_Teniers_ (Flemish: 1600-1694). _See 154._
"A perfect type of the Unromantic Art which was assailed by the gentle
enthusiasm of the English School of Landscape. It represents a few
ordinary Dutch houses, an ordinary Dutch steeple or two, some still
more ordinary Dutch trees, and most ordinary Dutch clouds, assembled in
contemplation of an ordinary Dutch duck-pond; or, perhaps, in respect
of size, we may more courteously call it a goose-pond. All these
objects are painted either gray or brown, and the atmosphere is of
the kind which looks not merely as if the sun had disappeared for the
day, but as if he had gone out altogether, and left a stable lantern
instead. The total effect having appeared, even to the painter's own
mind, at last little exhilatory, he has enlivened it by three figures
on the brink of the goose-pond--two gentlemen and a lady,--standing all
three perfectly upright, side by side, in court dress, the gentlemen
with expansive boots, and all with conical hats and high features.
In order to invest those characters with dramatic interest, a rustic
fisherman presents to them, as a tribute,--or, perhaps, exhibits as a
natural curiosity,--a large fish, just elicited from the goose-pond by
his adventurous companions, who have waded into the middle of it, every
one of them, with singular exactitude, up to the calf of his leg" (_Art
of England_, pp. 209, 211). The group on the left comprise the painter
and his wife, another lady, and his son.