Painting

(TITIAN)

CHARLES LAMB

(PIERO DI COSIMO)

EDWARD T. COOK

(GAINSBOROUGH)

RICHARD AND SAMUEL REDGRAVE

(TITIAN)

EDWARD T. COOK

(PIERO DI COSIMO)

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

(TINTORET)

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

But the greatest of all the Dutch painters, in some ways the greatest painter that has ever lived, was Rembrandt van Ryn (1606-1669). Beside him all the rest seem merely commonplace, and their works the product of this or that demand, according to their different times and circumstances, executed with more or less skill.

In England, meantime, great things were being accomplished amid peaceful surroundings. In portraiture Lawrence soon became supreme, and what excellence he possessed was accentuated on his death in 1830 by the appointment of Sir Martin Archer Shee as his successor in the Presidency of the Royal Academy. That was the end of portraiture in England until a new school arose.

Coming to the second period in the development of the new art—roughly, that is to say, from 1400 to 1450—Vasari observes that even where there is no great facility displayed, yet the works evince great care and thought; the manner is more free and graceful, the colouring more varied and pleasing; more figures are employed in the compositions, and the drawing is more correct inasmuch as it is closer to nature.

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.