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THE NETHERLANDS. xi
with justice, been likened to Moliére. The greater number and the
best of his works are in England. He is very partially represented
in the museums of Amsterdam and the Hague. The Duc d’Aren-
berg pos 2s in his Brussels collection one of the very rare scrip-
tural pieces by this master, the ‘Marriage at Cana’; another, ‘Laban
searching for his ima , is in the 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-
eee of living forms. Very frequently these ‘landscapes with
figures’ are the result of friendly co-operation. Thus Adrian van de
Velde (16 2), one of the most estimable as well as gifted of
Dutch } supplied the figures for the landscapes of his master
Wynants, for Moucheron, and even for Hobbema and Ruysdael
Philip Wouverman (A1( 620-68) has “perhaps the greatest repu-
tation for tl zure pictures, of which some 800 may still be
reckoned combats , hantitie scenes, in which horses al-
a conspicuous part, he has repeated with endl varia-
tions, without however passing the bounds of mediocrity. To enu-
> the names of all who occupied this particular field is simply
acticable, for it is precisely in this field that Dutch art was most
prolific. We must, however, mention (as akin to the foregoing)
Paul Potter (b. 1 d. Amsterdam, 1654), chief of animal paint-
ers, to whose pictures landscape lends idyllic charms, and whom we
must accept a ical example of the entire fraternity. A con-
summate draughtsman, he was at least as eminent as a colourist,
especially in his smaller pictures. Gai Jardin (1625-78), an ex-
uberantly fertile painter, owes his best qualities to the foregoing,
but the inequality of his works shows his inability to resist ot ther
less favourable influence Other ‘idyllic’ painters are Jan Asse-
lyn (1610-60) and Nicolas Berchem (1620-83), both of Amsterdam,
As landscape-painters must be named Jan van I of the
Hague (1596-1656); Albert Cuyp of Dordrecht (1620-94 ), son
of Jacob Gerritsz (p. liii), also eminent as a painter of portraits and
animals; Jan Wynants of Haarlem (46( )0-70) , famous for the
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number of his pene and his own steady development; Allart van
Everdingen (Alkmaar, 1621-75); Jacob Ruysdael (born 1625, at
Haarlem; d. 1681), ‘excelling all other masters in a feeling for
the poetry of northern landscape combined with the power of gra-
phic embodiment’; and Meindert Hobbema, whose merits have only
rece Bly come to be appreciated. Hobbema was born at Amsterdam,
and died in 1709. His works exhibit a moderate talent only
for composition; the same motive constantly recurs in his pictures
(the figures are for the most part by another hand); but in delicacy
and thoroughness of ela boration, more particularly in his treatment
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