That Holland in an expansive mood of satisfaction at her success should
have wished to see groups of her gallant arquebusiers and portraits of
her eminent burghers is not to be wondered at, and we can understand
that respectable painters of such pictures should arise in some force
to supply the need--just as wherever in this country at the present day
there are cricketers and actresses, there also are photographers. That
painters of ordinary merit should be forthcoming is, as I have said,
no wonder: the mystery is that masters of technique whose equal has
never been before or since should have arisen in such numbers; that
in the space of a few years--between say 1590 and 1635--should have
been born in a country never before given to the cultivation of the
arts Rembrandt and Jan Steen, Vermeer and De Hooch, Van der Helst
and Gerard Dou, Fabritius and Maes, Ostade and Van Goyen, Potter and
Ruisdael, Terburg and Cuyp. That is the staggering thing.
Another curious circumstance is that by 1700 it was practically all
over, and Dutch art had become a convention. The gods had gone. Not
until very recently has Holland had any but half gods since.
It may of course be urged that Italy had witnessed a somewhat similar
phenomenon. But the spiritual stimulus of the Renaissance among the
naturally artistic southerners cannot, I think, be compared with the
stimulus given by the establishment of prosperity to these cold and
material northerners.
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