Identifier: netherlandgaller00prey (find matches)
Title: The Netherland galleries : being a history of the Dutch school of painting, illuminated and demonstrated by critical descriptions of the great paintings in the many galleries
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Preyer, David C. (David Charles), 1861-1913
Subjects: Art museums Painting
Publisher: Boston : St. Botolph Society
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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Text Appearing Before Image:
Six collection to the Ryksmuseum. Both of these
paintings bear the indubitable impress of the
breadth and amplitude of Rembrandt's figure paint-
ing.
Vermeer's life was uneventful. With the ex-
ception of a few years in Amsterdam, it was passed
entirely in his native city Delft, whence the words
" van Delft " are affixed to his name, in order to
distinguish him from others of the same name —
Jan Vermeer, or van der Meer, van Utrecht (1630-
1688), and from the Vermeer, or van der Meer,
van Haarlem (1656-1705). He must have been
very poor indeed when he entered the Guild of St.
Luke in Delft, and had to pay his entrance fee of
six guilders in instalments, which it took him three
years to complete. That his art became soon pro-
ductive, however, may be seen from his self-por-
trait in the Czernin Gallery of Vienna (formerly
ascribed to de Hooch, until rightly attributed byB
urger), which shows him richly attired and at
work in a room of no mean appointments. In the
midst of his prosperity he died at the age of forty-
Text Appearing After Image:

Isaac blessing Jacob

Govert
Flinck

Ryks Museum

THE GENRE PAINTERS 105

three, leaving his wife and eight children well pro-
vided for.
No three artists could be more strongly indi-
vidual than Maes, Vermeer, and de Hooch. They
learned from Rembrandt the subtleties and mys-
teries of graduated light, but developed this with
a keenness of perception all their own, even with
greater refinement than their master ever sought.
Jan Vermeer is original in the manner in which
he bathes his interiors in a diffused silvery light,
as de Hooch more favoured the golden sunlight in
graded planes — both were eminently light-paint-
ers. Sometimes Vermeer takes us outdoors, and
then his light is a part of the atmosphere, as we
may see in his View of Delft in the Maurits-
huis, and in his street scene in the Six collection.
But generally we find an interior the subject of
the few works that have come down to us. There
he places most frequently the figure in the fore-
ground in shade, as if we are looking at the scene
through a hole in the wall, or out of a very dar

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