wn with the cares of life, with grey hair and deeply
furrowed forehead.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVII.--REMBRANDT

PORTRAIT OF AN OLD LADY

_National Gallery, London_]

The one at Hertford House, already mentioned, and two in the National
Gallery, fall between these extremes. Of other portraits we have already
mentioned the two Pellicorne groups in the Wallace Collection; and
another of this earliest period, the very popular _Old Woman_, in the
National Gallery, dated 1634. This is of greater interest as showing, if
anything does, whether it is fair to attribute any of his training to
the influence of Hals. At any rate this picture is a highly important
proof that at the early age of twenty-six, the painter was already in
the full possession of that energy and animation of conception, and of
that decision of the "broad and marrowy touch" which are so
characteristic of him. Of his later period--probably about 1657--a fine
example is _The Jewish Rabbi_, and of his latest the _Old Man_, both in
the National Gallery.

III

PAINTERS OF GENRE

The painters of _genre_, by the number, quality, and diversity of whose
pictures the Dutch School is specially distinguished, may be roughly
divided into three classes; namely, those who studied the upper, the
middle, and the lower classes respectively. But as Holland was a
republic, and the great stream of its art welled up from the earth and
was not showered upon it from above, it will be found convenient to
reverse the social order in considering them, and begin with the
immediate successors of Frans Hals, whose influence was without doubt a
very considerable factor in the development of Adrian Brouwer and Adrian
and Isaac Ostade.

ADRIAN BROUWER, now generally classed under the Flemish School, was
born at Oudenarde in 1606. But he went early to Haarlem, and it was not
until about 1630 that he settled at Antwerp, where he died in 1641. He
was a pupil of Frans Hals, and acquired from him not only his spirited
and free touch, but also a similar mode of life. His pictures, which for
the most part represent the lower orders eating and drinking, often in
furious strife, are extraordinary true and life-like in character, and
display a singularly delicate and harmonious colouring, which inclines
to the cool scale, an admirable individuality, and a _sfumato_ of
surface in which he is unrivalled; so that we can well understand the
high esteem in which Rubens held them. Owing