SECTION XI ISACK VAN OSTADE ISACK VAN OSTADE, a younger brother of Adriaen, was born at Haarlem in 1621, and baptized on June 2 in that year. He died in 1649, when he was only twenty-eight of the same age as Paulus Potter, who died early in 1654. That Isack van Ostade, like Potter, must be counted among the great painters of the seventeenth century, is a proof of his remarkable talent, in no wise inferior to that of his elder brother Adriaen, who lived much longer. It may indeed be said that Isack's work is far superior to all that Adriaen produced up to the year 1638, when he himself was twenty-eight. Isack was a pupil of Adriaen, according to Houbraken, whose authority may be trusted. Indeed, Isack's early pictures show so close a resemblance to those which Adriaen painted about the years in which his brother must have been his pupil (1635-8) that the two brothers' works are nowadays often confused, and cannot always be distinguished with certainty. Isack, so far as we know, spent his whole life at Haarlem, where he was at work since about 1639, the date on a picture at Augsburg (144). Very little is known about the external facts of Isack's career. The growth of his reputation in the years 1641-3 is illustrated by an interest- ing document printed by Van der Willigen (p. 239) ; it is the result of an arbitration by the council of the Guild of St. Luke in a dispute between Isack and the Rotterdam dealer Leendert Hendricksz Volmarijn (see Nos. 1-5). Isack found his subjects mainly in the peasant life of his own day, both indoors and out of doors. The rest of his work is of little import- ance. His interiors, in which he shows the closest kinship to Adriaen, are among his early productions. Most of them have the light and shade strongly emphasised, with one passage that is brightly illumined. In colour they are somewhat warmer and yellower than those of Adriaen. The types are not so much caricatured ; scenes of revelry, with drunkards or men fighting, occur less often. In his more mature period Isack confined his attention chiefly to exteriors. These fall into two main groups : first, summer scenes, usually streets, but seldom pure landscapes ; and, secondly, winter scenes, on the 437
