ion working in the
mysterious depths of his shadows. A very famous picture of his is 'Dr
Deeman (an anatomist) demonstrating from a dead subject.' In another
picture a man stealing from the gloom is in the act of stabbing in the
back the unconscious man in the foreground.[25] Rembrandt's originality
is as undoubted as his ability, and he was as great in etching as in
painting. His defect as a painter was the frequent absence of any
evidence in his work of a sense of refinement, grace, or even beauty;
this can be said of him who spent means not his own on gathering
together images of beauty and grace produced by the pencils and brushes
of others. Many of Rembrandt's pictures are in the galleries of
Amsterdam and the Hague, and we have many in London. The National
Gallery has several examples, including two of Rembrandt's portraits.

Passing over Van Dyck, whom I reserve, as I have reserved Holbein, to
class among the foreign painters resident in or closely connected with
England, I come to the Teniers--father and son. David the elder was born
at Antwerp in 1582, and David the younger also at Antwerp, in 1610.
David the younger is decidedly the more eminent painter, though the
works of the father are often mistaken for those of the son. The two
Teniers' class of subjects was the same, being ordinarily 'fairs,
markets, peasants' merry-makings, beer-houses, guard rooms.'

David the younger had great popularity, was court painter to the
Archduke of Austria, and earned such an independence, that he bought for
himself a chateau at the village of Perck, not very far from the Chateau
de Stein of Rubens, with whom David Teniers was on terms of friendly
intimacy. There Teniers, like his great associate, lived in the utmost
state and bounty, entertaining the noblest of the land. David Teniers
married twice, his first wife being the daughter of one of a family of
Flemish painters, who were known, according to their respective
proclivities in art, by the names of Peasant Breughel, Velvet Breughel,
and Hell Breughel. Teniers had many children.

The elder Teniers died at Antwerp in 1649; the younger died at Brussels,
and was buried at Perck, in 1694.

The distinction of the Teniers was the extreme fidelity and cleverness
with which they copied (but did not explain) the life they knew--the
homeliest, humblest aspect of life. They brought out with marvellous
accuracy all its traits, except, indeed, the underlying strain of
poetry, wh