The public also applauded the skill with which such subjects were rendered by the artists, and the latter, since still-life presented excellent opportunities for the display of craftsmanship, were glad enough to reciprocate the popular taste. Thus resulted what one notes as a second point in the consideration of Holland still-life painting: namely, that the artists freely introduced objects of still-life into their portraits. I cannot cite a more typical instance than the earliest military group-picture by Frans Hals in the Haarlem Museum. Here the viands and furnishings of the banquet are rendered with at least as much gusto as the heads, and for the present with more assurance. Thirdly, it is easy to trace the influence that this joy in the representation of still-life had upon the evolution of genre painting in the Holland School and upon the particular character that it assumes. In fact, the interest in still-life subjects, with the influence it had upon the methods of the artists, was a most important factor in the development of the Holland School. Closely allied to it is the interest in portraiture. How radically this interest affected the art of Holland may be gathered from another glance at the foregoing list of names. It is in the beginning of the new era, in the earlier division of names, that all the famous portrait-painters appear. Not to mention Rembrandt, whose genius was of the universal kind, embracing in its single scope the separated motives of other artists, we find the names of Hals, Mierevelt, Ravesteyn, Van der Helst, Terborch, De Keyser, Cuyp, Bol, and Flinck. On the other hand, among the names in the second list, selected without any _parti pris_, there is not one of first or even second rank as a portrait-painter; only men like Maes and Netscher, who were primarily and far more worthily genre painters. For it is the genre painters who form one of the chief distinctions of the later generation. It is true that Dou belongs with the earlier, and he was and still remains popular. But he is not in the same class as Vermeer and Steen, nor as Maes, Metsu, and De Hooch, scarcely as a painter even to be reckoned with Ostade. Indeed, he is nearer to Van Mieris and Netscher, the men in whose hands genre sank to a distinctly lower level. The only example in the earlier generation of a great genre painter is Terborch, who presents the exception, and a brilliant one, to the generalization I have suggested.