Dutch painting was born with the liberty and independence of Holland.  As long as the northern and southern provinces of the Low Countries remained under the Spanish rule and in the Catholic faith, Dutch painters painted like Belgian painters; they studied in Belgium, Germany, and Italy; Heemskerk imitated Michael Angelo; Bloemart followed Correggio, and “Il Moro” copied Titian, not to indicate others; and they were one and all pedantic imitators, who added to the exaggerations of the Italian style a certain German coarseness, the result of which was a bastard style of painting, still inferior to the first, childish, stiff in design, crude in color, and completely wanting in chiaroscuro, but not, at least, a servile imitation, and becoming, as it were, a faint prelude to the true Dutch art that was to be....

After depicting the house, they turned their attention to the country.  The stern climate allowed but a brief time for the admiration of nature, but for this very reason Dutch artists admired her all the more; they saluted the spring with a livelier joy, and permitted that fugitive smile of heaven to stamp itself more deeply on their fancy.  The country was not beautiful, but it was twice dear because it had been torn from the sea and from the foreign oppressor.  The Dutch artist painted it lovingly; he represented it simply, ingenuously, with a sense of intimacy which at that time was not to be found in Italian or Belgian landscape.

The flat, monotonous country had, to the Dutch painter’s eyes, a marvelous variety.  He caught all the mutations of the sky, and knew the value of the water, with its reflections, its grace and freshness, and its power of illuminating everything.  Having no mountains, he took the dikes for background; and with no forests, he imparted to a simple group of trees all the mystery of a forest; and he animated the whole with beautiful animals and white sails.

The subjects of their pictures are poor enough—­a windmill, a canal, a gray sky;—­but how they make one think!  A few Dutch painters, not content with nature in their own country, came to Italy in search of hills, luminous skies, and famous ruins; and another band of select artists is the result.  Both, Swanevelt, Pynaeker, Breenberg, Van Laer, Asselyn.  But the palm remains with the landscapists of Holland, with Wynants the painter of morning, with Van der Neer the painter of night, with Rusydael the painter of melancholy, with Hobbema the illustrator of windmills, cabins, and kitchen gardens, and with others who have restricted themselves to the expression of the enchantment of nature as she is in Holland.

Simultaneously with landscape art was born another kind of painting, especially peculiar to Holland—­animal painting.  Animals are the wealth of the country; and that magnificent race of cattle which has no rival in Europe for fecundity and beauty.  The Hollanders, who owe so much to them, treat them, one may say, as part of the population; they wash them, comb them, dress them, and love them dearly.  They are to be seen everywhere; they are reflected in all the canals, and dot with points of black and white the immense fields that stretch on every side; giving an air of peace and comfort to every place, and exciting in the spectator’s heart a sentiment of patriarchal serenity.