Gerard Honthorst was born at Utrecht in 1592, and died in 1662. He was a follower of Caravaggio. He visited Italy and found favour in Rome, where he got from his night-pieces Correggio's name, 'Della Notte.' Honthorst was summoned to England by Charles I., for whom he painted several pictures. He entered the service of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange, and painted also for the King of Denmark. He left an extraordinary number of works, sacred, mythological, historical, and latterly many portraits. He drew well and painted powerfully, but was coarsely realistic in his treatment. At Hampton Court there are two of his best portraits, those of the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia and the Duke of Buckingham and his family. Gerard Honthorst's younger brother, William, was a portrait painter not unlike the elder brother in style.
Jan Steen was born at Leyden in 1626, and died in 1679. He was great as a genre painter. He is said to have been, after Rembrandt, the most humorous of Dutch painters, full of animal spirits and fun. At his best, composition, colouring, and execution were all in excellent keeping. At his worst, he was vulgar and repulsive in his heads, and careless and faulty in his work. He was very rarely either kindly or reverent in his subjects, though, in spite of what is known to have been his riotous life, he is comparatively free from the grossness which is often the shame of Flemish and Dutch art. Jan Steen succeeded his father as a brewer and tavern-keeper at Delft. He renounced the brewery, in which he did not succeed, and joined the Painters' Guild, Haarlem; but his position as a tavern-keeper is reflected in his pictures, of which eating and drinking, card-playing, &c., are frequently the motifs. His family relations were not conducive to higher principles and tastes. He is said to have been so lost to common feeling as to have painted his first wife when she was in a state of intoxication. [52] His second wife may have been a worthier woman, but she was drawn from the lowest class, and had been accustomed to sell sheeps' heads and trotters in the butchers' market. Without doubt Jan Steen had extraordinary genius coexisting with his coarse, careless nature and jovial habits, and he must have worked with great facility, since, in spite of his idleness and comparatively early death, he left as many as two hundred pictures, of which two-thirds are in this country, where his broad humour has rendered him extremely popular. Besides his favourite subjects, such as 'The Family Jollification,' 'The Feast of the Bean King,' 'Game of Skittles,' he has pictures in a slightly higher atmosphere, such as 'A Pastor Visiting a Young Girl,' 'The Parrot,' 'Schoolmaster with Unmanageable Boys,' 'The Pursuit of Alchemy.' Among the latter a good example is 'The Music Master' in the National Gallery.
Gerard Dow was born in 1613 and died in 1680. He was a genre painter of great merit. He belonged to Leyden, and was a pupil of Rembrandt. He began with portraiture, often painting his own face, and went on to scenes from low and middle-class life, but rarely attempted to represent high society. Compared to Jan Steen, however, he is refined. He had a curious fondness for painting hermits. The lighting of his pictures is frequently by lantern or candle. They are mostly small, and without animated action, but are full of picturesqueness. He was a good colourist, 'with a rare truth to nature and a marvellous distinctness of eye and precision of hand.' Minute as his execution was, his touch was 'free and soft.' His best pictures are 'like nature's self seen through the camera obscura.' An instance often given of his exquisite finish is that of a broom in the corner of one of his pictures. Some contemporary had remarked how careful and elaborate was the labour bestowed on it, when the painter answered that he was still to give it several hours' work. He must have been exceedingly industrious as well as painstaking, since he left two hundred pictures as his contribution to Dutch art. Among his finer pictures are 'An Old Woman reading the Bible to her Husband,' in the Louvre; 'The Poulterer's Shop,' in the National Gallery. His chef d'œuvre, 'The Woman Sick of the Dropsy,' is in the Louvre. His candlelight is the finest rendered by any master. There is a good example of it in 'The Evening School,' in the Amsterdam Gallery.
Peter de Hooch—spelt often, De Hooge—was the genre painter of full, clear sunlight. The dates of his birth and death can only be guessed by those of his pictures, which extend from 1656 to 1670. His groups are generally playing cards, smoking, drinking, or engaged in domestic occupations—almost always in the open air. No other genre painter can compare with him in reproducing the effects of sunlight. His prevailing colour is red, varied and repeated with great delicacy. English lovers of art brought De Hooch into favour, and many of his pictures are in England. There are fine examples—'The Court of a Dutch House' and 'A Courtyard'—in the National Gallery.
Adrian van Ostade was born at Haarlem in 1610 and died in his native town in 1685. He has been called 'the Rembrandt of genre painters,' and, like Rembrandt, he was without the sense of human beauty and grace, for even his children are ugly; yet it is the purer, happier side of national life which he constantly represents, and he had great feeling for nature, with picturesqueness and harmony of design and colouring, as well as mastery of the technique of his art. He suffered many hardships in his youth, and grew up a quiet, industrious, family man. He left a very large number of pictures, nearly four hundred, many of them good, and not a few in England. 'The Alchemist' [53] is in the National Gallery.
Maas, born in 1632, died in 1693, is a much-prized genre painter, whose pictures are rare. He was a pupil of Rembrandt. He is said to have treated 'very simple subjects with naïve homeliness and kindly humour.' His pictures are 'well lit, with deep warm harmony, and a vigorous touch.' 'The Idle Servant-maid,' in the National Gallery, is a masterpiece.
Metzu, like Terburg, is par excellence one of the two painters of Dutch high life. Metzu was born in 1615, and is known to have been alive in 1667. He painted both on a large and a small scale, and occasionally departed from his peculiar province to represent market-scenes, &c. He is the most refined and picturesque of genre painters on a small scale. Among his chefs d'œuvre are a 'Lady holding a Glass of Wine and receiving an Officer,' in the Louvre; and a 'Girl writing, a Gentleman leaning on her chair and another girl opposite playing the Lute,' in the Hague Gallery. The fine 'Duet,' and the 'Music Lesson' are both in the National Gallery.
Gerard Terburg was born at Zwol, in 1608, and died in 1681. He visited Germany and Italy in his youth. His small groups and single figures, taken from the wealthier classes, with their luxurious surroundings, are 'given with exquisite delicacy and refinement.' Included in his masterpieces are a 'Girl in white satin (a texture which he rendered marvellously) washing her hands in a basin held before her by a maid-servant,' in the Dresden Gallery; an 'Officer in confidential talk with a Young Girl, and a Trumpeter who has brought him a Letter,' in the Hague Gallery; a 'Young Lady in white satin sitting playing the Lute,' in the Chateau of Wilhelmshöe, at Cassell. There are twenty-three Terburgs in England and Scotland.
Caspar Netcher, born in 1639, died in 1684. He formed himself upon Metzu and Terburg. He is the great Dutch painter of childhood. His finest works are in the Dresden Gallery. In the National Gallery is his 'Children blowing Bubbles.'
Ferdinand Bol was born at Dordrecht in 1611, and died at Amsterdam in 1680. He was a student of Rembrandt's, and distinguished himself in sacred and historical pictures, and especially in portraits. He followed his master in his youth, fell off in his art in middle life, but became again excellent in his later years. Among his fine pictures are 'David's Charge to Solomon,' in the Dublin National Gallery; and 'Joseph presenting his father Jacob to Pharaoh,' in the Dresden Gallery. His last portraits are considered very fine. They are taken in the fullest light, and have a surprising amount of animation. Such a portrait, called 'The Astronomer,' is in the National Gallery. [54]