k oneself which single
picture one would choose before all others if such a privilege were
offered. The answer if honest is a sure revelation of temperament, for
one would select of a certainty a picture satisfying one's prevailing
moods rather than a picture of any sensational character. In other
words, the picture would have to be good to live with. To choose from
thousands of masterpieces one only is a very delicate test.

If the Dutch Government, stimulated to gratitude for the encomiastic
character of the present book, were to offer me my choice of the
Ryks Museum pictures I should not hesitate a moment. I should take
No. 2527--"Woman Reading a Letter" (damaged), by Vermeer of Delft. You
will see a reproduction in black and white on the opposite page;
but how wide a gulf between the picture and the process block. The
jacket, for example, is the most lovely cool blue imaginable.

This picture, apart from its beauty, is interesting as an illustration
of the innovating courage of Vermeer. Who else at that date would have
placed the woman's head against a map almost its own colour? Many
persons think that such daring began with Whistler. It is, however,
Terburg who most often suggests Whistler. Vermeer had, I think,
a rarer distinction than Terburg. Vermeer would never have painted
such a crowded group (however masterly) as that of Terburg's "Peace of
Munster" in our National Gallery; he could not have brought himself
so to pack humanity. Among all the Dutch masters I find no such
fastidious aristocrat.

He, Vermeer, has another picture at the Ryks--"De brief"
(No. 2528)--which technically is wonderful; but the whole effect is
artificial and sophisticated, very different from his best transparent
mood.

Any mortification, by the way, which I might suffer from the knowledge
that No. 2527 can never be mine is allayed by the knowledge, equally
certain, that it can never be any one else's. Money is powerless
here. To the offer of a Rothschild the Government would return as
emphatic a negative as to a request from me.

The room in which is Vermeer's "Reader" contains also Maes's "Spinning
Woman" (see page 230), two or three Peter de Hoochs and the best Jan
Steen in the Ryks. It is indeed a room to linger in, and to return
to, indefinitely. De Hooch's "Store Room" (No. 1248), of which I
have already spoken, is in one of the little "Cabinet piece" rooms,
which are not too well lighted. Here also one may spend many hours