flict with every phase of life, psychology in short. Jacob Maris was the first to give us in our day color, the joy of color revealed in the gladness of Holland's skies and cities and fields, color in light, color in shade. . . . All that he sought to achieve he achieved fully; he was in harmony with his conception; he was one with his art. This cannot always be said of Israëls. that lies outside the painter's art, something that may be classified as metaphysical."

We have hinted that we cannot endorse all that is here said in praise of Israëls. We believe, on the contrary, that the latter's failures spring from a vague hope or an unconscious effort to absorb more than he was capable of out of the genius of Millet's inspiration. There is something of Israëls' Jewish origin in this, a sort of (be it said in no harsh sense) acquisitiveness spurred beyond the real capacity for acquiring even as behind the matchless technique of Brahms we detect every now and then an extra desire, the desire to appropriate what is of Beethoven. Of Jacob Maris, on the other hand, our author speaks justly. And because Jacob's aims were more simple and in their measure more sincere, his achievement leaves less room for comment. It is among the misfortunes of all art that the more perfect it is in its kind, the less it calls for criticism. "Good wine needs no bush." Of a good picture you can say little more than that it is good; concerning an odd picture you can write a chapter. And before we come to the end of this article we shall see the fatal effects on modern art which have sprung from this difference: how to gain notice goodness has more and more to be put aside as the artist's aim, oddity sought out more and more. Jacob Maris in his turn came back to Holland with his eyes purged by the Barbizon school. "It was with him

as with another less known modern Dutch landscapist, Willem Roelofs. But Roelofs never threw off the French influence; Jacob Maris did so. To him had been revealed not so much the masters of Barbizon and their works, but the essence of the lowlands of Holland." No other Dutch painter, Mr. Marius thinks (leaving Bosboom out of the question), brought forth about 1870 any work in which "the essence of our Dutch atmosphere and landscape are so exquisitely reproduced" as in Maris' "Ferry Boat," which once and for all marked the return to sheer painting.

Thus Holland seemed to come to her own again. For, after all, the painting of pure landscape is a Dutch invention. It passed over to England and underwent there endless modifications, the history of which Richard Muther has traced in his excellent history of modern painting. Not much of the original inspiration, for instance, remains in the fluid decorative landscape of Gainsborough. Yet it was from England, and through Constable, that a definite, solid, and "real" landscape made its way back to France, and then, as we have seen through the Barbizon painters, to Jacob Maris and his contemporaries. Mr. Marius is not afraid to compare the modern painter with Jan Vermeer of Delft, nay he writes:

If we mention not only Vermeer but also Rembrandt and Jacob Maris in one breath we must remember that they who shout "Rembrandt! Rembrandt!" the loudest, without being impressed by Jacob Maris' greatness, would certainly have belonged to those who in Rembrandt's own day most violently reviled him, or for lack of understanding denied him. And yet if our delight, the nature of our emotion in the presence of Jacob Maris is less intense than in that of Rembrandt, it is the same insatiable feeling.

Moreover, this Maris has not confined himself to landscape. We have here a charming reproduction of his, "A Little Girl at the Piano," which is in a private collection at Amsterdam, of his "Cradle," which is at Arnhem, and "The Bird Cage," which was the property of Mr. Forbes.

Though Jacob Maris is, then, more purely and simply a painter than Israëls, a question arises even with him whether we are to regard his art solely as a stage in the history of Dutch painting, or to refer it to wider influences. What relation does it bear to the plein-air work in France? In respect of Maris' landscape very little, though some of the blue-green herbage of France seems to have found its way here into a country where it is not indigenous. In respect of such a picture as "The Bird Cage" outside inspiration is more suggested. Of Willem Maris the same must be said. His work is less striking and less varied than that of his elder brother. But if there were no Jacob and no Matthew, Willem would take a very high place in modern Dutch art. He has followed a national tradition in painting a great number of landscapes with cows; though, as we saw by a quotation, he himself denies having painted cows or anything but effects of light. A reproduction in this volume of Willem Maris' "Luxurious Summer" suggests (only the original could show) with what mastery this aim of his has been achieved. There is a pleasant little anecdote related by Mr. Marius which brings Willem Maris into relation with Mauve. Young Maris was then nineteen:

Mauve has told how at Oosterbeck a pale, delicate little lad came up to him and modestly asked leave to introduce himself and to accompany him, so that they might work together. "At first." says Mauve, "I did not feel much inclined to agree, but I did not like to

refuse the little fellow flatly, so we went off together. My companion did not suffer from loquacity; and, coming to a field that had cows in it, I sat down to go on with a drawing I had begun that morning. The little chap strolled round a bit and then settled down to work himself. We sat there for hours under the pollards, until I grew curious to see what the little fellow was at. He sat sketching with a bit of chalk; but oh! I stood astounded. I seized him by the hand and stammered in my turn, 'My boy, what an artist you are! You stagger me! It's magnificent!'"

The author continues in criticism:

Even as with Jacob, so for Willem, a painting has always been a material reproduction of a momentary aspect of nature. His glorious ditches with their waving reeds, with the gold-green duckweed, so full of rich color, are the synthesis of a series of close observations of such a character that their expression, synchronizing with the painter's mood and with an impregnable truthfulness, presents a scene, simple in itself, so marvellously that we learn through it to see and admire nature. Willem Maris is the last of the great lyrical painters of our time. His sentiment is what it was in the glorious days of 1880 to 1890, and there is none to approach him in that artistry in which every point of view at once becomes lyrical.

The last sentence is somewhat obscure; possibly like others it has suffered at the hands of the translator. But the expression "lyrical painters" is a just one. Of Millet pre-eminently, but of all the Barbizon painters more or less, certainly of Troyon with his monumental kine, we may say that the inspiration is epic. The painting of Manet and his school is epic likewise -a realistic epic, the counterpart in paint of Zola's in prose. In the pleinair painters, passing on to the impressionists we get from the outset a lyric impulse more or less varied, more or

less tame, more or less deep, more or less shrill, till with the newest school of all it sharpens into a shriek. Anton Mauve is far from this last development. Without question he is one of the most delicate and charming among the Dutch painters of our day. And the general picture-lover enjoys at this moment a good opportunity of appreciating Mauve's charm for his "Abreuvoir" or "Horses Drinking," one of Mauve's best-known works, is on exhibition at the National Gallery. It is a picture of immense refinement; the pellucid air which bathes the scene can almost be felt. One hardly likes to make it a reproach to the author that the blues and greens are not quite native, are hardly such (one cannot help thinking) as a Dutch eye if left to itself would have been able to seethe blue of the rider's dress-the bluegreen of the willows and of the herbage generally. Be that as it may, it is a complete poem in color; as, indeed, are almost all Anton Mauve's pictures, of which one or two, "Ploughing" and "Winter," are well reproduced in Mr. Marius' book.

Matthew Maris again may be excellently appreciated in the exhibition of his paintings which, while we write, is on view in the French Gallery (Pall Mall); for the selection passes on from his early and exact work, such as "The Young Cook" or "The Girl at the Well" (not very early work, but still quite simple and direct), to the opening of a more imaginative vein in his "Butterflies" (though the picture here given is, we believe, only a replica), to such dim and fantastic works as his "Enchanted Wood" and "Enchanted Castle." The collection includes too Matthew Maris' beautiful "Lady of Shalott." But though, as we have said, these works are representative, they will hardly express Matthew Maris' genius to any but to those to whose mind they serve to recall a

long series of the artist's pictures, various in character but in many cases of an extraordinary maîtrise; or others of a peculiar charm. Matthew Maris' "In the Slums" is of the same class as "The Girl at the Well," but a stronger piece of work. And there is nothing in this exhibition which at all approaches the merit of the magnificent "Three Mills" of Sir John Day's collection, or of the "Souvenir of Amsterdam," which is reproduced in Mr. Marius' book in photogravure as a frontispiece. The only picture which resembles this particular order of excellence in Maris' work is the "Montmartre" in the French Gallery. "Sisky," which is reproduced here, is the same painter tending to a weaker vein as in his "Butterflies," which has, too, the characteristic tightness of the plein-air painting amid which Maris was thrown in the early seventies. It is known that Mr. Matthew Maris now lives in England. His reputation has been long established. But he has more and more of late years turned to a fantastic and sketchy art in which his admirers see untold depths of imagination, but the soberer critic a good deal of weakness.

A Dutch painter better known possibly in England and in France than any of the moderns we have mentioned, better known maybe than Josef Israëls himself, is Mesdag, whose sea pieces and boats-"Scheveningen Harbor" or what not-have year after year held their place on the walls of the French salons and frequently been seen in this country. Mesdag seems to stand outside any school. There is no reason why he should not have drawn his inspiration direct from his fathers in painting, the seascapists of the seventeenth century. But he is completely modern in style, and nothing would surprise the eye more than the sight of one of Mesdag's pictures hung among a collection of William Van de

Gabraels and Weissenbruch are asked for windmills to the exclusion of all else." But one wonders what was the market in the days of Van de Velde or of Teniers. Cannot one imagine the former asked in one year for vessels sailing to the right and in the next for vessels sailing to the left, and Teniers painting for one amateur three, for another four, rustics drinking round a barrel? With us it is known that white marble is exacted as a sine qua non in the pictures of Sir Alma Tadema. But then Sir Alma Tadema is himself by birth at least of the "Dutch school." May it not then be something placid and obliging in the Hollander nature that makes him conform to the market requirements, or perhaps not to dislike repeating himself? This may account for Mesdag's sameness, but that same sameness makes his work a difficult matter for the critic.

The influence of The Hague school is felt in the work of such painters as Albert Neuhuijs and B. J. Blommers. Neuhuijs' "First Lesson" is a gem of simplicity and delicacy very evidently of the school of Israëls, but free from the too obvious mannerisms of Josef Israëls, as, for example, the obvious atmosphere of which he is fond of surrounding his people. The influences which reformed Israëls' painting came to Neuhuijs at a still later date; and

though the latter was born in 1844 he did not come to his own, to the work for which he was really fitted, until 1870. Blommers was about the same age as Neuhuijs. A less imaginative painter, his technique is extremely strong; he has about him a good deal of the character of Dutch genre painters of the seventeenth century, with just the same striking contrast to their workmanship that distinguishes the painting of Mesdag from (say) that of Van de Velde. A third painter who must be mentioned in this company is A. C. Artz. He was, Mr. Marius tells us, Israëls' principal pupil. The same writer contrasts, in the following words, the work of pupil and master, and the appreciation is interesting in that it allows Mr. Marius once moreto tell us how much he finds in Israëls' work:

In a picture such as "Mourning,” despite the fine expression of sorrow, we are struck by the fact that this sorrow does not, as it would have done were the picture painted by Israëls, permeate the whole figure, the fall of the folds of the woman's dress, the fall of the light, every detail of the apartment, which would have been dramatized as it were in and through the human tragedy; we see that Artz is more positive and more practical, that he prefers to follow his model, to give his attention to each object, and that, from this point of view, the folds of that dress are beautifully painted, beautiful, too, and seventeenth century those squat little baby shoes on that empty floor. a detail upon which Jan Steen could not have improved.

We have never (it has been said already) succeeded in finding all this. merit in Israëls' work, and are disposed to think that in him the human or dramatic element runs more toward the sentimental than the sublime.

There are two landscape painters. whose works in their fashion very

much resemble that of Anton Mauve. One is Weissenbruch, the other Philip Sadée. In the case of the former, we again come across the epochal year 1870 as marking the development of his characteristic and really successful painting, although the painter was born so far back as 1824. And this fact once more suggests a connection with the French plein-air school. Sadée was born in 1837. His landscape painting is more distinctly plein-air than that of any other Dutch painter.

For most amateurs of painting the work of The Hague painters still probably represents "modern Dutch art," although its principal masters are either dead or quite old. From it through a succession of painters we pass on to a style which is really modern, though certainly anything but distinctive of Holland, the slap-dash manner which leads directly to Impressionism. J. B. Jongkind is indeed a kind of father of Impressionism, and Pissarro is reported to have said that if Jongkind had not existed "none of us would have been here." Jongkind was born as far back as 1819. His work has long been familiar to frequenters of French exhibitions, and it is hard to class him among Dutch painters; for he spent, we believe, most of his life in France, and died there in 1891. The twin painters David and Peter Oyens are of the same class. They were of rather a later date, born in 1830, and dying, one in 1894, the other at the beginning of the present century. A third in this group is later still. G. H. Breitner, who was born as late as 1857, is a painter of great vigor and sometimes great success. In all these modern brushwork tends to become more and more obtrusive. It is as if these slap-dash painters conceived that there were two separate processes in art: one to produce the picture as a whole, the other to pro

duce a pattern of various pigments; just as in a certain school of modern poetry we are conscious of two separate endeavors in the writers thereof, not of one effort to combine meaning. and charm of sound into an inseparable whole, but a further care to make sure that their skill as versifiers should never be overlooked.

With regard to the question we asked at the beginning of this article, How far does modern Dutch art allow us to speak of it as a school of painting? the answer is not easy. What seem movements within the country come to appear, when we take a wider view, but fragments of larger movements which have affected all modern painting, and whose origins are to be sought if anywhere in France. Yet distinctive characteristics are not altogether wanting in this art. We agree with Mr. Marius that landscapepainting remains to-day, as it was at the outset, a birthright of the nation, and that if the eyes of the modern Dutch painters have been purged by French influence, they still see in a genuine and, one may say, a national manner, distinct from the way of the English as of the French. Again, if Israëls owes much to Millet, he owes much too to Rembrandt. Not only Rembrandt, the greatest of Dutch painters, but the lesser Dutch masters also have influenced the work of the Hague school and its immediate following. It is always the earliest work of a modern painter-of Matthew Maris or of the two Oyens-whichr shows the ancient influences the most (that we should expect), but the influences are traceable throughout the whole of life. Nevertheless the balance of the art (as we may say) in Holland, as in most modern countries, is not national but international.

It would not do therefore if the latest phase of continental art was unrep