Furniture of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
faience jug and two little ones, six big rare sea-shells
and other Oriental curios.
Dutch art was now in its decadence ; it had lost
its pre-eminence. The French artists set the fashion.
The painter who is commonly held responsible for the
decadence is Gerard de Lairesse (Liege, 1641-1711).
He shows all the technique of the old school, and ar-
ranges his compositions in accordance with the laws
of Italian taste, but he is decidedly artificial. His con-
temporaries and successors are feeble imitators of the
Great and Little masters, and those who have the greatest
reputations are miniaturists and still-life painters.
For Dutch interiors we now have to go to the pastels
of Cornelis Troost (Amsterdam, 1697-1750), whose com-
positions gained for him the name of the " Dutch Ho-
garth." Two reproductibns of interiors by this artist
are shown in Plates LIV and LV. The chairs, tables,
sideboards, candlestands, chandeliers, buffets and chim-
ney-pieces in these pictures in nowise differ from those
used in England during the early Georgian era.
Dutch taste ran to heaviness and over-loading in
ornamentation. During the Louis Quinze period, Schu-
bler was more in favour in wealthy Dutch houses, as
he was in Germany, than were the French designers of
a lighter touch.
A handsome example of Dutch carving of the early
eighteenth century is shown in the mirror frame in
Fig. 47. This is of carved and gilded wood, representing
scrolls, leaves, flowers, a mascaron and a female figure
issuing from one of the scrolls. " This kind of mirror,
made to be hung upon the woodwork or tapestries of
301