It is here that one seems to discover the essential difference between Van der Helst and Hals. The former is intellectually the bigger man, while Hals’s distinction is a superiority of feeling. His work, therefore, has the sensuous charm in which the other’s is deficient. When in the light of this you reëxamine Van der Helst’s masterpiece, it is to discover that what is lacking in it is the esthetic quality. The composition is not pervaded with atmosphere, in the various planes of which the figures might take on differences of subtle value; and, while there is an arrangement of light and shade, it is used only to assist the modeling of the figures, and with no feeling for heightening the beauty of the color-scheme by the luminosity of the hues. The result is that the scene, for all its assertion of vital force, is lacking in vivacity. The same test, applied to the other corporation pictures and single portraits by this artist in the Rijks Museum, corroborates the conviction that, apart from Rembrandt, Van der Helst was the biggest intellectual force among the portrait-painters of Holland, but that he lacked the esthetic feeling and accordingly the quality of technique which alone make him inferior to Hals. THOMAS DE KEYSER SON of an architect and sculptor, Thomas de Keyser was born in Amsterdam, 1596 or 1597, and died there in 1667. His career is divided by a date about 1628. Before this his portraits are similar in character to those of Nicolaes Elias, with which they have been confused. The figures have a hardness and some stiffness, but unmistakable carrying power; the flesh is leathery, dull in color, and expressionless, and the composition either formally arranged in rows, or artlessly strung out in separate items. Thus his earlier portraits present a curious mingling of power and naïveté. They are representative of real people, but are not yet conceived with an artist’s eye. Then by 1628 a change begins to appear in De Keyser’s work, as it also did a few years later in that of Elias. Atmosphere creeps into his pictures; the flesh becomes more luminous, the composition at once more varied and more unified, and the figures, without losing their character, acquire amenity and dignity. It is said that De Keyser’s work influenced the young Rembrandt when he first settled in Amsterdam, and it would seem as if also the older man gradually gained something from the younger.