Rossetti.
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VAN DYCK
Van Dyck completed Rubens by adding to his achievement portraits absolutely worthy of his master's brush, better than Rubens' own. He created in his own country an art which was original, and consequently he has his share in the creation of a new art. Besides
this he did yet more: he begot a whole school in a foreign country, the English school—Reynolds, Lawrence, Gainsborough, and I would add to them nearly all the genre painters who are faithful to the English tradition, and the most powerful landscape painters issue directly from Van Dyck, and indirectly from Rubens through Van Dyck. These are high claims. And so posterity, always just in its instincts, gives Van Dyck a place apart between the men of the first and those of the second rank. The world has never decided the exact precedence which ought to be his in the procession of the masters, and since his death, as during his life, he seems to have held the privilege of being placed near the throne and of making a stately figure there.
Fromentin.
SPANISH PAINTING
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