XKVili HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ART

by the ever-present fiddler ; and with such marvellous effect is colour
accentuated, so complete is his mastery of chiaroscuro, that nearly
every picture may be said to provide a new ‘feast for the eye’. His
representations of courtyards (usually enclosed) possess, perhaps, a
higher pictorial charm than his interiors; and it was certainly more
difficult to secure harmony of tone and colour in the former than in
the latter. With Adriaen van Ostade are connected his brother,
Isaae van Ostade (1621-49), whose high promise was frustrated
by an early death, Cornelis Bega (1620-64), and Cornelis Dusart
(1660-1704).

And thus we are brought to the almost innumerable throng of
GENRE PAINTERS, who have imparted to Dutch art its peculiarly dis-
tinctive attributes and have secured its greatest triumphs. It
would be difficult to distinguish amongst the genre painters of
Holland various degrees of excellence, inasmuch as each in his
respective and, as arule, contracted sphere, has asserted an in-
disputable supremacy. It is unfortunate that their works are rarely
to be met with in Dutch collections, as the greater number have
been transferred to foreign galleries, so that Holland is no longer
exclusively the place where the genre and landscape painters of
the Netherlands can be studied. It must suffice, therefore, to
mention the most conspicuous names.

The genre painters are usually divided into several groups, ac-
cording to the subjects which they make peculiarly their own; pic-
tures, for example, belong to the higher or lower genre as they set
before us the more refined or coarser aspects of social life, the world
of fashion or the vulgar herd. These, however, are merely adventi-
tious distinctions and do not by any means sufficiently account for
this latest development of Dutch art, resolving itself as it did into
a number of local schools. Dirck Hails (d. 1656), a younger brother
of Frans Hals (to whom many genre works by Dirck have been
ascribed), Anton Palamedess (ca. 1601-1673), Jacob Duck, Pieter
Codde (ca. 1600-1678), and others abound in pictures of soldiers
and cavaliers contending with Venus and Bacchus, or engaged in
the sterner encounter of pitched battle and skirmish; in illustra-
tions, too, of the fierce licence engendered by the wars of the 17th
century ; figures roaming hither and thither without restraint, lusty
and light-hearted. In striking contrast to such scenes as these are
the pictures of a peaceful and refined domestic life, occasionally
disconcerted by the vicissitudes of love, which formed the fayourite
theme of Gerard Terburg (ter Borch), born at Zwolle in 1617,
a man who had travelled much and who died at Deventer in
1681. He, together with his successors, Gabriel Metsu, of Leyden
and Amsterdam (ca. 1630-1667), Caspar Netscher (b. at Heidel-
berg, 1639; died at The Hague, 1684), etc., are generally known
‘stuf? painters, owing to the attention they bestow upon drapery

as