684 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 15)20. 



no apparent deterioration. We have seen Whistler in his nocturnes 

 and other painters reproduce for a time the luminous shadows of 

 Rembrandt; but we have also seen these works grow opaque and 

 muddy, mocked by the changeless perfection of the incomparable 

 master. Had Rembrandt possessed the sense of beautiful form that 

 characterized the Greeks and Raphael and Titian, he would have 

 been the greatest of painters. Even with this limitation, he remains 

 without a superior. 



In smart circles these days it is the fashion to exalt Velasquez above 

 Rembrandt. The Spaniard is undoubtedly a mighty master of the 

 brush ; but his cold and apparently contemptuous aloofness, pre- 

 senting the outward lineaments of his sitters with unsurpassable 

 veracity while almost ignoring their souls, ranks him far below the 

 sympathetic and deep-seeing Rembrandt, who comprehends and de- 

 picts every emotion from the gentlest and sweetest to the fiercest and 

 most turbulent. 



The element in a portrait that most interests the ordinary beholder 

 is the character portrayed. Ordinarily the young have little char- 

 acter in their faces; but with advancing years the result of all the 

 good and evil that men have done and thought becomes etched upon 

 their lineaments in lines which the discerning eye can read as in an 

 open book. Therefore, Rembrandt, the supreme master in the de- 

 picting of character, loved particularly the faces of the aged, and 

 he makes them tell us all their secrets. Raphael and Titian and 

 Velasquez were wonderful painters of portraits; but to my mind 

 Rembrandt was the greatest of them all. 



In Mr. Johnson's collection there is the splendid portrait of a 

 rather young and handsome man, clothed in black with a broad- 

 brimmed black felt hat and a broad white collar fringed with lace. 

 He is evidently a gentleman of wealth and refinement, and he is 

 painted with the admirable precision of Rembrandt's earlier style 

 before he became absorbed in the study of light, and when his figures 

 emerge mysteriously from luminous shadows. A truer or more vital 

 portrait it would be hard to find. 



While Rembrandt is facile p?*inceps\ among the painters of Hol- 

 land, the school had so many splendid masters of portraiture that 

 it is hard to choose among them. But it seems to me that after 

 Rembrandt none surpasses Nicolaas Maes. He never indulges in 

 any of the dizzy flights of genius that so mystified Rembrandt's con- 

 temporaries. His feet are always planted firmly upon the solid 

 earth; but his absolute fidelity to nature and his impeccable tech- 

 nique rank him among the great painters of portraits. 



One of the finest collections of pictures in private ownership is 

 that of Mr. Charles P. Taft, of Cincinnati. His dining room is 

 adorned with a number of portraits of the English school of the 



