Joseph Archer Crowe and Paul George Konody

“ Brabant has more sun, more comfort and a higher type of humanity; Teniers, in consequence, is silvery and sparkling; the people he paints are fair specimens of a well built race. Holland, in the vicinity of Haarlem seems to have suffered much from war; the air is moist and hazy, and the people, as depicted by Ostade, are short, ill-favoured and marked with the stamp of adversity on their features and dress. Brouwer, who painted the Dutch boor in his frolics and passion, imported more of the spirit of Frans Hals into his delineations than his colleague; but the type is the same as Ostade’s. ”

“ At Amsterdam we have the likeness of a painter, sitting with his back to the spectator, at his easel. The colour-grinder is at work in a corner, a pupil prepares a palette and a black dog sleeps on the ground. A replica of this picture, with the date of 1666, is in the Dresden gallery. Both specimens are supposed to represent Ostade himself. But unfortunately we see the artist’s back and not his face. In his etching (Bartsch, 32) the painter shows himself in profile, at work on a canvas. ”

“ He took the highest honours of his profession, the presidency of the painters’ gild at Haarlem, in 1662. Among the treasures of the Louvre collection, a striking picture represents the father of a large family sitting in state with his wife at his side in a handsomely furnished room, surrounded by his son and five daughters, and a young married couple. It is an old tradition that Ostade here painted himself and his children in holiday attire; yet the style is much too refined for the painter of boors, and Ostade had but one daughter. ”

“ A specimen of Isaac’s work at this period may be seen in the “Laughing Boor with a Pot of Beer,” in the museum of Amsterdam; the cottage interior, with two peasants and three children near a fire, in the Berlin museum; a “Concert,” with people listening to singers accompanied by a piper and flute player, and a “Boor stealing a Kiss from a Woman,” in the Lacaze collection at the Louvre. The interior at Berlin is lighted from a casement in the same Rembrandtesque style as Adrian’s interior of 1643 at the Louvre. ”