Studio: international art (60.1914)

Studio-Talk

painter, Philip de Koningh, there is a magnificent
specimen, showing one of those extensive views of
country under the transforming effects of April
weather in which that master excelled. Other
paintings are a fine Emanuel de Witte, Interior of
the Nieuwekerk, Delft; two important sea-pieces of
Van Goyen; an exquisite work by Van de Velde,
besides works by Jan Both, Brekelenkam, Hobbema,
Ostade, Saenredam, Van der Neer and Jan Wyck.
There is also a work by Du Jardin, The Start for
Hawking, from the Hope collection, of which
Smith says : “ It is impossible to commend too
highly this exquisite work of art.” The landscape
by Cuyp, which we are reproducing, is very expres-
sive of the national genius in landscape, in its
simplicity, its sense of the mystery and beauty of
indefinite horizons and its feeling for the human
element in landscape compositions.

The Portrait of a Young
Woman by Rembrandt,
which formed a part of the
collection when recently
exhibited at the Grosvenor
Gallery, has been with-
drawn by Sir Hugh Lane
—the maker of the collec-
tion-—on account of an
attack by a well-known
writer, and the twenty-two
works referred to above
take its place. They make
the collection extremely
representative of the art of
the period with its many
facets, and it cannot be
doubted that the particular
purpose which the collec-
tion is intended to fulfil is
assisted by the exchange.

Since the transfer, the
Portrait of a Young
Woman has been cleaned
by the eminent Professor
Hauser, of the Kaiser-
Friedrich Museum, a fine
connoisseur of Rem-
brandt’s work. It has
been pronounced by him,
also by the still better
known authority on Rem-
brandt, Dr. Bode, and by
Dr. Frielander, to be un-
questionably a Rembrandt “portrait of a lady” by gerard ter borcpi

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of his 1640 period, and a remarkably fine example.
The picture fetched in the Demidoff sale in 1880
the highest sum that had hitherto been obtained
for a Dutch picture, and by the curious expressive-
ness of the face it has aroused the enthusiasm of
artists and writers. In a national collection, how-
ever, it is important that the student should be
protected from every suspicion that his study of a
single work standing in the name of so great a
master may end in deception. The generous
donor, Mr. Max Michaelis, has had the single
aim of acquiring the best that modern connoisseur-
ship could secure for the inauguration of a National
Gallery in a country whose interests he has deeply
at heart. There is no doubt that there never has
been a national collection founded before upon
work which so helped to express the history and
character of its founders, or a modern gallery
opened with a nucleus collection of greater im-