Nor does this suggestive generalization involve the slovenliness or crudeness of brushwork that often disfigures the modern impressionistic picture. While a canvas by Hals should be viewed from some distance off, it does not offend at close range. On the contrary, one can enjoy the orderliness and finesse, the result of fluency and assurance, that the brushwork reveals, the ensemble having that quality of perfected craftsmanship which characterizes the whole Holland School. And, though Hals is scarcely to be classed as a colorist, the compositions being decked with color rather than interwoven of color, yet his color has a distinctly positive charm. For he takes so frank a delight in local colors, whether gravely or gaily sumptuous, preserves their purity of hue and invests them with luminousness. His color-schemes, too, have this distinction, that, for all their bravery of show, they are never commonplace and seldom without a clear suggestion of virility. A unique opportunity of tracing the development of his style is presented by the series of corporation pictures at Haarlem. I will not attempt a detailed description of each, but rather recall the impressions that were jotted down in the presence of them. The earliest, then, is _The Banquet of the Officers of the Archers of St. George_, dated 1616, when Hals was thirty-two. How magnificent the display of still-life, the table-cloth, fruit, dishes, and goblets painted with such skill and evident delight; what a vigorous enthusiasm is manifested in the treatment of the uniforms, mostly black, and the scarfs of white and crimson silk! Each head is strongly characterized, and so are the hands. The heads are so disposed that they form a band across the picture, below which another band contains the more sprinkled arrangement of the hands. Two of the latter, close together near the center of the table, form the nucleus from which the lines of the composition radiate. The composition, in fact, is quite formal, and the heads, one notices, are lighted from the side and constructed of shadow as well as light; meanwhile no light comes in from the window at the back, through which appears a landscape, less vividly lighted than the scene indoors. Indeed, the whole arrangement is still influenced by the arbitrary devices of the studio; nor does one fail to note that the space occupied by the heads is flattened almost into one plane, as a modern photographic group is apt to be.