Promenades of an Impressionist Part 12

PICTURES AT THE HAGUE

There are two new Rembrandts in the galleries of the Mauritshuis, lent by Prof. A. Bredius, director of the Royal Picture Gallery at The Hague. Neither is an "important" picture in the professional sense of that word, but they are Rembrandts--at least one is indubitable--and that suffices. The more credible of the pair is a small canvas depicting Andromeda manacled to the rocks. Her figure is draped to the waist; it is a solid Dutch figure, ugly as the one of Potiphar's wife (in an etching by Rembrandt), and no deliverer is in sight. The flesh tones are rather cold, a cadaverous white, but it is a Rembrandt white. The picture as a whole is sketchy and without charm or mystery.

Nevertheless, the lion's paws are there. The other shows us a woman reading at a table. The colouring is warm and the still-life accessories are richly and minutely painted. Not a likely Rembrandt, either in theme or notably so in treatment. We must bow, however, to the judgment of the learned Bredius who made the ascription. These two works are not as yet in the catalogue. It is a pity the catalogue to this gallery is not as complete as those of the Rijks Museum. To visitors they offer an abridged one, dated 1904. There are since then many new pictures, notably a sterling Chardin, marvellously painted, and an excellent landscape by Van Cuyp, both loans of Dr. Bredius.

Otherwise this little collection is as choice and as entertaining as ever. The usual tourist makes at once for the overrated Young Bull by Paul Potter and never looks at the magnificent Weenix across the room, the Dead Swan, with its velvety tones. The head of a young girl by Vermeer, with its blue turban and buff coat, its pearl earrings, is charming. And the View of Delft seems as fresh as the day it was painted. The long facade of the houses and warehouses and the churches and towers facing the river are rendered with a vivacity of colour, a solidity in drawing, and an absence of too marked literalism which prove that this gifted artist had more than one style. The envelope is rich; there is air, though it be stagnant. Down-stairs is an allegorical subject, The New Testament, which is not very convincing as a composition, but warm in tint. The Diana and Her Companions must have inspired Diaz and many other painters. But the real Vermeer, the Vermeer of the enamelled surfaces and soft pervasive lighting, is at Amsterdam.

No place is better than The Hague for the study of the earlier Rembrandt. Dr. Tulp's Anatomical Lecture is, after the Potter bull, the most gazed-at canvas in the Mauritshuis. It is not in a good condition. There are evidences of over-varnishing and cobbling; nor is it a very inspiring canvas. The head of Dr. Tulp is superb in characterisation, and there is one other head, that of a man with inquiring eyes, aquiline profile, the head strained forward (his name is given in the critical works on Rembrandt), which arrests the attention. An early composition, we are far from the perfection of The Syndics. The self-portrait of the painter (1629) is a favourite, though the much-vaunted feather in the head-gear is stiff; perhaps feathers in Holland were stiff in those days. But the painters flock to this portrait and never tire of copying its n.o.ble silhouette. The two little studies of the painter's father and mother are characteristic. One, of the man, is lent by Dr. Bredius. Rembrandt's brother (study of an old man's head) shows a large old chap with a nose of richest vintage. The portrait is brown in tone and without charm. The Susanna Bathing is famous, but it is not as attractive as Simeon in the Temple, with its masterly lighting, old gold in the gloom. The Homer never fails to warm the c.o.c.kles of the imagination.

What bulk! What a wealth of smothered fire in the apparel! The big Saul listening to the playing of David is still mystifying. Is Saul smiling or crying behind the uplifted cloak? Is he contemplating in his neurasthenia an attempt on David's life with a whizzing lance? His sunken cheeks, vague yet sinister eye, his turban marvellous in its iridescence, form an ensemble not to be forgotten. David is not so striking. From afar the large canvas glows. And the chiaroscuro is miraculous.

The portrait of Rembrandt's sister, the Flight Into Egypt, the small, laughing man, the negroes, and the study of an old woman, the latter wearing a white head-dress, are a mine of joy for the student. The sister's head is lent by Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot, the art expert.

There are only thirty-odd Rembrandts in Holland out of the five hundred and fifty he painted. Of this number eighteen are in the Mauritshuis. Holland was not very solicitous formerly of her masters.

Nowadays sentiment has changed and there is a gratifying outcry whenever a stranger secures a genuine old master. As for the copies, they, like the poor, are always with us. America is flooded every year with forged pictures, especially of the minor Dutch masters, and excellent are these imitations, it must be confessed.

There are only four specimens of Frans Hals here; portraits of Jacob Pieterez, Aletta Hanemans, his wife; of William Croes, and the head of a man, a small picture in The Jolly Toper style. The lace collar is genuine Hals.

Let us close our catalogue and wander about the galleries. German and English are the tongues one hears, Dutch seldom, French occasionally.

The Potter bull with the wooden legs is stared at by hundreds. As a picture painted by a very young man it is noteworthy. The head of the beast is n.o.bly depicted. But what of the remainder of this insignificant composition with its toad and cows, its meaningless landscape? The Weenix swan is richer in paint texture. The Holbeins are--two anyhow--of splendid quality. Of the Rubenses it is better to defer mention until Antwerp is reached. They are of unequal value. The same may be said of the Van Dycks. Look at that baby girl standing by a chair. A Govert Flinck. How truthful! The De Heems are excellent fruit and flower pieces. Excellent, too, the Huysums, Hondecoeters, and Weenixes. There is a dead baby of the Dutch school (1661) which is as realistic as a Courbet. We admired the small Memlic, or Memling, and, naturally, the Metsus, Mierevelts, and Mierises. The Holy Virgin and Infant Christ, by Murillo, is tender and sleek in colour. It hangs near the solitary Velasquez of the museum, a portrait of Charles-Baltasar, son of King Philip IV of Spain. It is not a remarkable Velasquez.

The Pieter Lastman, a Resurrection of Lazarus, is of interest because this painter was a preceptor of Rembrandt. William Kalf's still-life is admirable, and the Aert Van den Neer moonlight scene (purchased 1903) is a lovely example of this artist. Indeed, all the minor Dutchmen are well represented. Potter's much-praised Cow in the Water is faded, and the style is of the sort we smile over at our own Academy exhibitions. The Van Goyen waterscapes are not all of prime quality, but there are two that are masterpieces. Amsterdam excels in both Van Goyens and Jacob Ruisdaels. The Distant View of Haarlem of the latter proved a disappointment. The colour is vanished quite, the general effect flat. The Bol portrait of Admiral de Ruyter is a sterling specimen. The Van de Veldes and Wouvermans are excellent. The Good Housekeeper of Dou, a much-prized picture, with its tricky light and dark. The Teniers and Ostades no longer interest us as they did.

Perhaps one tires soon of genre pictures. The inevitable toper, the perambulating musician, the old woman standing in a doorway, the gossips, the children, and the dog not house-broken may stand for the eternal Ostade, while the merry-makings of David Teniers are too much alike. However, this touch of spleen is the outcome of seeing so many bituminous canvases.

Probably in no other painter's name have so many sins been committed as in Rembrandt's. His _chiaroscuro_ is to blame for thousands of pictures executed in the tone of tobacco juice. All the muddy browns of the studio, with the yellow smear that pa.s.ses for Rembrandtish light, are but the monkey tricks of lesser men. His pupils often made a mess of it, and they were renowned. Terburg's Despatch is an interesting anecdote; so too Metsu's Amateur Musicians. There are the average number of Dutch Italianate painters, Jan Both and the rest, men who employed southern backgrounds and improvised b.a.s.t.a.r.d Italian figures. Schalcken's candlelight scenes are not missing, though Dou leads in this rather artificial genre. And every tourist led by a guide hears that Wouvermans always introduced a white horse somewhere in his picture. You leave Holland obsessed by that white animal.

Naturally the above notes hardly scratch the surface of the artistic attractions in this Hague gallery. Not the least of them is to look out on the Vyver lake and watch the swans placidly swimming around the emerald islet in the middle. The Mauritshuis is a cabinet of gems, and months could not stale its variety. There are important omissions, and some of the names in the catalogue are not represented at top-notch.

But the Rembrandts are there, and there are the Potters, the Rubenses, the Van Dycks, the Jan Steens--his Oyster Feast is here--the landscape and marine painters, not to mention the portraiture, the Murillo, Palma Vecchio, and the t.i.tian. The single Roger van der Weyden, an attribution, is a Crucifixion, and hangs near the Memlig. It is an interesting picture. Of the sculpture there is not much to write.

Houdon, Hendrick de Keyser, Verhulst, Falconet, Blommendael, and Xavery make up a meagre list.

At Baron Steengracht's house--admission by personal card--on the Vyverberg there is a wonderful Rembrandt, Bathsheba After Her Bath, a golden-toned canvas, not unlike the Susanna over at the Mauritshuis.

It was painted in 1643, about a year after he had finished The Night Watch, a jewel of a Rembrandt and the clou of this collection. There are some weak modern pictures and examples by Terburg, Metsu, Flinck, Jordaens, Cuyp, Potter, Brouwer--the smoker, a fine work; a Hobbema mill and others. In the Munic.i.p.al Museum, full of curiosities in furniture, armour, and costumes, there is a gallery of modern paintings--Israel, David Bles, Mesdag, Neuhuys, Bisschop, J. Maris, Weissenbruch, Bosboom, Blommers, and Mauve. There are also Mierevelts, Jan Ravensteyns, Honthorst, Van Goyen, Van Ceulen, and a lot of shooting-gallery (Doelen) and guild panoramas; there are miles of them in Holland, and unless painted by Hals, Van der Heist, Elias, and a few others are shining things of horror, full of staring eyes, and a jumble of hands, weapons, and dry colours. But they are viewed with religious awe by the Dutch, whose master pa.s.sion is patriotic sentiment.

There is the Huis ten Bosch (The House in the Wood), the royal villa, a little over a mile from The Hague, in which De Wit's grisailles may be seen. The j.a.panese and orange rooms are charming; the portraits by Everdingen, Honthorst, Jordaens, and others are of historic interest.

THE MESDAG MUSEUM

When we were last at The Hague the Mesdag Museum had just opened (1903). There was no catalogue, and while the nature of this great gift to the city was felt it was not until a second visit (in 1909) that its extraordinary value was realised. The catalogue numbers three hundred and forty-four pictures by modern artists, and there is also a valuable collection of objects of art, bronzes, pottery, furniture, and tapestries. Philip Zilcken (a well-known Dutch etcher) in his introduction calls attention to the rare quality of the Mesdag Museum and tells us that Mr. and Mrs. Mesdag van Houten bought for their own pleasure without any thought of forming a gallery for the Dutch nation. That came later. W.H. Mesdag is the well-known marine painter whose paintings may be seen in almost every gallery on the Continent.

A native of Groningen (1831), he studied under Roelofs and while in Brussels lived with his relative, Alma-Tadema; the latter is a Frieslander. Mesdag excels in marines, painting great sweep of waters with breadth and simplicity. His palette is cool and restrained, his rhythmic sense well developed, and his feeling for outdoors truly Dutch. He belongs to the line of the cla.s.sic Dutch marinists, to Van der Velde, Backhuizen, and Van Goyen. His wife, a woman of charm and culture, died in the spring of last year. She signed her work S.

Mesdag van Houten. Her gift lies in the delineation of forest views, interiors, portraits, and still-life. Her colour is deep and rich.

A cursory walk around the various rooms on the Laan van Meerdervoort impresses one with this idea: with what envy must any curator of any museum in the world study this collection. Mesdag began gathering his treasures at a time when the Barbizon school was hardly known; when a hundred other painters had not been tempted by the dealers into overproduction; when, in a word, fancy prices were not dreamed of. The Alma-Tademas are among his best, little as we admire his vital marbles and lifeless humans. An early portrait of his wife is here.

Bastien-Lepage has a preparatory sketch for Les Foins. Indeed, the Mesdag Museum is rich in _frottis_, painted-in pictures, by such men as Rousseau, Daubigny, Diaz, Vollon, Millet, Dupre. As we admire the etchings of Mari Bauer, it was a new pleasure to see half a dozen of his paintings, chiefly scenes in the Orient. The same misty, fantastic quality is present; he manipulates his colour, thinly laid on, as if it were some sort of plastic smoke. Impressionistic as are these canvases, there is a subdued splendor in them all. Bauer feels the East. His etchings recall Rembrandt's line; but his paintings are miles away in sentiment and handling. Bisschop (1828-1904) is represented by a fine still-life, and among the various Blommers is one with children playing in the water and on the sands; vividly seized, this example.

The late Theophile de Bock was an interpreter of nature and his brush-work was fat and rich. His work is well known in America and gains in value every day (he died in 1904). There are fourteen specimens here of his best period. The Emile Bretons are early and therefore different from his commercial productions. Of the Corots, twelve in number, we did not see an insignificant one, not a weak one.

The famous Early Morning and View at Villeneuve-les-Avignon are hung.

The first depicts a group of trees; to the right a narrow stream in which is reflected a cloudless sky. In the centre two women in white caps. The second is more elaborate in composition. The middle distance is occupied by picturesque buildings dating probably from the Middle Ages. In the foreground four persons are under the shadow of some trees. An unusual scheme for Corot. His well-known characteristics are present in the dozen; the tremulous leaf.a.ge, the bright, pure light, the Italian softness. And what do you say to a half-dozen Courbets, all of his strong period, landscapes, still-life, a nude study, a dead roe, a sunlit path, and a lake scene! Good Courbets are not numerous, and these are good. The nude is a woman rec.u.mbent upon draperies. The _pate_ is heavy but vital, the flesh tones glowing, and the silhouette firm, yet delicate. The portrait of the artist by himself is ma.s.sive.

It was probably painted in Ste. Pelagie.

Coutures two, twenty-five Daubignys, and one of his son Karl. Daubigny the elder is here in all his manners, dark pictures with big foregrounds, intimate bits of wooded interiors, sand-hills, streamlets, moonlights, coast scenes, evening effects, sunsets at sea, twilights, sheep, broken rocks, and a study in crayon.

Decamps and Delacroix come next in order. There are three of the former, among the rest his Poacher, and three of Delacroix, one a portrait of himself. Seven of Diaz, painted when his colour was most sonorous and brilliant, are here, with a study of an undraped female figure. La Mare is a sunlight effect in the forest of Fontainebnleau.

Dupre has seven to his account, several of great tonal beauty. The one Fortuny is an elaborate etching of his Anchorite. The Josef Israels are strong. Jacque pigs and sheep; Klinkenberg's view of the Binnenhof; Mancini's bewildering chromatic blurs and sensuously rich gamut, and seventeen in number. This painter is seldom encountered in America. He should be better known; while his ideas are not particularly significant he is colourist for colour's sake, as was Monticelli. The three brothers Maris, Jakob, Willem, and Matthys (the latter living in London), are to be seen here in unexampled states.

Mauve, too, with fourteen pictures. Both the Mesdags, Taco Mesdag, a brother and his wife are present. Also Ter Meulen, a gifted Dutch artist. We have seldom seen better George Michels. The Monticelli up-stairs is an unusual subject. It is a mountain path in the south of France. The sun is disappearing behind a cl.u.s.ter of trees. Rocks in the foreground. The scheme of colour is low for Monticelli, the forms sharply accented. He could see line when he wished. The smaller example is an interior, as rich as Monticelli knew how to lay the colours on.

Seven Millets, one the large exhibition picture Hagar and Ishmael, another the wonderful Resting Vintager. Alone these Millets would cause a sensation if exhibited elsewhere. The Hagar seems a trifle too rhetorical for the simple-minded painter. Brown predominates in the colour scale, the composition is rather conventional, an echo, perhaps, of the artist's Delaroche apprenticeship, but the Vintager is a masterpiece. Seated among the vines in the blaze of the sun, he is resting and has removed his heavy sabots. The relaxed att.i.tude after arduous labour is wonderfully expressed. The atmosphere indicates stifling sultriness.

Ricard, Roelofs, Theodore Rousseau--halt! There are twelve of this French master, dramatic and rich. Descente des Vaches dans le Jura is the celebrated canvas refused at the Salon, 1834. But it is too bituminous in parts. A greater composition, though only a drawing, is Les grands chenes du vieux Bas-Breau. Four large trees illumined by sun-rays. Two Segantinis, a drawing in chalk and pastel; Storm Van's Gravesande; seven Troyons, one, Le retour du Marche, a masterpiece; Vollon, still-life, fish, ivory goblets, violets; Weissenbruchs; Zilcken etchings and two De Zwarts. There is old Rozenburg pottery, designed by Colenbrander, scarce to-day; Dutch and Gothic bra.s.s, Oriental portieres and bra.s.s, old Delft, j.a.panese armour, various weapons and lanterns, Gobelin tapestry, carved furniture, Dutch and Scandinavian, and a magnificent a.s.sortment of Satsuma pottery, Cmail cloisonne, j.a.panese bronzes, Persian pottery, Spanish bra.s.ses, majolica and bronzes and sculptures by Mattos, Constantin, Meunier, and Van Wijk--the list fills a pamphlet. Next door is the studio of the aged Mesdag, a hale old Dutchman who paints daily and looks forward to seeing his ninety years. In Holland octogenarians are not few. The climate is propitious; above all, the absence of hurry and worry. To see The Hague without visiting this collection would be a regrettable omission.

HALS OF HAARLEM

In writing of Holland more is said of its windmills than its flowers.

It is a land of flowers. Consider the roll-call of its painters who their life long produced naught but fruit and flower pieces. Both the De Heems, the cunning Huysums, whose work still lives in the mezzotints of Earlom--like David de Heem, he was fond of introducing insects, flies, bees, spiders, crawling over his velvety peaches and roses--Seghers, Van Aelst and his talented pupil Rachel Ruysch, Cuyp, Breughel (Abraham), Mignon, Van Beyeren, Van den Broeck, Margaretha Rosenboom, Maria Vos, Weenix, A. Van der Velde, Kalf, and many others who excelled in this pleasing genre. Their canvases are faded, the colours oxidised, but on the highways and by-ways the miracle is daily renewed--flowers bloom at every corner, fill the window-boxes of residences, crowd the hotel balconies, and are bunched in the hands of the peddlers. A cart goes by, a gorgeous symphony of hues. Roses, chrysanthemums, dahlias, daisies, tufts of unfamiliar species, leaves that are as transparent lace, blushing wild roses, and what not. Ivy is used for practical purposes. On the steam-yacht _Carsjens_ at Leyden a wind screen is composed of ivy; you feel enclosed in a floating garden. Along the Vivjer berg, fronting the house of Baron Steengracht, is a huge boat-shaped enclosure of stone. It is full of ivy growing low. Dutch landscape gardeners are fertile in invention.

They break the flat lines of the landscape with all sorts of ingenious surprises; bosky barriers, hedges abloom, elm-trees pared away to imitate the processional poplars of Belgium and France, sudden little leafy lanes--what quips and quirks we have come across a few miles away from the town! To see Haarlem and its environs in June when the bulb farms are alight with tulips must be a delightful spectacle. In the fall of the year you are perforce content to read the names of the various farms as the train pa.s.ses. The many-coloured vegetable carts remind you that Snyders and Van Steen painted here.

The Groote Kerke, St. Bavo, at Haarlem, is a n.o.ble pile with a tall tower. One of its attractions is the organ (built in 1735-38) by Christian Muller; it was until a few years ago the largest in the world. Its three manuals, time-stained, sixty stops and five thousand pipes (thirty-two feet the longest) when manipulated by a skilful organist produce adequate musical results. We had the pleasure of hearing the town organist play Bach for an hour. He began with a few Bach chorales, then came A Mighty Fortress is Our G.o.d; followed by the A minor prelude and fugue, and the Wedge fugue. The general diapasonic quality is n.o.ble, the wood stops soft, the mixtures without bra.s.sy squealing, and the full organ sends a thrill down your spine, so mellow is its thunder. Modern organs do not thus sound. Is the secret of the organ tone lost like the varnishing of Cremona fiddles and the blue of the old Delft china? There are no fancy "barnyard stops," as John Runciman has named the combinations often to be found in latter-day instruments. You understood after hearing the Haarlem organ why Bach wrote his organ preludes and fugues. Modern music, with its orchestral registration, its swiftness and staccato, would be a sacrilege on this key-board.

The bronze statue of Coster did not unduly excite us. The Dutch claim him as the inventor of printing, but the Germans hang on to Gutenberg.

At Leyden there is a steam train to Katwyk-aan-See; at Haarlem you may ride out to Zandvoort, and six miles farther is the North Sea Ca.n.a.l.

But as the Katwyk and Zandvoort schools flourish mightily in the United States we did not feel curious enough to make the effort at either town. Regrettable as was the burning of the old church at Katwyk, perhaps its disappearance will keep it out of numerous pictures painted in that picturesque region. Of course it will be, or has been, rebuilt. We walked in the forest of Haarlem and did not once think of 125th Street; the old town is slightly unlike its modern namesake. What a charm there is in this venerable forest. The Dutch of Amsterdam, less than half an hour away, come down here on Sunday afternoons for the tranquillity and the shade. You must know that the sun-rays can be very disturbing in July. The ca.n.a.ls intersecting the town are pretty. They may be sinks of iniquity, but they don't look so. Naturally, they exhale mephitic odours, though the people won't acknowledge it. It is the case in Venice, which on hot August afternoons is not at all romantic in a nasal sense. But you forget it all in Haarlem as you watch a hay barge float by, steered by a blond youngster of ten and poled by his brothers. From the chimney comes a light smoke. Soup is cooking. You remember the old sunlit towpath of your boyhood; a tightening at your heart warns you of homesickness, or hay fever. Oh, to be on the Erie Ca.n.a.l, you exclaim, as you sneeze.

But the Town Hall Museum is hard by. It is the glory of Haarlem as the Rijks Museum is the glory of Amsterdam and Holland. A pull at the bell and the door is opened, a small fee is paid, and you are free to the room where are hung ten large paintings by the inimitable Frans Hals.

Here are the world-renowned Regent pictures set forth in chronological order. Drop the catalogue and use your own eyes. The first impression is profound; not that Hals was profound in the sense of Rembrandt's profundity, but because of the almost terrifying vitality of these portraits. Prosaic men and women, great trenchermen, devourers of huge pasties, mowers down of wine-bottles and beer-tankards, they live with such vitality on the canvases of Hals that you instinctively lower your voice. The paint-imprisoned ghosts of these jolly officers, sharpshooters, regents, and shrewd-looking old women regents are not so disquieting as Rembrandt's misty evocations. They touch hands with you across the centuries, and finally you wonder why they don't step out the frame and greet you. Withal, no trace of literalism, of obvious contours or tricky effects. Honest, solid paint, but handled by the greatest master of the brush that ever lived--save Velasquez.

How thin and unsubstantial modern painting is if compared to this magician, how even his greatest followers, Manet and Sargent, seem incomplete. Manet, with his abridgments, his suppressions, his elliptical handling, never had the smiling confidence of Hals in facing a problem. The Frenchman is more subtle, also more evasive; and there is no hint in him of the trite statement of a fact that we encounter in Bartholomew Van der Heist--himself a great painter. Hals had not the poetic vision of Rembrandt, but he possessed a more dexterous hand, a keener eye. Judged according to the rubric of sheer paint, sheer brush-work, not Rubens, not Van Dyck, was such a virtuoso. Despite his almost incredible swiftness of execution, Hals got closer to the surfaces of what is called "actual" life than any of the masters with the exception of the supreme Spaniard.

At Haarlem you may follow his development; his first big picture painted in 1616; his last in 1664. He died at eighty-four. But at eighty odd he painted two important canvases, the portraits of the regents and of the lady regents. More summary as regards the execution, with a manifest tendency toward simplifications, these two pictures are very n.o.ble. The group of ladies, each a portrait of character, pleases some more than the male group. They are not so firmly modelled, and into them all has crept a certain weariness as of old age; but what justness of expression, what adjustment of puzzling relations! One lady follows you over the gallery with her stern gaze.

It recalls to us the last judgment look which a maiden aunt was wont to bestow upon us years ago. The men regents will live into eternity if the canvas endures. The shiny varnish is not pleasing, yet it cannot destroy the illusion of atmosphere that circulates about the vigorously modelled figures at the table. What a colourist! What nuances he produces on a restrained key-board! The tones modulate, their juxtaposition causes no harsh discords. The velvet black, silvery grays, whites that are mellow without pastiness, and the reds and yellows do not flare out like scarlet trumpets; an aristrocratic palette. Really you begin to realise that what you formerly considered grandfather tales are the truth. The great painters have been and are not with us to-day. It is not a consoling pill to swallow for apostles of "modernity." Hals is more modern than Sargent.

These corporation and regent pieces are chronologically arranged. No.

88 is considered the masterpiece. It shows the officers of the Arquebusiers of St. Andrew, fourteen life-sized figures. Again each man is a portrait. This was painted in 1633. The Regents of the Elizabeth Hospital (1641) has been likened to Rembrandt's style; nevertheless, it is very Halsian. Why, that chamber is alone worth the journey across the Atlantic. Hals shows us not the magic of life but the normal life of daylight in which move with dignity men and women undismayed by the mysteries that hem them about. He has a daylight soul, a sane if not poetic soul, and few painters before him so celebrated the bravery of appearances, the beauty of the real.

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

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