Painting

(VAN DER HELST) WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The Night-Watch at Amsterdam is magnificent in parts, but on the side to the spectator's right, smoky and dim. The Five Masters of the Drapers is wonderful for depth, strength, brightness, massive power. What words are these to express a picture!

(TITIAN)

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

(LEONARDO DA VINCI)

THÉOPHILE GAUTIER

(WATTEAU)

EDMOND AND JULES DE GONCOURT

(REMBRANDT)

EUGÈNE FROMENTIN

(GUIDO RENI)

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

In 1383, on the death of Louis de Maele, his son-in-law Philip the Hardy, Duke of Burgundy, assumed the government of Flanders. In the same year Philip founded the Carthusian Convent at Dijon and employed a Flemish painter named Melchin Broederlam to embellish two great shrines within it.

Whether or not Sir Joshua Reynolds is entitled to be ranked among the very greatest painters, there can be no question that he has a place among the most famous, not only on account of his actual painting, but also because of the influence exerted by his whole-hearted devotion to his art, and his strong character in forming, out of such unpromising elements, a really vigorous school of painting i

by Randall Davies

Dr Waagen thus summarises the history of painting in the Netherlands during the interval of about a century and a half that elapsed between the death of Jan van Eyck in 1440 and the birth of Peter Paul Rubens in 1577.