JOHNSON COLLECTION— ROSE. 685 



eighteenth century, marvels of s^yle, dignity, and aristocratic bear- 

 ing. But he has made the mistake of placing in their midst a mag- 

 nificent Dutch portrait — by Xicolaas Maes, if I remember rightly — 

 and when we turn from that living presentation of the actual man 

 to the English portraits, they seem to lose all vitality, and to be not 

 men, but pictures of men. 



By Nicolaas Maes there is in the Johnson collection a wonderful 

 portrait called The Burgomaster. Whether he is a burgomaster or 

 one of the dominating clergy of the time, I can not say. Certainly 

 he is a man used to command and quite satisfied with himself. Large, 

 stout, florid, with the top of his head bald, but with long, gray hair 

 growing out at the side and falling to his shoulders, with slight mus- 

 tache and imperial, he is the ideal of the successful elderly gentle- 

 man, who looks with entire satisfaction on his past and with serene 

 confidence to the future. But how unstable is human fortune ! At 

 London in the National Gallery, there is another portrait of the same 

 man, signed and dated just one year later, haggard, with flabby 

 cheeks, broken in body and soul. Sometime in that brief year the 

 heavy hand of Fate was laid upon him with crushing force. 



It is strange how indifferent our American collectors have been to 

 Eubens. It is impossible to make any list of the world's half dozen 

 greatest painters that would not include his name. He is as great 

 as Eembrandt. Yet, while we have upon our shores more than a 

 fourth of the masterpieces of the migh^ Dutchman, the worthy 

 examples of Eubens in our country could probably be counted upon 

 the fingers of a single hand. 



Yet one would think that Eubens would particularly appeal to our 

 generation. In the old days genius was defined as an infinite capacity 

 for taking pains. Leonardo worked four years on the Mona Lisa, 

 and still deemed it unfinished. Titian kept his pictures in his studio 

 for an average of five years. These days, however, the supreme de- 

 sideratum of the artist is economy of labor. The man who can 

 paint a picture with the fewest strokes of the brush is hailed by 

 artists as their chief, and proclaimed by critics as the worthy disciple 

 of Velasquez. 



In point of fact, these slap-dash masters of our day find no justi- 

 fication in the practice of the great Spaniard. He was a slow and 

 careful workman, who produced comparatively few pictures, less than 

 one fourth as many as Eembrandt, not one tenth as many as Eubens. 

 He painted usually with such perfection of finish that no brush 

 mark remains, and we have no idea how the marvel was wrought. 

 His pictures are equally satisfying whether we look at them from a 

 distance or close at hand. We do not have to cross the room to see 

 them, as with our modern artists who exalt themselves in his name. 



