The subject is an old beggar man playing

The subject is an old beggar man playing in front of the door of a cottage on a ridiculous instrument consisting of an earthen pot covered over like a jampot with a lid of parchment, on which he makes a rude noise with a stick, to the intense delight of a group of children. A picture like this, then, it is evident, instead of hanging in solitary confinement in the house of a great person, was so widely popular that it was copied on all sides, and must have been seen by thousands of people. oil paintings for sale

Next to Hals, in point of time, was Hendrik Gerritz Pot, who was born, probably at Haarlem, in 1585. It is to him rather than to Ostade, who was a quarter of a century later, that we must trace the origin of smaller genre pictures of the Dutch School which in later years became its principal product. Pot's works are neither very important nor very numerous, but as a portrait painter he is represented in the Louvre by a portrait of Charles I., which was probably painted when he was in England in 1631 or thereabouts; while at Hampton Court is a beautiful little piece by him which is catalogued under the title of A Startling Introduction. This belonged to Charles I., for his cypher is branded on the back of the panel on which it is painted, and it was sold by the Commonwealth as "a souldier making a strange posture to a Dutch lady by Bott." The painter's monogram H.P. appears on the large chimney piece before which the "soldier" is standing. original oil paintings

Gerard Honthorst, born at Utrecht in 1590, can hardly be said to belong to the Dutch School at all. When he was only twenty he went to Rome, where his devotion to painting effects of candle-light earned him the sobriquet of "Gherardo della Notte." In 1628 he
 was elected Dean of the Guild of St. Luke at Utrecht, but he was in no sense a national painter, and neither took nor gave anything in the way of national influence. He was in England for a few months in 1628, to which chance we are indebted for the picture of the Duke of Buckingham and his family which is in the National Portrait Gallery, and another group of the Cavendish family which is at Chatsworth. Pictures of the nobility, or of celebrities like Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, were more in his line than those of his republican patriots, and consequently he plays no part in the development of the school we are now considering. cheap oil paintings