Velasquez was so naturally a portraitist that apart from his actual portrait work, every figure composition he painted seems to consist merely of the portraits of a group of persons. He took little pains to connect the figures in a life action, often painting them with a look of unconcern with the proceedings around them, as if specially posing for the artist. In several of his works there are faces looking right out of the picture, and it is evident that in these the artist had little thought in his mind away from portrait presentation.[a] The Surrender of Breda and Las Meninas,[b] regarded generally as his best compositions, are admittedly portrait groupings, but the setting in each case is one of action, and hence the faces looking out of the picture are a great drawback, as they disrobe the illusion of a natural scene. That a man so accurate in his drawing, so perfect in his chiaroscuro, and so skilful in his brushwork, should yet be so conspicuously limited in imagination, is a problem which art historians have yet to solve. [a] See The Breakfast, Hermitage; Christ in the House of Martha, National Gallery, London; and The Drinkers, Prado. [b] Both at the Prado. Franz Hals was on a level with Velasquez in respect of facility in execution, and like him seems to have been a born portraitist. His brushwork was so rapid and decisive that in scarcely any of his designs is there evidence of deliberation. He seems to have been able to take in the essential features of a subject at a glance, and to transfer them to canvas without preliminaries, producing an amazing countenance with the least possible detail. Though some of his large groups are a little stiff, this is rather through his want of capacity in invention than a set purpose of exaggeration with a view to heightening the dignity of pose, for it is obvious that Hals had little imagination, and knew nothing of the boundless possibilities of his art in general composition. He appears to have passed through life without concern for his work beyond material results, being well convinced that the magic of his execution would leave nothing further for the public to desire. In the last forty years of his life he made no advance in his art except in one respect, but the change was great, for it doubled the art value of his portraits. He learned how to subordinate his colours; how to modify his chiaroscuro in order to force the immediate attention of the observer on the countenance of his subject.[52] Such an advance with such an artist placed him in the rank of the immortals among the portraitists.