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Ix HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ART
of fashion or the vulgar herd. These, however, are
tious distinctions, and do not by any means suffi
this latest development of Dutch art, r
a number of local schools. Dirk Hals
Frans Hals, to whom many genre work
Anton Palamedess, J. A. van Duck,
in pictures of soldiers and cayalic
Bacchus, or engaged in the
e merely adventi-
atly account for
"as it did into
scribed),
abound
nding with Venus and
sounter of pitched battle and
l by the
s roaming hither and thither without
1. In striking contrast to such sc
ful and refined domestic life, oc-
casionally disconcerted e Vicissituc of lox formed the
favourite theme of Gerard Terburg, born at Zwolle in 1608, a man who
had travelled much and who died at Deventer in 1681. He, together
with his successors, Gabriel Metsu, of Leyden and Amsterdam (b,
1630, d. after 1667), Caspar Netscher (b. at Heidelberg, 1639 ; died at
the Hague, 1684), etc., are generally known as ‘stuff’ painte
ii to the attention they bestow upon drape specially silks and
satins. It must be borne in mind, however, that in the absence of
these external properties, thus carefully supplied, the refinements
of life could not be invested with appropriate pictorial splendour.
But that these painters were not the mere imitators of stuff and
; inillustrations, too, of the fierce licence engendere«
wars of the 17th centur 1
restraint, lusty and light-heart
as these are the pictures of
owing
tulis
texture, that they were capable of emotion, and could give utterance
to the sentiments of romance, will be sufficiently evident to those
who study the ‘Paternal Warning’ of Terburg in the Museum at
Amsterdam. As a portrait-painter, too, Terburg has made a at
reputation. (His ‘Peace Congress of Miinster’, his most celebrated
piece, was sold with the Demidoff collection for 182,000 fr.
JAN Steen, the so-called jolly landlord of Leyden (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-liyed tippler is simply one of
those wholly gratuitous slanders with which it was once the fashion
to besmirch the painters of Holland. A jovial life was probably not
repugnant to his tastes; and what more to our purpose is the
fact that a spontaneous joyousness pervades his works, and a sparkling
sense of humour too; while as a colourist he must be looked upon
as the foremost of the entire school. His pictures might be enti-
tled comedies of life, in which man’s follies
g
are chastised with
satire, and his weaknesses held up to ridicule, but without the
glaring exaggeration and obtrusive moralising 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 |