This rough sketch must suffice for our study of the History and
Portrait Painters of Holland. Although, of course, portraiture played
a most important part throughout the whole range of Dutch art, we must
now deal with those of their contemporaries and successors who are
classed as painters of genre subjects, Interiors, Conversation-pieces,
and Rustic Scenes. The compositions of these men at first show high
technical excellence, and a refined feeling for light and shade;
they depict simple scenes and homely incidents which make a wide
appeal in any age. By the end of the seventeenth century their scenes
become festive, and eventually boisterous, and so degenerate into
unimaginative renderings of far-fetched incidents which are treated
with a parade of mere imitative skill. In the last phase of their art
the subjects become even more uninviting, the panels are smoothly
painted, and all originality disappears.