Another Dort painter, below Albert Cuyp in fame, but often above him,
I think, in interest and power, is Nicolas Maes, born in 1632--a
great year in Dutch art, for it saw the birth also of Vermeer of
Delft and Peter de Hooch. Maes, who studied in Rembrandt's studio,
was perhaps the greatest of all that master's pupils. England, as has
been so often the case, appreciated Maes more wisely than Holland,
with the result that some of his best pictures are here.

But one must go to the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam to see his finest work
of all--"The Endless Prayer," No. 1501, reproduced on the opposite
page. We have at the National Gallery or the Wallace Collection no
Maes equal to this. His "Card players," however, at the National
Gallery, a free bold canvas, more in the manner of Velasquez than of
his immediate master, is in its way almost as interesting.

To "The Endless Prayer" one feels that Maes's master, Rembrandt,
could have added nothing. It is even conceivable that he might have
injured it by some touch of asperity. From this picture all Newlyn
seems to have sprung.

According to Pilkington, Maes gave up his better and more
Rembrandtesque manner on account of the objection of his sitters to
be thus painted. Such are sitters!

Dordrecht claims also Ferdinand Bol, the pupil and friend of Rembrandt,
and the painter of the Four Regents of the Leprosy Hospital in the
Amsterdam stadhuis. He was born in 1611. For a while his pictures were
considered by connoisseurs to be finer than those of his master. We
are wiser to-day; yet Bol had a fine free way that is occasionally