painters who can be studied here is our Utrecht friend Jan
van Scorel, who has a large "Adam and Eve" in the passage and a famous
"Baptism of Christ"; Jan Verspronk of Haarlem, Hals' pupil, who has a
very quiet and effective portrait (No. 210) and a fine rich group of
the lady managers of an orphanage; and Cornelius Cornellessen, also of
Haarlem, painter of an excellent Corporation Banquet. In the collection
are also a very charming little Terburg (No. 194) and a fascinating
unsigned portrait of William III. as a pale and wistful boy.

Haarlem was the mother or instructor of many painters. There is Dirck
Hals, the brother of Frans, who was born there at the end of the
sixteenth century, and painted richly coloured scenes of fashionable
convivial life. He died at Haarlem ten years before Frans. A greater
was Bartholomew van der Helst, who was Hals' most assimilative
pupil. He was born at Haarlem about 1612, and is supposed to have
studied also under Nicolas Elias. His finest large work is undoubtedly
the "Banquet" to which I have just referred, but I always associate
him with his portrait of Gerard Bicker, Landrichter of Muiden, that
splendid tun of a man, No. 1140 in the Gallery of Honour at the Ryks
Museum (see opposite page 86). One of his most beautiful paintings
is a portrait of a woman in our National Gallery, on a screen in the
large Netherlands room: a picture which shows the influence of Elias
not a little, as any one can see who recalls Nos. 897 and 899 in the
Ryks Museum--two very beautiful portraits of a man and his wife.

Haarlem and Oudenarde both claim the birth of Adrian Brouwer, a painter
of Dutch topers. As to his life little is known. Tradition says that
he drank and dissipated his earnings, while his work is evidence that
he knew inn life with some particularity; but his epitaph calls him
"a man of great mind who rejected every splendour of the world and
who despised gain and riches". Brouwer, who was born about 1606,
was put by his mother, a dressmaker at Haarlem, into the studio of
Frans Hals. Hals bullied him, as he bullied his first wife. Escaping
to Amsterdam, Brouwer became a famous painter, his pictures being
acquired, among others, by Rembrandt in his wealthy days, and by
Rubens. He died at Antwerp when only thirty-three. We have nothing
of his in the National Gallery, but he is represented at the Wallace
Collection.

At Haarlem was born also, in 1620, Nicolas Berchem, painter of charming
s