With the Dutch people this was most certainly the case, and the popularity of the painters of scenes of everyday life is a proof of it. That Hals, Brouwer, or Ostade were great painters was not half so important to them, if indeed they thought of it all, as that they were capable of turning out pictures which reflected their everyday life like a mirror. So long as Rembrandt painted portraits like those of the Pellicornes and their offspring--the two pictures at Hertford House--or a plain straightforward group like Dr Tulp's _Anatomy Lesson_ (though in this he was already getting away from convention), he was tolerated. And it was not so much his freedom in living and his extravagant notions of the pleasures of life that brought about his downfall, as his failure to realize that when he took the money subscribed for the group of Captain Banning Cocq's Company, the subscribers expected something else for their money than a picture (_The Night Watch_) which might be a masterpiece according to the painter's notions, but was certainly not a portrait group of the subscribers. Here, then, for the first time in the history of painting, we find an artist definitely at issue with the public. I do not say that this was the first time that an artist had failed to please the public, but it is the first occasion on which it was decided that if a painter was to undertake commissions, he must consider the wishes of the patron, or starve. It was something new for a painter of Rembrandt's repute to be told that not he, but the persons who commissioned the work, were to be the judges of whether or not it was satisfactory.