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design in praise of Fortitude, and another in praise of Labour. The plate of Melancholia' is the history of the sorrowful toil of the earth, as the 'Knight and Death' is of its sorrowful patience under temptation" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iv.)

946. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

Mabuse (Flemish: 1470-about 1532). See under 656, p. 280. 943. A PORTRAIT.

1

Ascribed to Hans Memling. See under 686, p. 274. This portrait, which is dated 1462, has long been called Memling's portrait of himself, but is now called by others Bouts's own portrait (see 783, p. 277). Whether of Memling or of Bouts, the face bespeaks a gentle, humble, pious, laborious soul.

1063. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

Unknown (Early Flemish or Dutch: 16th century).

1042. A MAN'S PORTRAIT.

Catharina van Hemessen (Flemish: painted about 1550). By a lady artist, herself the daughter of an artist, Jean Sanders, surnamed Van Hemessen from his native village.

1 This is unlikely, for he died in 1495, presumably young, since his children were then still minors, and this portrait is of a man certainly of not less than thirty, which at the lowest would make Memling sixty-three when he died. "It is," says Mr. Armstrong (Notes on the National Gallery, p. 28), "pretty surely the work of Dirck Bouts. Compare it with the Madonna numbered 774, and ascribed to Van der Goes. In conception, in chord of colour, in technical manner, the similarity is so complete between them as to leave room, in my mind, for very little doubt as to the identity of their authors. And this Madonna is by Dirck Bouts, as no one who has examined his 'Last Supper' in the church of St. Pierre at Louvain can doubt. . . Mr. W. M. Conway, who was the first, I fancy, to recognise Bouts in all three of these pictures, drew my attention to a curious peculiarity of his he goes out of his way to paint hands. In his Last Supper' many hands are displayed that might quite naturally have been hidden, and we find the same thing in this portrait."

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THE DUTCH AND FLEMISH SCHOOLS (Continued) 819. OFF THE MOUTH OF THE THAMES.

Bakhuizen (Dutch 1631-1708). See under X. 223, p. 214. ON representations of rough weather by this painter and Vandevelde, Mr. Ruskin writes as follows: "If one could but arrest the connoisseurs in the fact of looking at them with belief, and, magically introducing the image of a true seawave, let it roll up through the room,-one massive fathom's height and rood's breadth of brine, passing them by but once,-dividing, Red Sea-like, on right hand and left, but at least setting close before their eyes, for once in inevitable truth, what a sea-wave really is; its green mountainous giddiness of wrath, its overwhelming crest-heavy as iron, fitful as flame, clashing against the sky in long cloven edge,-its furrowed flanks, all ghastly clear, deep in transparent death, but all laced across with lurid nets of spume, and tearing open into meshed interstices their churned veil of silver fury, showing still the calm gray abyss below; that has no fury and no voice, but is as a grave always open, which the green sighing mounds do but hide for an instant as they pass. Would they, shuddering back from this wave of the true, implacable sea, turn forthwith to the papillotes? It might be so. It is what we are all doing, more or less, continually" (Harbours of England, p. 19). In

default of the actual sea-wave, the visitor may be recommended to look next at Turner's rough seas (XXII. 472 and 476, pp. 595, 597). Such a comparison will show how much of the roughness in the Dutch pictures is due to mere blackness, how little to any terror in the forms of the waves, such as Turner depicts.

872, 873. THE COAST OF SCHEVENINGEN. W. Vandevelde (Dutch: 1633-1707). See under X. 150, p. 215.

These two pictures afford good illustrations of what has been said before of the way in which this painter's version of the sea was coloured by that "mixture of sand and sea-water" which belongs to his native coasts. How firmly indeed the Dutch shallows had hold of his mind is shown by the fact that though he often set himself to paint the North Sea and the English Channel, which, as we know, are not seldom rough, he yet almost invariably painted them calm.

835.

COURT OF A DUTCH HOUSE.

Pieter de Hooch (Dutch: 1632-1681). See under X. 794, p. 235.

A courtyard at Delft: superbly painted, and a good picture. of Dutch home life-of its neatness, its cleanliness, its quiet, and its content. Notice over the entrance a commemorative inscription, partly covered already by vine leaves, dated 1614. The day's work is done, and the wife stands in the porch, waiting for her husband's return; a servant brings down the child too into the courtyard to greet its father. "It is natural to think your own house and garden the nicest house and garden that ever were. . . . They are a treasure to you which no money could buy, the leaving them is always pain,-the return to them a new thrill and wakening to life. They are a home and a place of root to you, as if you were founded on the ground like its walls, or grew into it like its flowers" (Fors Clavigera, 1876, p. 51).

876. A GALE.

W. Vandevelde (Dutch: 1633-1707). See under X. 150, p. 21 5.

818. COAST SCENE.

Bakhuizen (Dutch: 1631-1708). See under X. 223, p. 214.

865. A COAST SCENE.

Jan van der Cappelle (Dutch: painted about 1650-1680). Of this painter nothing is known beyond the fact that, on the occasion of his marriage in 1653, he received the freedom of the city of Amsterdam. One may connect with this fact the state barge, introduced in some of his pictures, or the corporation barge, it may be,-much resembling the barges. belonging to the City and the City Companies which not long ago might still be seen on the Thames at London, and some of which may now be seen, transformed into College barges, at Oxford.

873. See above under 872, p. 284.

864. THE GUITAR LESSON.

Gerard Terburg (Dutch: 1608–1681). A good specimen of Terburg's skill in "conversation pieces"; for a more important work by him see X. 896, p. 251. This painter, it is interesting to know, was a great traveller, and carried on his profession, amongst other places, in England. He eventually married and settled at Deventer, where he became burgomaster: a full-length portrait of him in that capacity is in the Museum at the Hague.

853.

THE TRIUMPH OF SILENUS.

Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See under X. 38, p. 220 For the subject see under XIII. 93, p. 308.

839. THE MUSIC LESSON.

Gabriel Metsu (Dutch: born 1630, died after 1667). Metsu is one of the genre painters who are now appraised most highly sums of £2000 and £3000 severally having been recently given for pictures of his. Though, like most of his fellow-artists, he was fond of painting tavern scenes (see, e.g. 970, p. 298), yet he was also one of the painters of high life and the drawing-room (as here)—like Terburg and Netscher. Next to nothing is known of the circumstances of his life. His talent is an instance of hereditary transmission, both his father and his mother having been painters.

Hortensio. Madam, before you touch the instrument,
To learn the order of my fingering,

I must begin with rudiments of art;
To teach you gamut in a briefer sort,
And there it is in writing, fairly drawn.

...

Bianca. Why, I am past my gamut long ago.
Hortensio. Yet read the gamut of Hortensio.

Bianca [Reads]. "Gamut' I am, the ground of all accord,
'A re,' to plead Hortensio's passion;
'B mi,' Bianca, take him for thy lord,

'C fa ut,' that loves with all affection :
'D sol re,' one clef, two notes have I :
'E la mi,' show pity, or I die."

884. SAND DUNES.

Taming of the Shrew, Act iii. Sc. 1.

Jan Wynants (Dutch: 1615-1679). See under 971, p. 301. It is not uninteresting to notice—as strangely in keeping with the poor and hard country here depicted—that in nearly every picture by Wynants (see 883, 971, 972) there is a dead tree. That Dutch painters were alive to the beauties of vegetation, the oaks of Ruysdael are enough to show; but to Wynants at least nature seems to have been visible only as a destroying power, as a rugged and conflicting force, against which the sturdy Hollander had to battle for existence as best he might.

852.

THE CHAPEAU DE PAILLE.

Rubens (Flemish: 1577-1640). See under X. 38, p. 220. One of the best known and most be-copied pictures in the Gallery. Its fame among artists “depends to no slight extent on its being a tour de force. The head is painted in reflected light, so as to come as near as may be to Queen Elizabeth's shadowless ideal, and painted almost entirely in three pigments" (Armstrong: Notes on the National Gallery, p. 31). It is known as the Chapeau de Paille (straw-hat), but Chapeau de Poil (beaver-hat) would be more correct. The expression of the subject is as much a tour de force as the technical

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