HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL NOTICE

the female companions he has given them are always truly worthy of them. Sometimes he paints them dancing to the discordant sound of a village violin. Frequently he represents them in the midst of their family; and it is here that he has depicted with striking correctness, and with a kind of inspiration, the interior of a cottage, where the father, the mother, the grandmother and a brood of most ugly, dirty, snotty-nosed children, eat, sleep, and satisfy the wants of nature, all stowed in the same room, which is likewise lumbered with their tools, their kitchen utensils and their garments. It is, however, impossible to give to any picture a greater glow and harmony of light and shade than he has introduced into these picturesque

re treats.

If we looked for the principles of the ignoble, we should find it in his figures; their stature is short, their gestures mean and their heads large; the most prominent feature of their sunburnt faces is always a red nose, large at the end and narrow at the top; they have little eyes set close to each other in deep sockets bordered with scarlet, and wide wry mouths, very far from the nose, and of which the lower lip projects more than the other; a chin which projects still further, and leads to a neck where we meet with several other chins, a charming road conducting to other attractions, with the description of which we shall be readily allowed to dispense.

The principal figures of Ostade are always the most ugly. We should be tempted to believe that among the human beings that he painted, ugliness was held in great consideration, and should be authorised in imagining that if any jealous deity had wished to excite among them a sanguinary war, and throw into the midst of their assembly an apple of discord, the inscription on it would have been: For the most ugly. »

This facetious criticism cannot prevent us admiring the pictures of Ostade, on account of their originality; his personages interest us in spite of their graceless forms. We should not

OF ADRIAN VAN OSTADE.

III

wish to go into the company of his models, but we look at them with pleasure. It is one of his distinguishing characteristics to be of all painters that which produces the greatest excitement to laughter. His figures display vulgar forms, but they have not the air of being ill-humoured; they are sprightly, they inspire merriment and not dread, and we should not fear to meet them upon a high road, like those we behold in Salvator Rosa's pictures.

Van Ostade may be reproached with having sometimes placed his visual point too high, so that his rooms appear fantastical, and would be absolutely ridiculous if he had not had skill to fill up great spaces with interesting minute objects. The beauty of the colouring is a principal merit of this able master; for no painter, in any of the different branches of the art or of any nation, has proved himself a more delicate and harmonious colourist than Ostade.

The number of pictures and designs executed by Van Ostade did not prevent him devoting a part of his time to engraving; he has left a series of fifty pieces representing familiar besides some single figures and academical heads which display the same merit and the same whimsicalities as his paintings. His execution, although not exquisite, is nevertheless delicate and spirited.

scenes,

Adrian Van Ostade died at Amsterdam in 1685, at the age of 75 years. He had for pupils his brother Isaac Van Ostade, who died young, and whose pictures have sometimes been attributed to him; John Van Goyen, whose daughter he married; and John Steen who, whilst he imitated his master in the vulgarity of his subjects, did not preserve in them the same degree of modesty.

Among the engravers who copied from his works are Blooteling, Suyderhoef, C. de Visscher, Schmidt, Le Bas and