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at the Ryks Museum--opposite page 22. But I doubt if human skill
has ever transcended the painting of the woman's face, or the sheer
drawing of her. Look at her arm and hand--Jan Steen never went wrong
with arms and hands. Look at the hands of the boy playing the pipe in
the picture opposite page 74; look at the woman filling a pipe at the
table. To-day we are accustomed to pictures containing children: they
are as necessary as sunsets to picture buyers: all our figure-painters
lavish their talents upon them; but who had ever troubled to paint
a real peasant child before Jan Steen? It was this rough toper that
showed the way, and no one since has ever excelled him.
Parallels have been drawn between Jan Steen and Hogarth, and there
are critics who would make Jan a moralist too. But I do not see how
we can compare them. Steen did what Hogarth could not, Hogarth did
what Steen would not. Hogarth is rarely charming, Steen is rarely
otherwise. It is not Hogarth with whom I should associate Jan, but
Burns. He is the Dutch Burns--in colour.
I wish we had more facts concerning him, for he must have been
a great man and humorist. The story is told of Hogarth that on
being commissioned to paint a scriptural picture of the Red Sea
for a too parsimonious patron who had beaten him down and down, he
rebuked him for his meanness by producing a canvas entirely covered
with red paint.
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