Meantime we must turn our attention to Holland

Meantime we must turn our attention to Holland, where Frans Hals, who was born only three years later than Rubens, namely in 1580, was the forerunner of Rembrandt, Van der Helst, Bol, Lely, and a host more of greater or less painters, who made their country as famous in the seventeenth century for art as their fathers had made it in the sixteenth for arms. Without going into the complications of the political history of the Netherlands at this period,Single Piece Paintigns, it is important nevertheless to remember that while the Flemish provinces remained Catholic under Spain, the northern states, after heroic struggles, formed themselves into a Republic; so that while it is difficult to draw a hard and fast line between what was Dutch and what was Flemish in estimating the influence of one particular painter upon another, there is no question at all as to vital difference between the conditions which led to the production of the pictures of the two schools. The Flemish pictures were for the Church and for the Court,cheap oil painting, the Dutch for the house, the Guildhall, or the bourgeoisie. The former were aristocratic, the latter democratic. Rubens and Van Dyck were aristocrats, Hals and Rembrandt democrats. Rubens painted altar-pieces, for the great166 churches or cathedrals or for the chapels of his patrons. Rembrandt painted Bible stories for whoever would purchase them. Van Dyck painted the portraits of kings and nobles. Hals painted the rough soldiers and sailors, singly, or in the great groups into which they formed themselves as Guilds. For the first time in the history of painting, neither Church nor Court were its patrons. oil painting reproductions