ere is a famous 'Boar Hunt' in the Louvre,
in Munich 'Lionesses Pursuing a Roebuck,' in Vienna 'Boar attacked by
Nine Dogs.' Snyders' animal pictures are full of energetic action and
fierce passion. To these qualities is frequently added hideous realism
in detail. There are many Snyders in English galleries.

Gerard Honthorst was born at Utrecht in 1592, and died in 1662. He was a
follower of Caravaggio. He visited Italy and found favour in Rome, where
he got from his night-pieces Correggio's name, 'Della Notte.' Honthorst
was summoned to England by Charles I., for whom he painted several
pictures. He entered the service of Prince Frederick Henry of Orange,
and painted also for the King of Denmark. He left an extraordinary
number of works, sacred, mythological, historical, and latterly many
portraits. He drew well and painted powerfully, but was coarsely
realistic in his treatment. At Hampton Court there are two of his best
portraits, those of the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia and the Duke of
Buckingham and his family. Gerard Honthorst's younger brother, William,
was a portrait painter not unlike the elder brother in style.

Jan Steen was born at Leyden in 1626, and died in 1679. He was great as
a _genre_ painter. He is said to have been, after Rembrandt, the most
humorous of Dutch painters, full of animal spirits and fun. At his best,
composition, colouring, and execution were all in excellent keeping. At
his worst, he was vulgar and repulsive in his heads, and careless and
faulty in his work. He was very rarely either kindly or reverent in his
subjects, though, in spite of what is known to have been his riotous
life, he is comparatively free from the grossness which is often the
shame of Flemish and Dutch art. Jan Steen succeeded his father as a
brewer and tavern-keeper at Delft. He renounced the brewery, in which he
did not succeed, and joined the Painters' Guild, Haarlem; but his
position as a tavern-keeper is reflected in his pictures, of which
eating and drinking, card-playing, etc., are frequently the _motifs_.
His family relations were not conducive to higher principles and tastes.
He is said to have been so lost to common feeling as to have painted his
first wife when she was in a state of intoxication.[52] His second wife
may have been a worthier woman, but she was drawn from the lowest class,
and had been accustomed to sell sheeps' heads and trotters in the
butchers' market. Without doubt Jan Steen had extraor