IT has already been remarked that the naval and marine pictures are an exception to the general rule that Dutch painting reflects nothing of the war and the turbulence of the times. The headquarters of the craft was naturally the great shipping and commercial center, Amsterdam. Here in the early part of the seventeenth century lived Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom. Born in Haarlem in 1566, he had, previously to his settling down in the Dutch capital, visited France, England, and Italy, while there is good reason to believe that shipwreck had increased his experiences by enforced sojourn on the west coast of Africa. He makes a brave showing in the Rijks Museum with records of Dutch vessels running down Spanish galleys and a sea-fight on the Haarlem Meer, and always his signature appears proudly on a pennon at the masthead of a winning ship. Simon de Vlieger, a native of Rotterdam, where he was born in 1693, is another painter of stirring sea-fights, though he also represents the peaceful side of shipping; witness _A River Scene_, in the Rijks Museum, where a big-sailed merchantman from the Indies lies near some little boats on the wind-flecked water, a picture full of bracing suggestion. Lieve Verschuier (1630-1686), also a native of Rotterdam, could present with vigorous effect the busy aspect of the harbor, as may be seen at the Rijks Museum in his _Charles II Entering Rotterdam, 24 May, 1660_. But the greatest of this stalwart group were Willem van de Velde the Elder, and his son, Willem the Younger. Both were born in Leyden, the former in 1611, the younger in 1633, and, after a period in Amsterdam, settled in England, where the father died in London, 1693, and the son at Greenwich, in 1707. The characteristic of these men is their treatment of the shipping; for with them, as with the others, the shipping and the sky are of more concern than the water. They give the great galleons and bulky Indiamen the personality almost of sentient things: creatures of power and importance, swelling with the pride of consequence. CHAPTER XI VAN GOYEN AND HOBBEMA The greatest name in Holland landscape, second only to Rembrandt, as many believe, in Dutch art, is Jacob van Ruisdael. Of the comparative merits of the other two leaders of Dutch landscape, opinions may differ; but personally I give the palm to Van Goyen.