"But I have not yet mentioned the strangest part of it all: this Saint in two minds, and the Adam in the picture of Paradise, were both exact portraits of the painter himself. And this added immensely to the drollery of the thing. For in point of fact my friend's appearance was a perfect study for a humorist. He might have been painted entirely in different shades of yellow, his complexion of the tender tone of a fresh Edam cheese, his hair and beard like overgrown dusty stubble, his grey eyes almost hidden by thick pale eyelashes. And to make the matter more complete he always dressed himself from top to toe in sand-coloured cloth for winter, in nankeen for summer, and was fond of bringing forward and ridiculing his own personal peculiarities by the most far-fetched comparisons. So, too, in his pictures, where he regularly and as prominently as possible introduced himself moderately caricatured, but always in positions that were half-comic and half-sad, half-expressive of self-contempt, and half of resignation. It seemed as if he wished to show that he did not take in ill-part, but rather was the first to laugh over, the practical joke played him by the step-dame Nature.
"Well, it was Whit Monday, my wife had a party of her friends to coffee, and the buzz and hum of female voices--which I could hear through double doors--drove me out. As it was a beautiful afternoon, with everything in its early freshness, and plenty for me to study on the banks of the Isar, I determined to invite Van Kuylen to take a walk. He was living at that time in Theresa-meadows, in a small house with a room to the north, that he had fitted up for a studio. You entered it by a little garden, in which of course the inevitable tulips were not now wanting, but which equally abounded with lilacs and jessamine. Next you turned into a small court where a fountain was playing, which the eccentric artist had adorned with a misshapen Triton, the work of his own hands, for he dabbled in modelling. Then you came to the studio door, which was seldom open, for Jan painted away with unwearied diligence from morning to night, and neither sought amusement nor society.
"I was, therefore, surprised on the present occasion, to find the door open, and for a moment thought he must have gone out, and that his maid might be busy arranging the room, when I heard his voice saying to some one, 'If you are weary, we will leave off for to-day, and besides it is a high festival. Let us hope your father confessor will not be angry at our being engaged with such worldly subjects, instead of keeping it holy!'
"No answer was returned, or at all events none that I heard. I was amazed. To have a model sitting with an open door was no more usual or befitting at that time than it is now. And that the strong smell of the Dutch tobacco should not come through that door, bordered on the miraculous.
"When, however, I drew a step nearer, I soon saw why my good Jan had given up smoking, and though I was only a landscape painter, I did not at all wonder at him. For such a model was worth while losing one's head for, to say nothing of one's pipe.
"The colours on the face of the young girl who sat there in the best light, as motionless as a picture, with a red damask curtain behind her, were really so brilliant, that they exceeded all probability, and made me perfectly stupid with amazement. Such a white satin-skin, just tinged with faintest rose-colour, and here and there with blue, such vividly red lips, such velvety brown eyes and silky hair of the same colour growing rather low on a superbly arched brow, I have never before nor since seen, except, indeed in pictures, where they make little impression because they are exaggerated. Nature can certainly venture upon much that Art can never safely aspire to. When I had somewhat got over the first shock of this sensational style of nature-painting, I saw that in the drawing, too, the very best possible had been done; done with a grandeur and solidity which were almost prodigal, for it is not wise to expend every resource, colour and form, both in perfection, on any one figure. Even a sculptor must have confessed that only in the best antiques had he seen anything of the kind. Above all I was amazed at the contour of the cheeks, the noble, massively-rounded chin, the half-opened lips that seemed to breathe out a very overflow of life, and the perfect shape of the straight, scornful little nose, which was just a trifle too broad, perhaps, for modern taste. It was only the eyes that afforded any room for fault-finding, if after seeing those calm and melancholy stars beaming on one, one had the heart for it. At least I found out later that the line of the eyelids might have been more curved, and they themselves a degree broader.
"For the first ten minutes I stood there actually spell-bound, did not even say 'Good-day,' and was--as people often stupidly call it--all eyes. And indeed no one spoke. Van Kuylen, his extinct pipe in his mouth, had merely given me a side nod, and continued painting hard. The motionless beauty queened it before her red curtain on an old satin ottoman with gilt lions' heads, her eyes fixed upon the great half-darkened window, her hands--which were very slender and white, but not small--carelessly folded on her lap. She wore a common dark-coloured cotton gown, with an old tulle frill crammed in at her throat, but had neither ear-rings, rings, nor ornaments of any kind.
"Beside her on a low stool, sat a little girl of about seven, slowly and reluctantly knitting away at a coarse blue stocking.
"At length I found it necessary to make some remark.
"'I am disturbing you, Mynheer,' said I, though for a quarter of an hour past I had seen that he did not permit himself to be disturbed by me. We painters used to call him Mynheer in jest.