THIS charmingly original and versatile artist, whose works abound in public and private collections, was born in Haarlem in 1619 and died there in 1668. He studied landscape with Jan Wynants, but the teacher who set the tenor of his career was Frans Hals. It was from the latter that he derived his skill in handling figures, composing them in groups, placing them in space, and rendering them with fluency and vitality of brushwork; and the principles thus acquired were applied by him also to the treatment of the landscape. On his own part he brought to his work a singularly alert observation, that was happy in hitting upon the fugitive and accidental aspects of a scene, and a fancy that invests his subject with a lyrical grace. His fecundity was such that it is estimated he left some seven hundred examples, which may be divided into those of his early period, which extended through the forties, and those of his maturity, which belong to the fifties and early sixties. He was brought up during the vicissitudes of the Thirty Years’ War, and the impressions of soldiering suggested many of his subjects of cavalry, skirmishing, on the march, or halting at an inn. Elsewhere it is hunting parties, riding parties, gay cavalcades of ladies and gentlemen; then, again, scenes of farming life: the bringing home of hay, watering of horses, scenes in the smithy--an inexhaustible array of incidents in which figure men and women and their friends, the horse and dog. With such unusual productivity it is not strange that some of his pictures suffered by haste of execution. This is especially true of his latest pictures, where the shadows have come through and destroyed the brilliance of the colors. For, though Wouwerman was not a colorist, he was an adept at suggesting the gaiety of color, and his best pictures are bouquets of animated brilliance. AELBERT CUYP