No place is better than The Hague for the study of the earlier Rembrandt.  Dr. Tulp’s Anatomical Lecture is, after the Potter bull, the most gazed-at canvas in the Mauritshuis.  It is not in a good condition.  There are evidences of over-varnishing and cobbling; nor is it a very inspiring canvas.  The head of Dr. Tulp is superb in characterisation, and there is one other head, that of a man with inquiring eyes, aquiline profile, the head strained forward (his name is given in the critical works on Rembrandt), which arrests the attention.  An early composition, we are far from the perfection of The Syndics.  The self-portrait of the painter (1629) is a favourite, though the much-vaunted feather in the head-gear is stiff; perhaps feathers in Holland were stiff in those days.  But the painters flock to this portrait and never tire of copying its noble silhouette.  The two little studies of the painter’s father and mother are characteristic.  One, of the man, is lent by Dr. Bredius.  Rembrandt’s brother (study of an old man’s head) shows a large old chap with a nose of richest vintage.  The portrait is brown in tone and without charm.  The Susanna Bathing is famous, but it is not as attractive as Simeon in the Temple, with its masterly lighting, old gold in the gloom.  The Homer never fails to warm the cockles of the imagination.  What bulk!  What a wealth of smothered fire in the apparel!  The big Saul listening to the playing of David is still mystifying.  Is Saul smiling or crying behind the uplifted cloak?  Is he contemplating in his neurasthenia an attempt on David’s life with a whizzing lance?  His sunken cheeks, vague yet sinister eye, his turban marvellous in its iridescence, form an ensemble not to be forgotten.  David is not so striking.  From afar the large canvas glows.  And the chiaroscuro is miraculous.

The portrait of Rembrandt’s sister, the Flight Into Egypt, the small, laughing man, the negroes, and the study of an old woman, the latter wearing a white head-dress, are a mine of joy for the student.  The sister’s head is lent by Dr. C. Hofstede de Groot, the art expert.

There are only thirty-odd Rembrandts in Holland out of the five hundred and fifty he painted.  Of this number eighteen are in the Mauritshuis.  Holland was not very solicitous formerly of her masters.  Nowadays sentiment has changed and there is a gratifying outcry whenever a stranger secures a genuine old master.  As for the copies, they, like the poor, are always with us.  America is flooded every year with forged pictures, especially of the minor Dutch masters, and excellent are these imitations, it must be confessed.

There are only four specimens of Frans Hals here; portraits of Jacob Pieterez, Aletta Hanemans, his wife; of William Croes, and the head of a man, a small picture in The Jolly Toper style.  The lace collar is genuine Hals.