Perhaps the frequent attribution to Hals of works by his pupils and imitators, has had something to do with the public estimation of the breadth of his manner. This was often greatly exaggerated by his followers, and many portraits are given to him which he could not possibly have painted. In his important work on the artist, Dr. von Bode points out that some of the duplicates of his pictures were apparently executed by his pupils, but these are not separated in the book.[b] It is a simple matter to divide the works painted by Hals from the studio copies and the portraits of imitators. His brushwork and impasto were quite exceptional. He had a firm direct stroke, never niggled or scumbled, and his loading was restrained though very effective. Quite naturally his pupils, however industrious and skilled, could not closely imitate his remarkable freedom in handling. They were incapable of firm decisive strokes throughout a portrait, and endeavoured to overcome the loading difficulty by using brushes of a coarseness foreign to the master when rendering light tones. Moreover Hals was nearly perfect in drawing, and in this there are usually marked defects in the studio copies. [a] See Stephanus Gereardts, Antwerp Museum; Isabella Coymans, E. Rothschild Collection, Paris; Lady with a Fan, National Gallery, London; and William van Heythuysen, Liechtenstein Collection, Vienna. [b] _Frans Hals: his Life and Work_, 1914. NOTE 53. PAGE 161 The term "grace" as applied in art has so many significations that it is difficult to deal with one of them without confusion. What is here specially referred to is the grace of pose designed by the artist. The object of the portrait painter is to pose his sitter so that the grace indicated shall appear natural and habitual, a feature as important now in the appearance of women as it was twenty-five centuries ago when Sappho asked[a]: What country maiden charms thee, However fair her face, Who knows not how to gather Her dress with artless grace? But the grace of pose never appears to be artless, after the first inspection, unless there is something in the expression to hold the mind. Without this appeal to the mind the portrait must soon tire, and the pose become artificial and stiff, that is to say, in representations of life size, for in miniature portraiture the countenance seldom or never crosses the vision involuntarily.