817. TENIERS'S COUNTRY-SEAT AT PERCK.
Teniers (Flemish: 1600-1694). See 154.
"A perfect type of the Unromantic Art which was assailed by the gentle enthusiasm of the English School of Landscape. It represents a few ordinary Dutch houses, an ordinary Dutch steeple or two, some still more ordinary Dutch trees, and most ordinary Dutch clouds, assembled in contemplation of an ordinary Dutch duck-pond; or, perhaps, in respect of size, we may more courteously call it a goose-pond. All these objects are painted either gray or brown, and the atmosphere is of the kind which looks not merely as if the sun had disappeared for the day, but as if he had gone out altogether, and left a stable lantern instead. The total effect having appeared, even to the painter's own mind, at last little exhilatory, he has enlivened it by three figures on the brink of the goose-pond—two gentlemen and a lady,—standing all three perfectly upright, side by side, in court dress, the gentlemen with expansive boots, and all with conical hats and high features. In order to invest those characters with dramatic interest, a rustic fisherman presents to them, as a tribute,—or, perhaps, exhibits as a natural curiosity,—a large fish, just elicited from the goose-pond by his adventurous companions, who have waded into the middle of it, every one of them, with singular exactitude, up to the calf of his leg" (Art of England, pp. 209, 211). The group on the left comprise the painter and his wife, another lady, and his son.