place: it is
lighted up where it should be, and it is also properly tinted according
to the demands of the principal object, its purpose being to accompany
or serve as a relief to the latter. With a wise understanding of the
law of contrasts, the painter has beautifully graded the strong tints
and the dark shading of the animal. The darkest part is opposed to the
light portion of the sky, and the most energetic and ingrained
characteristic of the bull is opposite to all that is most limpid in the
atmosphere. But this is hardly a merit, considering the simplicity of
the problem. The rest is simply a surplus that we might cut away without
regret, to the great advantage of the picture."

That would be a brutal criticism, but an exact one. And yet public
opinion, less punctilious or more clear-sighted, would say that the
signature was well worth the price.

Public opinion never goes entirely astray. By uncertain roads, often by
those not most happily chosen, it arrives definitely at the expression
of a true sentiment. The motives that lead it to acclaim any one are not
always of the best, but there are always other good reasons that justify
this expression. It is deceived regarding titles, sometimes it mistakes
faults for excellencies, it estimates a man for his manner, and that is
the least of all his merits; it believes that a painter paints well when
he paints badly and because he paints minutely. What is astonishing in
Paul Potter is the imitation of objects carried to the point of
eccentricity. People do not know, or do not notice, that in such a case
the soul of the painter is of more worth than the work, and that his
manner of feeling is of infinitely greater importance than the result.

When he painted _The Bull_ in 1647, Paul Potter was not twenty-three
years of age. He was a very young man; and according to the usual run of
young men of twenty-three years, he was a child. To what school did he
belong? To none. Had he any masters? We do not know of any other
teachers than his father Pieter Simonsz Potter, an obscure painter, and
Jacob de Wet (of Haarlem), who had no force to influence a pupil either
for good or evil. Paul Potter then found around his cradle and
afterwards in the studio of his second master nothing but simple advice
and no doctrines; very strange to say, the pupil did not need anything
more. Until 1647 Paul Potter divided his time between Amsterdam and
Haarlem, that is to say, between Frans Hals a