_Nicolas Maes_ (Dutch: 1632-1693). _See_ 153.
"There are few pictures in the National Gallery," says C. R. Leslie
(_Handbook for Young Painters_, p. 243), "before which I find myself
more often standing than at this." Its great attraction, he adds, is
"the delight of seeing a trait of childhood we have often observed and
been amused with in nature, for the first time so felicitously given by
art." The Dutch housewife sits intently engaged in scraping a parsnip,
whilst the child stands by her side "watching the process, as children
will stand and watch the most ordinary operations, with an intensity
of interest, as if the very existence of the whole world depended on
the exact manner in which that parsnip was scraped." Note the Flemish
_kruik_, or beer-jug, so often introduced into the pictures of Maes.
Signed and dated 1655.