Jan van Scorel was born at Schoorl, near Alkmaar, 1495.  He studied under Jacob Cornelis at Amsterdam and with Jean de Maubeuge at Utrecht.  He died at Utrecht, 1562.  When travelling in Germany he visited Duerer at Nuremberg; resided for a time in Italy.  The Italian influence is strong, particularly in his Mary Magdalen, which formerly hung in the town-hall of Haarlem.  A replica is in the residence of the head-master of Eton College, England.  Mary is shown seated, richly attired.  She holds in her right hand a box of perfume, her left hand, beautifully painted, rests on her knee.  Behind is a mountainous landscape, distinctly Italian, beside her a tree.  The head is north Lombardian in character and colouring, the glance of the eyes enigmatic.  A curiously winning composition, not without morbidezza.  Scorel has five other works in the Rijks.  The Bathsheba is not a masterpiece.  Solomon and the Queen of Sheba is conventional, but the Harpsichord Player was sold at Paris as late as 1823 as a Bronzino.  Perhaps it is only attributed to Scorel.  It is unlike his brush-work.  The Painting of a Vault, divided into nine sections, five of which represent the Last Judgment, is a curiosity.  The portrait of Emperor Charles V. as Pharaoh is pointed out by the gallery attendant, who then retires and diplomatically coughs in the middle distance.

The Mancini (pupil of Morelli and W.H.  Mesdag) is entitled Poor Thing.  A little girl stands in a miserable room; mice run over the floor.  The colouring is rich.  There are admirable Jakob Marises; but we wish to follow in the track of the old fellows.  Adrian van Ostade’s Baker is so popular that it is used for advertising purposes in Holland.  The baker leans out of his door, the lower half closed, and blows a horn.  Palamedes evidently repainted the same picture many times.  An interior with figures, seated and standing; same faces, poses, accessories.  Same valet pouring out wine; variants of this figure.  A Merry Party is the usual title.  At The Hague in the Mauritshuis there is another such subject; also in Antwerp and Brussels.  But a jolly painter.  Steen and Teniers we may sidestep.  Also the artificial though graceful Tischbein.  There is a Winterhalter here, a mannered fashionable portrait painter (he painted the Empress Eugenie), and let us leave the Titians to the experts.  When you are in Holland look at the Dutch pictures.  A De Vos painted topers and fishermen with gusto, and there is Vinckboons, who doted on scenes of violence.  Fancy Vollon flowers in the midst of these old Dutchmen.  The Frenchman had an extraordinary feeling for still-life, though more in the decorative Venetian manner than in Chardin’s serene palette, or the literalism of Kalf.  Whistler’s Effie Deans, presented by the Dowager Baroness R. van Lynden in 1900, is not one of that master’s most successful efforts.  It is a whole-length figure painted in misty semi-tones, the feeling sentimental, un-Whistlerian, and, as we before remarked, wraith-like and lacking in substance when compared to Hals.