y are a present from the old lady in
the house over the way, who from her front door watches the child
delivering the gift.

[Illustration: AN INTERIOR
From the picture by Pieter de Hoogh, in the Wallace Collection, London]

It is a domestic scene that you might witness in any of the old towns
of Holland to this day. The insides and outsides of the houses are
still scrubbed with soap and water; rows of clogs stand outside the
front doors on muddy days; the women wear the same bright coloured
gowns fully gathered round the waist, with the cleanest of white
aprons; their faces are placid and unruffled as they pursue the even
tenour of their way.

This atmosphere of Dutch life, peaceful, home-loving, and competent,
is rendered by Peter de Hoogh in most of his pictures. It is not the
atmosphere of Rembrandt's art, yet he never could have painted thus
except for Rembrandt. The same love of sunlight and shadows prevailed
with Peter de Hoogh, and it was no less the aim of his art to attain
mastery over the painting of light, but light diffused and reflected.
He loved to show the sunlight shining through some coloured substance,
such as this yellow curtain, which scatters its brightness and lets
it fall more evenly throughout the room. He never painted such extreme
contrasts as make manifest Rembrandt's power. Rembrandt's light had
been so vivid that it seemed to overwhelm colours in a dazzling
brilliancy. Peter de Hoogh's lights are just strong enough to reveal
the colours in a milder illumination. In our picture the sunshine
diffused by the yellow curtains mingles with the red of the woman's
dress and creates a rich orange. Little does she know how well her
dress looks. But it was only after incessant study of the way in which
Rembrandt had mastered the whole range from light to dark, that Peter
de Hoogh became able to paint as he did within his narrower scale,
abridged at both extremes.

Begin with the room, then the passage, then the farther hall, then
the highway open to the unseen sky above, then the house-front beyond
it, and the hall beyond the lady in the neighbouring doorway; there
are at least four distinct distances in this picture each differently
lighted, and the several effects worked out with scrupulous
painstaking fidelity. It is worth your while, with your own eyes rather
than with many words of mine, to search out on the original all these
beautifully varied gradations. In many of his pictures one part i