This little picture, which dates from the earliest days of the National Gallery, was for many years obscured with dirt and not exhibited to the public. It has recently been cleaned, and shows one of the painter's favourite subjects--the bleaching grounds in the neighbourhood of Haarlem. Before the discovery of chemical means of bleaching linen, these were a great source of income to the town. Linen was brought here from all parts of the continent to be bleached, and then went back as Dutch linen or Holland. 45. THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY. _Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). Rembrandt Harmensz--called also Van Rhyn, "of the Rhine," from having been born on the banks of that river--has a place apart by himself in the history of painting. He is the greatest genius of the Dutch School, and one of the six supreme masters of the world. He is also one of the most distinctive and individual of them all. In what, let us ask, do the genius and the individuality of Rembrandt consist? In the first place, his mastery of the resources of painting, within the sphere and for the ideals he chose for himself, is surpassed by no other artist. "It will be remembered," said Millais, "that Rembrandt in his first period was very careful and minute in detail, and there is evidence of stippling in his flesh-painting; but when he grew older, and in the fulness of his power, all appearance of such manipulation and minuteness vanished in the breadth and facility of his brush, though the advantage of his early manner remained. The latter manner is, of course, much the finer and really the more finished of the two.[76] I have closely examined his pictures at the National Gallery, and have actually _seen_, beneath that grand veil of breadth, the early work that his art conceals from untrained eyes--the whole science of painting. And herein lies his superiority to Velazquez, who, with all his mighty power and magnificent execution, never rose to the perfection which, above all with painters, consists in _ars celare artem_" (_Magazine of Art_, 1888, p. 291). "Rembrandt," says Sir Frederic Burton, "would have been unparalleled had he treated nothing but frivolous subjects"; but, in the second place, "the artist was a poet and a seer." He was a seer in his penetration into the mind of man; a poet in his perception of a special kind of beauty. His portraits have "an inward life that belongs to no others in a like degree." It is as a painter of character that he shows himself supreme, bringing out the personality of his sitters in their gestures and attitudes, and in the peculiarity of bearing and expression stamped upon them by temperament and habits. From his dramatic action and mastery of expression, Rembrandt has been called "the Shakespeare of Holland." In his