStddel. Iague. Gallery. ilVERPOOL. AOif. Nat: Gal. \wthbrook Coll: jEyden. Toivn H. luNiCH. Pina- kothek. *ARis. Louvre. 'esth. Gallery. iOTTERDAM. Mus 5T. Petersburg. Hermitage. David's Charge to Solomon. {Dated 1643.) Portrait of a Young Man holding his Hat and Gloves in Lis Hand. f. bol, 1644. {EtcJied by Eissenhardt.) Portrait of a Man with Curly Hair. f. bol, 1659. Portrait of Michiel Adriaansz de Kuijter. {Lithographed by Elink Sterk.) Portrait of Engel de Ruijter. f. bol, 1669. {Lithographed hi/ J. H. JVeissenbruch.) The Angel appearing to Hagar. {In the Institute.) Portrait of an Astronomer. F. bol fecit, 1652. Portraits of a Bride and Bridegi'oom. A Scene from Guarini's " Pastor Fido." Allegory of Peace. {Painted in 1664. ) Abraham, about to Offer up Isaac, stopped by an Angel. Portrait of a Man Clothed in Black. A Philosopher in Meditation. A Young Prince of Holland in a Chariot drawn by Goats, F. bol, 1654. Portrait of a Mathematician. {Engraved by Klaubert aiul by Waumans. ) Portrait of a Man. f. bol, 1659. Portrait of a Man. • Portrait of Dirk van der Waeijen. F. bol, 1656. Portrait of a Lady. f. bol fecit, 1652. Portrait of a Countess of Nassau- Siegen. {Probably Ernes- tina, wife of John, the younger, of Nassau- Siegen.) Portraits of Persons, unknown — as Theseus and Ariadne. The Savant, writing. Portrait of a Man, turning over the leaves of a hook by his side. Portrait of a Lady, in black, seated, holding her gloves. Portrait of a Young Man, his right hand on a table. Portrait of a Young Lady, standing before an old man, who is seated. {Miscalled " Esther and Ahasueru^.^') The Philosopher. {Signed.) Portrait of a Young Man. {Signed and dated 1641.) Portrait of an Old Woman, seated, with a book on her kneci. Signed and dated 1651. out 81 jaeii {formerly in the Collection of the Duke of Portland. ) 92 BARTHOLOMEUS VAN DER HELST. BARTHOLOMEUS VAN DER HELST. Amsterdam. Museum. Town Hall. Six Collection. Antwerp. Mi(s : Berlin. Mus . Brussels. Gall. Cassel. Gall : Copenhagen. Gallery, The Banquet of the Civic Guard ("De Schutters-maaltijd ''). BARTHOLOMEUS VAN DER HELST FECIT A°., 1648. [Engravccl by Patas and by J. W. Kaiser ; and lithoyraphed by Van Loo.) The Syndics of the Confraternity of St. Sebastian at Am- sterdam. BARTHOLOMEUS VANDER HELST, 1657. Portrait of Lieutenant- Admiral Aart van Nes. b. van der HELST, 1668. {In the background is a Naval Combat 'painted by Ludolf BacMiuisen. ) Portrait of Geertruida den Dubbelde, wife of Aart van Nes. B. van der HELST, 1668. Portrait of Maria Henrietta Stuart, widow of William II. Portrait of a Man, in black. Portrait of a Woman, b. v. h. Portrait of Vice-Admiral Egbert Meeuwiszoon Kortenaar. {Engraved by A. Bloteling.) Portrait of Andries Bicker, Burgomaster of Amsterdam. B. VAN DER HELST, 1642. {Engraved by J. v. Vilsteren and J. HoubraTcen.) Portrait of Gerdrard Bicker, Anieszoon, •♦ Bailli" of Muiden. Members of the Archery Guild of Amsterdam. {Painted in 1639.) Four Members of the Archery Guild, with the Steward and a Boy. {Painted in 1656.) Van der Heist at table with his wife Constantia Reijnst. Portrait of a Young Girl, as Diana. Portrait of an Old Woman. Portrait of Himself, b. vander helst, 1664. Portrait of a Woman, said to be his Wife, Constantia Reijn^t. B. vander helst, 1664. Portrait of a Man {three-qtiarter length), b, v. der hki-st, .1642. Portrait of a Man. b. van der helst, 1651. Portrait of a Man. B. van helst. BARTHOLOMEUS VAN DER IIELST. 93 Dresden. Gall: Florence. Uffizi. Pitti Pal : Frankfort. Stddel. Edinburgh. Hague. Gallery. Hampton Court. Lille. Gallery. London. Nation- al Gallery. Hertford Ho : Lansdoimie Ho : Northh'ooh Coll: Munich. Pina- Icothek. Paris. Louvre. Parma. Gallery. PiOTTERDAM. Museum. St. Petersburg. Hermitage. Portrait of a "Woman, who Draws back a Curtain, u. a'an DER helst, 1654. Portrait of a Man, Holding his Cloak in his Left Hand. Portrait of an Old Woman, with a White Cap. Portrait of the Wife of Andries Bicker, of Amsterdam, b. van DER HELST, 1642. iETA 48. Portrait of Himself. Portrait of a Man. Portrait of a Woman. B. van der helst, 1656 Portrait of a Man. (In the National Gallery, ) Portrait of Paulus Potter. B. van der helst, 16f4. (En- graved by F. L. Hujigens ; lithographed by J. C. d' Arnaud Gcrkens.) Portrait of a Dutchman. Portraits. Portrait of a Lady, Standing (lialf -length). Family Portrait. Bust Portrait of a Lady. B. van der helst, 1640. Portrait of an Officer. Portrait of Admiral Martin Harperts Tromj). Portrait of a Man, in a Black Dress, Holding his Gloves in his Left Hand and his Cap in his Eight. Portrait of a Lady, Holding a Fan in her Eight Hand. The Syndics of the Confraternity of St. Sebastian ("Ze Jugement du prix de Varc.") bartholomeus van der helst, 1653. (Engraved by Hulmer, and in Filhol.) A sketch for the picture in Amsterdam Museum. Portrait of a Man (half-length). Portrait of a Lady, van der helst, 1655. Portrait of a Man. A Cavalier and a liady in a Park (fhe landscape by A. ran Everdingen). b. van der helst fecit, 1654. Portrait of a Preacher, b. van der helst, f. 1638. Portrait of Daniel Bernard. (Signed and dated 1669.) The New Market, Amsterdam. (Signed and dated 1669.) The Presentation of the Fiancee. (Signed and dated 1647.) A Family Group, of five persons. A Family Group : a Cavalier with his wife and child. Portrait of Govaert Flinck. 94 GERARD DOU. St. Petersburg. Portrait of a Lady, in a black dress. Hermitage. Portrait of a Man, seated^ tying his garter. 1670.) Portrait of a Young Lady, in a red dress. Portrait of a Man, in red. Portrait of a Man, in black. {Signed and dated GERARD DOV, Q> Amsterdam. Mitseu7n. Six Coll . Van der Hoop C. liERLiN. Museum. Brunswick. G. Brussels. Gall: Arenberg Coll: Casskl. Gallery. Copenhagen. Gallery. Dresden. Gallery Portrait of Himself, g. uou. {Engraved by Schouman.) Evening School, g. dou. {Etclied by J A. Boland, and litho- graphed by Van Loo.) The Hermit. Curiosity. Portraits of Pieter van der Werf, Burgomaster of Leyden, and his Wife, berchem g.dou. The G atid the D inter- laced as given above. {The portraits are by Dou, the land- scape by Berchem.) The Dentist. A Girl at a Window, g. dou, 1667. A Candle-light Effect, Fish-woman. The Penitent Magdalen, g. dou, 1656. Portrait of an Old Woman, g. dou. The Store-room. Portrait of Himself. Portrait of Himself, g. dou. An Old Woman Sitting at a Table, covered with G old. Bust Portrait of an Old Man, with a blue feather in his hat. Bust Portrait of a Woman. The Doctor, g. dou. Girl with a Light, g. dou, 165(8 ?). , Portrait of Himself, g. dou, 1647. A Grey Cat on a Windov?^-sill ; in the background, Dou before his easel, g. dou, 1657. GERARD DOU. 95 Dresden. Qall. DuLwicH Gall: Florence. Uffizi. Frankfort, Hague. Gallery. London. NaJdon- al Gallery. Buckingham Pal . Bridgwater Ho : Northhrook Coll: Montpellier. Munich. Pina- kothek. A Girl Plucking Grapes at a Window, g. dou, 16.58. Gerard Dou Playing the Violin, g. dou, 1665. {See frontispiece.) A School-master Mending his Pen. g. dou, 1671. The Dentist, with a Boy, whose tooth he has just extracted. g. dou, 1672. A Hermit Praying, g. dou. A Girl Watering a Plant. G. dou. Still Life. G. dou. A Girl Sitting at a Table. Portrait of Gerard Don's Mother, reading the newspaper. An Old Woman Searching for her Lost Thread. A Girl in Wine-cellar. Portrait of Gerard Don's Mother, reading a book. An Old Woman Reading a Book. A Young Man and a Girl. A Lady Playing on the Virginals. Portrait of Himself, g. dou, 1618. A School-master. G. dou. The Pan-cake Seller. A Girl Preparing Supper. {In the Stddel). The Young Tailoress (or, "The Young Mother"), g. dou, 1658. {Engraved by Reveil, as ''La Jeune Mere;" by Chataigner, as " La Jeune Menag^re" ; and by A. L. Zeelander ; and lithographed by CCA. Last.) A Young Woman Holding a Lamp. {Engraved by J. F. Lange ; and lithographed by C C A. Last; and by A. C. Nunnink, in reverse.) Portrait of Himself, g. dou f. The Poulterer's Shop. g. dou. {Engraved in tlie ' ' Clwiseul Gallery.") Portrait of Don's Wife. g. dou. An Old Man. A Kitchen-maid. g. dou, 1646. A Mother Nursing a Child. The Violin-player, g. dou, 1637. Portrait of Himself. A Lady Playing the Spinet. The Mouse-trap. {In the Musee Fabre.) An Old Woman Looking Through a Window, g. dou. Portrait of an Old Painter in his Studio {said to be Jurian or Georg Ovens.) g. dou, 1649. 96 GERARD DOU. Munich. Piiia- A Be/dropique,^^ Dou. 39. Fishwife, The. Metsu. 60. Girl knitting. Maes. 63. Girl's Head. Ver Meer. 67. Goijen, Van. 50. Guild of S. Luke, The. 7. Guitar Lesson, The. Ter-Borch. 20. Hague, Painters' Guild at the. 7. Hague, Palace of the. 7. Hals, Frans. 2, 10, 22. Heist, Bartholomeus van der. 31. His Portrait and \yorks. 33. List of Paintings. 92. Honthorst, Gerard van. 5. AYorks of. 8. List of Paintings. 81. Honthorst, William. 8. Hooch, Pieter De. m. 111. Houbraken. 11, 16. " House in the Wood," The. 7. Idle Servant, The. Maes. 63. Interior of a School. Jan Steen. 52. Interiors. De Hooch. 70. Invalid Lady, The. Jan Steen. 52. Jameson, Mrs, 5. Knupfer, Nicolas. 50. Kouwenhoveu, Pieter. 36. Lace-maker, The. Ver Meer. QS. Lady feeding a Parrot. Mieris. 75. Lady playing on a Harpsichord. Ver Meer. 67. Lady playing on Lute. Ter-Borch. 19. Lady washing Hands. Ter-Borch. 19. Leslie, C. R. 52, 64, 69. Lejiefs Hospital, Lady Patronesses of. Bol. 28, Leper's Hospital, Regents. Bol. 2". Maes, Nicolaas. 61. Works of. 63. List of Paintiuj 110, 120 INDEX. " Marchande de Soieries," La. Van Mieris. 74. Market at Amsterdam. Metsu, 59. Martyrdom of S. John the Baptist. Honthorst. 7. Meer, .Tau Ver. 65. List of paintings. 110. Metsu, Gabriel. 57. Works of. 59. His Portrait. 60. His Pupils. 60. List of Paintiufi:s. 108. Mieris, Frans van. 73. His Portraits, 75. List of Paintings. 112. Mieris, Frans van, the younger. 75. Mieris, Jan van. 75. Mieris, Willem van. 75. Miracle of the Water turned into Wine, The. Jan Steen. 54. Moliere. 52. Mnsical Farty,A. Jan Steen. 52. Music Lesson, The. Netscher. 77. Netscher, Caspar. 77. His Portrait. 78. List of Paintings. 114. Niyht School, The. Dou. 38. Officer offering 3Ioney to a Lai^y, Ter- Borch. 18. Officer writim/, and Trumpeter. Ter- Borch. 19. Ostacle, Adriaan Jansz, van. 21. His Portrait. 24. Paintings and Etchings. 25. His Pupils. 26. List of Paintings. 87. Ostade, Isack Jauz, van. 22, 45. Works of, 48. List of Paintings. 103. Ovr Saviour hefcre Caiaphas. Hon- thor.st. 5. Paternal Advice. Ter-Borch. 14, 19. Peace of Miinster. Ter-Borch. 15,19. Periaranda, Count de. 15. Philosopher, The. Maes. 63. Pieters, Machtelgen. 22. Quellinus, Arthur. Bol. 29. Regents of the Leper^s Hospital, The Four. Bol. 27. Kembrandt. 1, 3, 23, 27, 28. Reynolds, Sir Joshua. 2. Rubens, Peter Paul. 3, 12. Rvijter, Admiral. Bol. 29. St. John the Baptist preaching. Ph, Wouwerman. 43. Satin, Gown, The ; or. Paternal Advice. Ter-Borch. 14, 19. Steen, Jan. 49. Works of. 56, 104. Still Life; Bead Game, etc. Ver Meer. 67. Stirmp Cup, The. Metsu. 60. Ter-Borch, Gerard. 14. His own Portrait. 16, 19. Works of. 18. Pupils. 20. List of Paintings. 85. Ter-Borch, Gezina. 20. Trumpeter, The. Ter-Borch. 19. Ver Meer, Jan. 65, QQ, 110. k'ioloncello Player, The. Metsu. 60. Woman talen in Adultery, The. Metsu. 59. Wouwerman, Jan. 44. Wouwerman, Peter. 44. Wouwerman, Philips. 40, 97. Young Woman at her Toilet. F. van Mieris. 75. YotoKi Woman reading a Letter. Ver Meer. 68. LONDON- : R. CLAY, SONS, .\ND TAYLCK, PRINTERS. I 14 DAY USE B£TURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORKOWED LOAN DEPT. This book is due on the last date stamped below» or on the date to which renewed. Renewals only: Tel. No. 642-3405 Renewals may be made 4 days i)rior to date due. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. WED ~wmw NOViJi '^3 '&pi^ 4J€tfir "'''wwm^^ i^^-'^»^ ^s-oy- LD21A-30m-10,'73 (R3728sl0)47G — A-30 General Library University of California Berkeley i