some woman, who forced her husband to
pass his evenings in a tavern in order to rid himself of her company.
The wife of Berghem was so intolerably avaricious that if she found
him dozing over his brushes she awoke him roughly to make him work and
earn money, and the poor man was obliged to resort to subterfuges to
purchase engravings when he was paid for his pictures. On the other
hand, one could never end reciting the misdeeds of the husbands. The
artist Griffier compelled his wife to travel about the world in a
boat; Veen begged his wife's permission to spend four months in Rome,
and stayed there four years. Karel du Jardin married a rich old woman
to pay his debts, and deserted her when she had paid them. Molyn,
another artist, had his wife assassinated that he might marry a
Genoese. I doubt whether poor Paul Potter, as the story runs, was
betrayed by the wife whom he blindly loved; and who knows whether
Huysum, the great flower-painter, who was consumed by jealousy in the
midst of riches and glory for a wife who was neither young nor
beautiful, had real grounds for his doubts, or whether he was not
induced by the reports of his envious rivals to believe what was
untrue? In conclusion, I must mention with due honor the three wives
of Eglon Van der Neer, who crowned him with twenty-five children--a
family which, however, did not keep him from painting a large number
of pictures in every style, from making several voyages, and from
cultivating tulips.

There are several small paintings by Albert Cuyp in the Rotterdam
gallery, a landscape, horses, fowls, and fruit--that Albert Cuyp who
holds a unique place in Dutch art, who in the course of a prolonged
life painted portraits, landscapes, animals, flowers, winter pieces,
moonlight scenes, marine subjects, figures, and in each style left an
imprint of originality. But nevertheless, like most of the Dutch
painters of his time, he was so unfortunate that until 1750, more than
fifty years after his death, his paintings sold for a hundred francs,
whereas they now would bring a hundred thousand francs--not in
Holland, but in England, where most of his works are owned.

Heemskerk's "Christ at the Sepulchre" would not be worth mentioning
if it were not an excuse for introducing the artist, who was one of
the most curious creatures that ever walked the face of the earth. Van
Veen--such is his real name--was born in the village of Heemskerk at
the end of the fifteenth century, a