532 Painting Guard (de Schutters-maaltijd), in the Museum of Amster- dam, has been placed opposite Rembrandt's Night Watch. Van der Heist here shows himself the master of genre painting, which consists in perpetuating the memory of an action and its actors. The National Gallery in London possesses a portrait of a Lady standing, half length ; but all his best works are in his native country. Gerard Dou (1613 — 1675) of Leyden, a pupil of Rem- brandt, but of too original a genius to permit of his being classed amongst mere imitators, was at first a portrait- painter; but afterwards, adopting the anecdotal style, he began by treating small subjects with great breadth before he ascended, or descended, according to the taste of the critic, to extreme and minute delicacy. The patient and laborious artist, who made his own brushes, pounded his own colours, and prepared his own varnish, panels, or canvas, worked, in order to avoid dust, in a studio opening on to a wet ditch. The best work of Gerard Dou is the Woman sick of the Dropsy, in the Louvre. The Empiric, in the Hermitage at S. Petersburg ; the Charlatan on his Stage, in the Pina- kothek, Munich, or an almost identical subject in the gallery at Buckingham Palace ; the Evening School, in the Museum of Amsterdam — are among his chief productions. He frequently painted his own portrait. At Paris there is a Portrait with his palette and pencils; at Dresden another, playing on the violin, and one writing in a book ; at Brussels, he is very young, drawing a statue of Love by the light of a lamp; in the National Gallery he holds a pipe in his hand : in the Amsterdam Gallery there is yet another. Many works by Dou are in the private galleries of Holland and England, and when sold fetch
