ject. The color was almost always in a key of silver
and gray, very charming in its harmony and serenity, but a little
thin. Both he and his father went to England and entered the service
of the English king, and thereafter did English fleets rather than
Dutch ones. Backhuisen was quite the reverse of Van de Velde in
preferring the tempest to the calm of the sea. He also used more
brilliant and varied colors, but he was not so happy in harmony as Van
de Velde. There was often dryness in his handling, and something too
much of the theatrical in his wrecks on rocky shores.

The still-life painters of Holland were all of them rather petty in
their emphasis of details such as figures on table-covers, water-drops
on flowers, and fur on rabbits. It was labored work with little of the
art spirit about it, except as the composition showed good masses. A
number of these painters gained celebrity in their day by their
microscopic labor over fruits, flowers, and the like, but they have no
great rank at the present time. Jan van Heem (1600?1684?) was perhaps
the best painter of flowers among them. Van Huysum (1682-1749)
succeeded with the same subject beyond his deserts. Hondecoeter
(1636-1695) was a unique painter of poultry; Weenix (1640-1719) and
Van Aelst (1620-1679), of dead game; Kalf (1630?-1693), of pots, pans,
dishes, and vegetables.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: This was a period of decadence during which there
was no originality worth speaking about among the Dutch painters.
Realism in minute features was carried to the extreme, and imitation
of the early men took the place of invention. Everything was
prettified and elaborated until there was a porcelain smoothness and a
photographic exactness inconsistent with true art. Adriaan van der
Werff (1659-1722), and Philip van Dyck (1683-1753) with their "ideal"
inanities are typical of the century's art. There was nothing to
commend it. The lowest point of affectation had been reached.

NINETEENTH CENTURY: The Dutch painters, unlike the Belgians, have
almost always been true to their own traditions and their own country.
Even in decadence the most of them feebly followed their own painters
rather than those of Italy and France, and in the early nineteenth
century they were not affected by the French classicism of David.
Later on there came into vogue an art that had some affinity with that
of Millet and Courbet in France. It was the Dutch version of modern
sentiment about the labor