But to resume the thread of the story. At the commencement of the new century Hals was sixteen years old; Daniel Seghers, eleven; Van Goyen and the portrait-painter Thomas de Keyser, four. The train, in fact, was already laid for a new kind of portraiture and for a new motive in painting--that of naturalistic landscape. Otherwise the men destined to be the most representative of the new school were as yet unborn. With the opening of the century, however, their names appear thick and fast, and continue to arrive for forty years; after which the list of those conspicuous in the annals of the Dutch seventeenth-century school ceases. Dating, therefore, from Hals’s birth in 1584, the period covered is fifty-six years. It is perhaps convenient for the purpose of assisting the memory to divide the first forty years of the new century into two parts: the first ending in 1621, with the conclusion of the twelve years’ truce; and the second with the marriage, in 1641, of the Prince of Orange’s son, William, to the eldest daughter of Charles I of England. The historical aspect of these two periods in relation to the story of art may be considered after we have reviewed the names of the principal artists whose births they contain. The earlier division, then, includes the greatest name in the art of Holland, one of the greatest in all art, that of Rembrandt, who was born in 1606. The latter is the birth-year also of the flower-painter Jan van Heem, while the preceding years of the century disclose the names of the marine-painter Simon de Vlieger and the landscape-painters Salomon Ruisdael and Aert van der Neer, and Palamedesz, painter of genre. The year 1610 gives us Van Ostade and the landscape-painter Johannes Both; 1611, Ferdinand Bol and Willem van de Velde the Elder; 1613, Wouwerman and Gerard Dou; and 1615, Govert Flinck and Jan Wynants. Here we may check the routine of enumeration to note another great name, one of the most distinguished of the Holland School. It is that of Gerard Terborch, born in 1617. He is followed, in 1619, by the landscape-painter Philips Koninck and the portrait-painter Bartholomeus van der Helst. To them succeed in 1620 Aelbert Cuyp and Nicolaes Berchem, followed in 1621 by Eeckhout and Allart van Everdingen. This enumeration does not pretend to be exhaustive. The aim has been rather to include as few names as possible, so as to simplify the study by concentrating attention from the start on those which are most representative and most often met with. After familiarizing one’s self with these, it is comparatively easy to add to their number and to place the newly acquired ones in their chronological relation to this preliminary list. The same motive determines the selection for the second period.