a manifest tendency toward simplifications, these two
pictures are very noble. The group of ladies, each a portrait of
character, pleases some more than the male group. They are not so
firmly modelled, and into them all has crept a certain weariness as of
old age; but what justness of expression, what adjustment of puzzling
relations! One lady follows you over the gallery with her stern gaze.
It recalls to us the last judgment look which a maiden aunt was wont
to bestow upon us years ago. The men regents will live into eternity
if the canvas endures. The shiny varnish is not pleasing, yet it
cannot destroy the illusion of atmosphere that circulates about the
vigorously modelled figures at the table. What a colourist! What
nuances he produces on a restrained key-board! The tones modulate,
their juxtaposition causes no harsh discords. The velvet black,
silvery grays, whites that are mellow without pastiness, and the reds
and yellows do not flare out like scarlet trumpets; an aristrocratic
palette. Really you begin to realise that what you formerly considered
grandfather tales are the truth. The great painters have been and are
not with us to-day. It is not a consoling pill to swallow for apostles
of "modernity." Hals is more modern than Sargent.

These corporation and regent pieces are chronologically arranged. No.
88 is considered the masterpiece. It shows the officers of the
Arquebusiers of St. Andrew, fourteen life-sized figures. Again each
man is a portrait. This was painted in 1633. The Regents of the
Elizabeth Hospital (1641) has been likened to Rembrandt's style;
nevertheless, it is very Halsian. Why, that chamber is alone worth the
journey across the Atlantic. Hals shows us not the magic of life but
the normal life of daylight in which move with dignity men and women
undismayed by the mysteries that hem them about. He has a daylight
soul, a sane if not poetic soul, and few painters before him so
celebrated the bravery of appearances, the beauty of the real.

PICTURES IN AMSTERDAM

I

The wonderful Rijks Museum is the representative home of old Dutch
art. The Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery excel it in variety,
but the great Rembrandts are in it, and The Syndics and The Night
Watch are worth a wilderness of other painters' work. The Night Watch
has been removed from the old room, where it used to hang, facing the
large Van der Heist, Captain Roelof Bicker's Company. But it is only
in tempo