[29] Sir W. M. Conway: _Early Flemish Artists and their Predecessors on the Lower Rhine_, 1887. [30] The letters often found on pictures, which for a long time excited the curiosity and imagination of critics, are now fully explained as the initials not of the painters but of the patrons (see Wauters: _The Flemish School_, p. 61). THE DUTCH SCHOOL ... Artists should descry abundant worth In trivial commonplace, nor groan at dearth If fortune bade the painter's craft be plied In vulgar town and country! ROBERT BROWNING: _Gerard de Lairesse_. The Dutch and Flemish schools were formerly hung together at the National Gallery. They are now separated, and with the _early_ Flemish school we have already dealt. We take up the story here at the point where it leaves off there, and proceed to discuss the Dutch school; passing afterwards to the later Flemish school. The confusion between Dutch and Flemish art is, it may first be remarked, historical. Just as Flanders derived its earliest artistic impulse from German painters, so did the Dutch derive theirs from the Flemings. In the two first periods of Flemish art, Dutch art runs precisely parallel with it. During the sixteenth century a new development began in both schools. This is the period of Italian influence, of the "Romanists" or "Italianisers," as they are called, represented typically by Bernard van Orley and Mabuse. At the end of the sixteenth century, however, a national movement began in both schools--corresponding closely to political changes. In 1579 the "Union of Utrecht" was effected, whereby the Dutch "United Provinces" (= roughly what is now Holland) were separated alike from the Spanish Netherlands and from the Empire, and Dutch independence thus began. Within the next fifty years nearly all the great Dutch painters were born--Berchem, Bol, Cuyp, Frans Hals, Van der Helst, De Keyser, Rembrandt, Ruysdael. In characteristics, as well as in chronology, Dutch art was the direct outcome of Dutch history. This art has come to be identified in common parlance, owing to its chief and distinguishing characteristic, with what is known as "_genre_ painting,"--the painting, that is, which takes its subject from small incidents of everyday life. Three historical conditions combined to bring this kind of painting into vogue. First, the Reformation. The Dutch, when they asserted their independence, were no longer Catholics; but Protestantism despised the arts, and hence the arts became entirely dissociated from religion. There were no more churches to ornament, and hence no more religious pictures were painted[31] whilst religious rapture is superseded by what one of their own critics describes as "the boisterous outbursts which betoken approaching drunkenness" (Havard: _The Dutch School_, p. 12).[32] Secondly, the Dutch were Republicans. There was no reigning family. There were no palaces to decorate, and hence no more historical or mythological pictures were in demand.