THE little portrait of Cosmo Monkhouse, about which Herkomer was so indiscreet in the opinion of Onslow Ford, procured for me a commission from one whose approbation and patronage was dearer to me than any other. David Croal Thomson had already won for himself a premier position among connoisseurs and writers on Art. His intimate knowledge of the various schools of modern Art, which was soon to include a comprehensive view of old painting, and particularly of the masterly English School that thrived under the Georges, and died under Victoria, singled him out as a man eminently fitted to be the historian of the Barbizon School, and of the Modern Dutch School, as he, indirectly, includes its story with that of the brothers Maris—James, Matthew, and William. It is, perhaps, wrong to say that the history of the school is indirectly given in the story of these three painters, because they, with the addition of Mauve, Israels, and Bosboom, express directly the character and achievement of the school.
Even though Croal Thomson may not consider Art hereditary as a matter of course, it is yet interesting to note that he traces downwards from the Old Dutch artists—Ruysdael, Hobbema, and Van der Neer, the English Bonnington, Constable, and Turner, and the Modern French—Daubigny, Corot, and Harpignies.
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