The painters of _genre_, by the number, quality, and diversity of whose pictures the Dutch School is specially distinguished, may be roughly divided into three classes; namely, those who studied the upper, the middle, and the lower classes respectively. But as Holland was a republic, and the great stream of its art welled up from the earth and was not showered upon it from above, it will be found convenient to reverse the social order in considering them, and begin with the immediate successors of Frans Hals, whose influence was without doubt a very considerable factor in the development of Adrian Brouwer and Adrian and Isaac Ostade. ADRIAN BROUWER, now generally classed under the Flemish School, was born at Oudenarde in 1606. But he went early to Haarlem, and it was not until about 1630 that he settled at Antwerp, where he died in 1641. He was a pupil of Frans Hals, and acquired from him not only his spirited and free touch, but also a similar mode of life. His pictures, which for the most part represent the lower orders eating and drinking, often in furious strife, are extraordinary true and life-like in character, and display a singularly delicate and harmonious colouring, which inclines to the cool scale, an admirable individuality, and a _sfumato_ of surface in which he is unrivalled; so that we can well understand the high esteem in which Rubens held them. Owing to his mode of life, and to its early close, the number of his works is not large, and they are now seldom met with. No gallery is so rich in them as Munich, which possesses nine, six of which are masterpieces. _A Party of Peasants at a Game of Cards_, affords an example of the brightness and clearness of those cool tones in which he evidently became the model of Teniers. _Spanish Soldiers Throwing Dice_, is equally harmonious, in a subdued brownish tone. _A Surgeon Removing the Plaster from the Arm of a Peasant_ is not only most masterly and animated in expression, but is a type of his bright, clear, and golden tone, and is singularly free and light in touch. _Card-players Fighting_, is in every respect one of his best pictures. The momentary action in each figure, all of them being individualized with singular accuracy even as regards the kind of complexion, is incomparable, the tenderness of the harmony astonishing, and the execution of extraordinary delicacy. The only example in the National Gallery is the _Three Boors Drinking_, bequeathed by George Salting in 1910; and at Hertford House the _Boor Asleep_, though of this we may without hesitation accept the description in the catalogue, "our painting is of the highest quality, and in the audacity of its realism rises almost to grandeur."