ich, while it redeems plainness, sordidness, and even
coarseness, is as true to life as is its veriest prose. With those who
ask a literal copy of life, whether high or low, and ask no more, the
Teniers and their school must always be in the highest favour; and to
those who are wearied and sceptical of blunders and failures in seeking
that underlying strain of life, the mere rugged genuineness of the
Teniers' work recommends itself, and is not without its own pathos;
while to very many superficial observers the simple homeliness of the
life which the Teniers chose to represent, prevents the observers from
missing what should be present in every life. Men and women are only
conscious of the defect when the painters wander, now and then, into
higher spheres and into sacred subjects, and there is the unavoidable
recoil from gross blindness. I have taken the Teniers as the
representatives of a numerous school of Flemish and Dutch artists, whose
works abound in this country. David Teniers the younger appears at his
best, several times, in Dulwich Gallery and the National Gallery.

Philip Wouverman was born at Haarlem in 1620. He was the son of a
painter, able, but unrecognized in his own day. Philip Wouverman found
few patrons, disposed of his pictures by hard bargains to dealers, was
tempted by his want of success to abjure his art, and even went so far,
according to tradition, as to burn his studies and sketches, in order to
prevent his son pursuing the career which had been to him a career of
bitter disappointment. He died at Haarlem, 1668, when he was no more
than forty-eight years of age. Yet some nine hundred paintings bear
(many of them falsely) Wouverman's name.

With all the truth and excellent execution of his contemporaries and
countrymen', Philip Wouverman, who had, as he thought, missed his mark,
had something which those successful men lacked--he had not only a
feeling for grace, but a touch of sentiment. His scenes are commonly
'road-side inns, hunts, fights;' but along with an inclination to adopt
a higher class of actors--knights and ladies, instead of peasants--there
is a more refined treatment and a dash of tenderness and melancholy--the
last possibly born of his own disastrous fortunes. In his love of horses
and dogs, as adjuncts to his groups, he had as great a fondness for a
special white horse, as Paul Potter had for black and white cattle.

Albert Cuyp was born at Dort in 1605. He was a brewer by tra