and less important, and towards the end of the century
disappear. As the song says, 'a very different thing by far' is painting
a landscape background and painting a whole landscape picture. Before
the end of the century Rubens painted some wonderful landscapes, and
he was soon followed by a great number of very fine landscape painters
in Holland. Cuyp was one of many.

In a Dutch landscape we cannot expect the rich colouring of Italy.
The colouring of Holland is low toned, and tender gradations lead away
to the low and level horizon. The canals are sluggish and grey, and
the clouds often heavy and dark. We saw how the brilliant skies and
pearly buildings of Venice made Venetian painters the gayest
colourists of the world. So the Dutch painters took their sober scale
of landscape colouring as it was dictated to them by the infinitely
varied yet sombre loveliness of their own land. In the great flat
expanses of field, intersected by canals and dotted with windmills,
the red brick roof of a water-mill may look 'loud,' like an aggressive
hat. But the shadows cast by the clouds change every moment, and in
flat country where there is less to arrest the eye the changes of tone
are more marked.

In an etching, Rembrandt could leave a piece of white paper for the
spot of highest sunlight, and carry out all the gradations of tone
in black and white, until he reached the spot of darkest shadow. A
painted landscape he indicated in the same way by varying shades of
dull brown. In all of them you seem to feel the interposition of the
air between you and the distant horizon at which you are looking. What
else is there? At each point in the picture the air modifies the
distinctness with which you can see the objects. This consciousness
of air in a picture of low horizon is a very difficult thing to describe
and explain. We know when it is there and when it is not. It has to
be seen, to be enjoyed, and recorded. Holbein painted Edward VI.
standing, so to speak, in a vacuum. Every line of his face is sharply
defined. In real life air softens all lines, so that even the edge
of a nose in profile is not actually seen as a sharp outline. The figures
in Richard II.'s picture stand in the most exhausted vacuum, but Hubert
van Eyck had already begun to render the vision or illusion of air
in his 'Three Maries.' In this respect he had learnt more than the
early painters of the Italian Renaissance; but Raphael and the
Venetians, especially G