The most curious florists of Holland were ambitious to supply the
Burgomaster van Storck with the choicest products of their skill for
the garden spread below the windows on either side of the portico,
and along the central avenue of hoary beeches which led to it.
Naturally this house, within a mile of the city of Haarlem, became a
resort of the artists, then mixing freely in great society, giving
and receiving [87] hints as to the domestic picturesque. Creatures
of leisure--of leisure on both sides--they were the appropriate
complement of Dutch prosperity, as it was understood just then.
Sebastian the elder could almost have wished his son to be one of
them: it was the next best thing to being an influential publicist or
statesman. The Dutch had just begun to see what a picture their
country was--its canals, and boompjis, and endless, broadly-lighted
meadows, and thousands of miles of quaint water-side: and their
painters, the first true masters of landscape for its own sake, were
further informing them in the matter. They were bringing proof, for
all who cared to see, of the wealth of colour there was all around
them in this, supposably, sad land. Above all, they developed the
old Low-country taste for interiors. Those innumerable genre pieces-
-conversation, music, play--were in truth the equivalent of novel-
reading for that day; its own actual life, in its own proper
circumstances, reflected in various degrees of idealisation, with
no diminution of the sense of reality (that is to say) but with more
and more purged and perfected delightfulness of interest.
Pages:
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87