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IN THE NETHERLANDS. lxix
uffs, especially silks and satins. It must be borne in mind, how-
er, that in the absence of these external properties, thus carefully
pplied, the refinements of life could not be invested with appro-
priate pictorial splendour. But these painters were not mere imi-
tators of stuff and texture; they were capable of emotion, and
could give utterance to the sentiments of romance. As a portrait-
painter, too, Terburg has made a great reputation.
Jan Steen, the so-called jolly landlord of Leyden (ca. 1626-79),
who, however, painted also at The Hague and Haarlem, was
likewise a painter of social subjects, but in a line and in a manner
quite his own. That he was a low-lived tippler is simply one of
those wholly gratuitous slanders with which it was once the fashion
to besmirch the painters of Holland. A joyial life was probably not
Tepugnant to his tas and what is more to our purposeis the
fact that a spontaneous joyousness pervades his works, and asparkling
sense of humour too; while as a colourist he must be looked upon
the foremost of the entire school. His pictures might be enti-
tled comedies of life, in which man’s follies are chastised with
satire and his weaknesses held up to ridicule, but without the
glaring exaggeration and obtrusive moralizing which make Hogarth’s
pictures (with whom Jan Steen has much in common) so unpleasant
to look upon. Family feasts and merry-makings, the wedding of
ill-assorted couples, quacks and their quackeries, lovelorn maidens
(‘hier baat geen medicijn, want het is minne pijn’), tavern brawls
and similar scenes are his favourite subjects. Jan Steen has, and
with justice, been likened to Moliére. The greater number of his
works, including many of the best, are in England, but he is well
represented in most of the Dutch collections also and especially
so in the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam. The Duc d’Arenberg possesses
in his collection one of the very rare Scriptural pieces by this master,
the ‘Marri it Cana’; another, ‘Laban searching for his images’,
is in the Municipal Museum at Leyden.
Jan Steen is a solitary personage. He stands alone, and has no
followers. So much the more numerous, and at the same time in-
timately associated, are the painters whose genius found employ-
ment in the domain of landscape, which they rendered with true
artistic appreciation, and enriched as well as animated by the ad-
dition of living forms. Very frequently these ‘landscapes with
figures’ are the result of friendly co-operation. Thus Adriaen van de
Velde of Amsterdam (ca. 1635-72), one of the most estimable as
well as gifted of Dutch painters, supplied the figures for the land-
scapes of his master Wynants, for Moucheron and Jan van der Heyde,
and even for Hobbema and Ruysdael. Philips Wouverman (1649-68)
has perhaps the greatest reputation for these figure pictures, of which
some 800 may still be reckoned. Cavalry combats, hunting scenes,
in which horses always play a conspicuous part, he has repeated
with endless variations, seldom, however, passing the bounds of
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