All Dutch painting is concave: what I mean is that it is composed of
curves described about a point determined by the pictorial interest;
circular shadows round a dominant light. Design, colouring, and lighting
fall into a concave scheme, with a strongly defined base, a retreating
ceiling, and corners rounded and converging on the centre; whence it
follows that the painting is all depth, and that it is far from the eye
to the objects represented. No type of painting leads with more certain
directness from the foreground to the background, from the frame to the
horizon. One can live in it, walk in it, see to the uttermost ends of
it; one is tempted to raise one's head to measure the distance of the
sky. Everything conspires to this illusion: the exactness of the aerial
perspective, the perfect harmony of colour and tones with the plane on
which the object is placed. The rendering of the heights of space, of
the envelope of atmosphere, of the distant effect, which absorbs this
school makes the painting of all other schools seem flat, something laid
upon the surface of the canvas.
_Fromentin._