Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 3, 1910.djvu/574

 560 ADRIAEN BROUWER SECT. concentrated flood of light and the kindred effect of light and shade, such as were obtained in Holland ; only in a very few cases did he achieve the completely harmonious combination of colours that is characteristic of the Northern school. Brouwer's characterisation is remarkable. He renders his personages with the fewest possible means. He gives prominence to the shady sides of life, to poverty, sickness, the passion for gaming, drunkenness, anger, fighting, and so on themes in rendering which he is excelled by none, and equalled, perhaps, only by Jan Steen. The time which he used to spend in taverns and vaults was not spent in mere relaxation. De Bie relates, and drawings still in existence show, that the artist would draw the company with pen and ink, and pay his score with the sketches. Not only the drawings, but the pictures also give such an impression of truth to nature that one might think they were designed and painted on the spot. The figures in his pictures come before the spectator not so much like models as like portraits ; it seems as if Brouwer's contemporaries could have found every one of them among the regular frequenters of the taverns. One looks vainly in Brouwer's work for the types that are repeated in- definitely by Teniers or Ostade. Brouwer's indifference to the female sex is noteworthy. In most of his pictures the figures are all, or almost all, men ; the few women whom he painted are among the most repulsive examples of their sex. The relations of the sexes in his pictures often pass the limits of propriety. In his landscapes, Brouwer was far in advance of his time. Before 1638, when Brouwer died, no one in the Northern Provinces, and Rubens alone in the Southern Provinces, had done anything equal to his works. Unfortunately they are not numerous and have not a wide scope. Their qualities of atmosphere and colour were not again attained until the best works of Ruisdael appeared. Although their subjects seem to have been taken from the Haarlem rather than the Antwerp district, their loose and sketchy handling suggests that they were produced in the painter's last years. Both Rubens and Rembrandt held Brouwer in high esteem, and possessed numerous pictures by him. Unusually high prices were paid for them even in the seventeenth century (compare, for instance, the notes to Nos. 1 72 and 247 with the note on Isack van Ostade, No. 343^). The Royal collections of the eighteenth century, such as Diisseldorf, Dresden, and Madrid, speedily acquired the best works of the master who, since Bode's studies paved the way in the nineteenth century, has again come into fame.