To the offer of a Rothschild the Government would return as
emphatic a negative as to a request from me.
The room in which is Vermeer's "Reader" contains also Maes's "Spinning
Woman" (see page 230), two or three Peter de Hoochs and the best Jan
Steen in the Ryks. It is indeed a room to linger in, and to return
to, indefinitely. De Hooch's "Store Room" (No. 1248), of which I
have already spoken, is in one of the little "Cabinet piece" rooms,
which are not too well lighted. Here also one may spend many hours,
and then many hours more.
The "Peace of Munster" has been called Terburg's masterpiece:
but the girl in his "Paternal Advice," No. 570 at the Ryks, seems
to me a finer achievement. The grace and beauty and truth of her
pose and the miraculous painting of her dress are unrivalled. Yet
judged as a picture it is, I think, dull. The colouring is dingy,
time has not dealt kindly with the background; but the figure of
the girl is perfect. I give a reproduction opposite page 190. It
was this picture, in one of its replicas, that Goethe describes in
his _Elective Affinities_: a description which procured for it the
probably inaccurate title "Parental Advice".
We have a fine Terburg in our National Gallery--"The Music Lesson"--and
here too is his "Peace of Munster," which certainly was a great feat
of painting, but which does not, I think, reproduce his peculiar
characteristics and charm.
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