The readiest way to study the art of Holland in the seventeenth century is under the separate heads of portraiture, landscape, marine, genre, and still-life. In this way one obtains a comprehensive survey of the development of each of these branches, and is not confused by the fact that many of the artists practised in more than one of them. But at the start it must be observed that these separate departments are inclosed in a common motive. As Fromentin says, the art of Holland was essentially an art of portraiture. It followed from the character of the people and the conditions under which they found themselves. They were a nation of burghers, practical in mind, direct in action, self-centered, and full of personal and local pride. What more likely, in fact more inevitable, than that they should need and their painters should supply an art which gave a complete, exact, and for the most part unembellished portrait of the country, its people, and their habits of life. But while this common motive of portraiture, which distinguishes every branch of Holland painting, was in response to a common and collective need of the people, it was modified and shaped by the example of two leading personalities: Hals and Rembrandt. So determining was their influence that an analysis of their respective motives and methods is not only a necessary preliminary but the quickest way to a comprehension of the development of the whole school. They had characteristics in common. One might almost represent the two men by concentric circles; Hals being the inner, Rembrandt the indefinitely larger one. Hals was an epitome of the genius of the Dutch race; Rembrandt was also this, but more--the expression of a genius peculiarly his own. Both manifested, Hals invariably, Rembrandt at times, the quality of direct seeing and doing that was a national characteristic; but at other times Rembrandt was possessed of a spirituality, if one may so call it, that was directly opposed to the prevailing practicalness. Let us study each for the purpose of discovering what was his own personal art and how it affected the art of others.