Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/561

1905.] observing that it seemed an easy matter to paint a portrait, requested that he be allowed to try to paint the artist. Hals soon recognized that his visitor was well skilled in the materials he was using. Great, however, was his surprise when he beheld the performance. He immediately embraced the stranger, at the same time crying out: “You are Van Dyck! No one but he could do what you have just now done!”



Assuming the story to be true, how interesting it would be if the two portraits existed, that one might see what Frans Hals, accustomed ta the heavier type of the Dutch burghers, made of the delicately refined features of Van Dyck, and how the latter, who always gave an air of aristocratic elegance to his portraits, acquitted himself with the bluff, jovial Hals, who was as much at home in a tavern as in a studio. For no two men could be more different, both in their points of view and in their methods, though they were alike in this one particular—that each was a most facile and skilful painter.