Much appreciation and some extravagant praise has been lavished on the still-life painters who, at the time when the higher aims of artistic endeavour began to die out in Holland, displayed remarkable ability. The cultivation of horticulture at Haarlem, the centre of the tulipomania fever in the middle of the seventeenth century, may have had an influence on the artistic presentation of inanimate nature; this feeling was no doubt stimulated by the display made by the goldsmiths in an age of great prosperity. Willem Claesz Heda, who was born 1594, is among the earliest of the Dutch still-life painters, and his picture (No. 2390) is dated 1637; he, however, did not die until more than forty years later. Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-1684), the painter of _Fruit and a Vase on a Table_ (No. 2391) and of another and much larger picture (No. 2392), was the pupil of his father, David de Heem; as he spent many years at Antwerp, he is sometimes regarded as a Flemish painter. That Abraham van Beyeren (1620-1675?), who painted several sea-pieces, was specially fond of copying the appearance of fish, is seen from his _Still-life: Fish_ (No. 2326A), at the Louvre, which has in recent years also acquired another work (No. 2312A) by him. Willem Kalf (1621?-1693) may have studied under H. G. Pot, the Haarlem genre-painter. He was evidently impressed with the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt, and often placed the drinking-cups, wine-glasses, and fruit on a richly-coloured tablecloth. He is here represented by four examples, of which the _Dutch Interior_ (No. 2436) is the best. Eight pictures by Jan Huysum (1682-1749), two by Jan van Os (1744-1808), and one by C. van Spaendonck (1756-1839) belong to the latest phase of art in Holland, and mark the decadence in full operation. It will be noticed that the Louvre has a much larger selection of still-life pictures than the National Gallery, which seems to regard achievements of this kind with disdain. Melchior Hondecoeter (1636-1695), the painter of the farmyard, gives unmistakable proof of his power in his large signed _Eagle swooping down on a Farmyard_ (No. 2405), and two rather smaller pictures (Nos. 2406-7). Jan Weenix (1640-1719), who usually concerns himself with dead game and birds, is working on the usual lines in three (Nos. 2610, 2611, and 2612A) of his four pictures in the great French museum; the other represents _A Seaport_ (No. 2612). He was the fellow-pupil of Hondecoeter in the studio of his father, Jan Baptist Weenix (1621-1660), who studied for a time under the early Dutch master, Abraham Blomaert, and worked in Italy for four years. For that reason the latter has adopted an Italian mode of signing his only picture (No. 2609) in the Louvre. THE DECLINE