Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 3, 1910.djvu/571

 SECTION XII ADRIAEN BROUWER ADRIAEN BROUWER was born at Oudenarde in 1605 or 1606, and was buried at Antwerp on February i, 1638. Both towns are in modern Belgium, so that it is necessary to justify the inclusion of the painter in the Dutch school. No explanation will, however, be thoroughly convincing. All the arguments for classing Brouwer as a Dutch painter may be set forth, but the contrary reasons for leaving him in the Flemish school will be equally numerous and equally valid. Obviously, he was not wholly un- connected with the art of the Northern Provinces. According to an old tradition, he ran away from his father's house at the age of sixteen. That would be about the years 1621-2. Soon afterwards he appears in the studio of Frans Hals ; if one may depend upon Houbraken's very trustworthy statements, this happened not later than the end of 1623 or the beginning of 1624 (see Hofstede de Groot, ^uellenstudien^ i. 63). He may be traced in Haarlem and Amsterdam until 1627. Then he is lost to sight until he reappears at the end of 1631 in Antwerp, where the records show that he remained until he died in the last days of January 1638. There is good reason to assign the earliest possible date the year 1621 to his arrival in Holland. For in 1627 he was commended in a dedication as a very famous painter (a native) of Haarlem. He must, therefore, have already lived so long in Haarlem that he was thought to have been born there. Besides, it is more probable that he migrated from the Southern to the Northern Provinces during the twelve years' truce (1609-21) than that he went north after the renewal of hostilities on April 10, 1 62 1. 1 Brouwer's latest biographer, F. Schmidt Degener, supposes that there was an earlier Antwerp period in the artist's development, before he went to Holland. The suggestion may seem attractive and would make it much easier to explain certain facts. But there does not seem any satis- factory proof of it, when considered in relation to what is known of 1 The map of the siege of Breda (1624-5), which was found in Brouwer's possession in 1631, has suggested the theory that the painter fought there on the side of the Dutch. At that time, however, Brouwer was in Haarlem. Apparently this map was the celebrated etching in six sheets by Jacques Callot. 557