e Water
is faded, and the style is of the sort we smile over at our own
Academy exhibitions. The Van Goyen waterscapes are not all of prime
quality, but there are two that are masterpieces. Amsterdam excels in
both Van Goyens and Jacob Ruisdaels. The Distant View of Haarlem of
the latter proved a disappointment. The colour is vanished quite, the
general effect flat. The Bol portrait of Admiral de Ruyter is a
sterling specimen. The Van de Veldes and Wouvermans are excellent. The
Good Housekeeper of Dou, a much-prized picture, with its tricky light
and dark. The Teniers and Ostades no longer interest us as they did.
Perhaps one tires soon of genre pictures. The inevitable toper, the
perambulating musician, the old woman standing in a doorway, the
gossips, the children, and the dog not house-broken may stand for the
eternal Ostade, while the merry-makings of David Teniers are too much
alike. However, this touch of spleen is the outcome of seeing so many
bituminous canvases.

Probably in no other painter's name have so many sins been committed
as in Rembrandt's. His _chiaroscuro_ is to blame for thousands of
pictures executed in the tone of tobacco juice. All the muddy browns
of the studio, with the yellow smear that passes for Rembrandtish
light, are but the monkey tricks of lesser men. His pupils often made
a mess of it, and they were renowned. Terburg's Despatch is an
interesting anecdote; so too Metsu's Amateur Musicians. There are the
average number of Dutch Italianate painters, Jan Both and the rest,
men who employed southern backgrounds and improvised bastard Italian
figures. Schalcken's candlelight scenes are not missing, though Dou
leads in this rather artificial genre. And every tourist led by a
guide hears that Wouvermans always introduced a white horse somewhere
in his picture. You leave Holland obsessed by that white animal.

Naturally the above notes hardly scratch the surface of the artistic
attractions in this Hague gallery. Not the least of them is to look
out on the Vyver lake and watch the swans placidly swimming around the
emerald islet in the middle. The Mauritshuis is a cabinet of gems, and
months could not stale its variety. There are important omissions, and
some of the names in the catalogue are not represented at top-notch.
But the Rembrandts are there, and there are the Potters, the Rubenses,
the Van Dycks, the Jan Steens--his Oyster Feast is here--the landscape
and marine painters, not to menti