Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 3, 1910.djvu/155

 SECT, x ADRIAEN VAN OSTADE 141 But about the year 1670 there comes a notable decline. Following the general course of Dutch art, the decadence of Ostade is marked by smoother execution, gayer colour-schemes, and a growing insipidity of colour and expression. His figures lose their individual character and become mere types. He shows a preference for single notes of colour, such as a blue jacket or a brilliant white cap. Many of his pictures look like translations into oil of his water-colours, which enjoyed a high popularity, and must have brought Ostade a great deal of money. Not only his early pictures, but even his simple pen-drawings, are to be pre- ferred to those gaudy water-colours. Ostade has left a very considerable number of works of both these kinds. In his etchings, fifty of which exist, the same development may be traced as in his pictures and drawings. More than once Ostade both painted or drew and etched precisely the same subject. The etchings have thus served as models for forged pictures and water-colours. The place which Adriaen van Ostade occupies in Dutch art is not easily defined in a few words. While, on the one hand, he has admirable qualities as a draughtsman and painter, which advance him to the front rank, he is, on the other hand, so far inferior to masters like Brouwer and Jan Steen in versatility, originality, and the power of depicting character that he cannot retain so exalted a position. His rendering of the light and shade in interiors, illumined by sunlight falling through small rounded panes, is one of his chief merits ; he is surpassed in this respect by no other artist. On the other hand, in the rendering of materials he is far inferior to masters like Metsu, Ter Borch, and Jan Steen. He never acquired a complete command of pigment as a means to an end in the same degree as those painters did. Although, no doubt, comparisons are always unsatis- factory, still it may be said that Ostade occupies in Dutch art much the same position relatively to Jan Steen as Teniers holds in Flemish art compared to Brouwer. PUPILS AND IMITATORS OF ADRIAEN VAN OSTADE Adriaen van Ostade's chief pupil was his brother Isack, whose works are described in the next section. Among the other pupils, CORNELIS DUSART (1660-1704) un- questionably comes nearest to the master. He must have entered Adriaen's studio shortly before the year 1680, and contrived to imitate the style or his later period so exactly that it is often very difficult to distinguish the works of the two painters. Yet, on a more careful examination, Dusart will be found to rank below his master in every respect, whether in delicacy of colouring, in perfection of technique, or in the rendering of material and of character. However, there must be a certain number of Ostades in the style of Dusart and Dusarts in the style of Ostade, on which master and pupil both worked, for in the sale catalogue of Dusart's goods (1708)