ately mansions.[56] He has all the lifelike truthfulness of the Dutch
artists. In tone he is as warm and golden as Ruysdael is cool in his
greens. In the National Gallery there are excellent specimens of
Hobbema, such as 'The Avenue Middelharnis' and 'A Landscape in Showery
Weather.'

Nicolas Berchem, often spelt Berghem, was born at Haarlem in 1620, and
died at Amsterdam in 1683. He was an excellent Dutch landscape painter.
He had evidently visited Italy, and displayed great fondness for
Italian subjects. His pictures show 'varied composition, good drawing,
fine aerial effects, freedom, playfulness, and spirit.' As a colourist he
was unequal, being often warm and harmonious, but at other times heavy
and cold. It is clear that he was no student of life, from the monotony
of his shepherds and shepherdesses and the sameness of his animals. He
was naturally industrious, and was spurred on, as a still greater artist
is said to have been, by the greed of his wife. He painted upwards of
four hundred pictures, besides doing figures and animals for other
painters. The great northern European galleries are rich in his works.
One of his best pictures, 'A Shepherdess driving her cattle through a
ford in a rocky landscape,' where the cool tone of the landscape is
contrasted with the golden tone of the cattle, is in the Louvre. Another
fine picture, 'Crossing the Ford,' is in the National Gallery.

Jan Both, born in 1610 (?), died in 1650 (?), was another Dutch
landscape painter still more spellbound by Italy,[57] which he visited,
and where he fell under the influence of Claude Lorraine. Both devoted
himself thenceforth to Italian landscape to a greater degree than was
practised by any other Dutch painter. He was excellent in drawing and
skilful in rendering the golden glories of Italian sunsets. He painted
freely and with solidity. The figures of men and animals in his pictures
were often introduced by his brother Andreas. Jan Both excelled both in
large and small pictures, but he was most uninterestingly uniform in
design. He had generally a foreground of lofty trees, and for a
background a range of mountains rising step by step, with a wide plain
at their feet. Sometimes he introduced a waterfall or a lake. He rarely
painted particular points in a landscape. His life was not a long one,
so that his pictures do not number more than a hundred and fifty.
Occasionally his warm tone of colouring degenerates to a foxy red. One
of Bot