On the other hand, it is easier to transmit the conviction that Hals was a follower of surfaces, for one’s eyesight here assists one’s feeling. Look at one of his portraits and observe the fluent skill with which the several planes of the features are rendered; the finesse with which a glove is fitted to the hand, the folds of a costume are expressed, and even protuberances of the form suggested. It is admirable, marvelous! When painters can achieve such magic, it is no wonder that we have a phrase, “as clever as paint.” But compare this portrait with one of Rembrandt’s, and the latter’s superiority in the matter of solidity and structural strength becomes apparent. The suggestion of form in Hals’s is altogether slighter; you will not be convinced of bone and muscle structure beneath the surfaces, and, if you continue the comparison from gallery to gallery or choose to vary it by comparing Hals with Van Eyck, Dürer, Holbein, and the great portrait-painters of the other schools, will hardly fail to be convinced of his inferiority as a constructor. On the other hand, it was his skill in following the surface that made his influence so valuable to his contemporaries. The sense of structural form cannot be imparted. It is constitutional; a man has it or he has not. But it is possible to teach efficiency in brushwork; and Hals, one of the most brilliant painters who ever lived, set a standard of painter-like craftsmanship that, passed on by his immediate pupils to others, gave to Holland the merit of producing the most efficient school of painters in the world. The most important of his pupils were Terborch, Metsu, Wouwerman, and Adriaen van Ostade, the last named the teacher of Jan Steen. It is a noticeable fact that all these men were genre painters, for even Wouwerman, by a slight straining of the word, can be included, since the individual charm of his landscapes consists in their animated groups of figures, and it was in his treatment of these that he was especially indebted to Hals. In fact, the latter’s influence on the men of his own day was directly and most characteristically and emphatically shown, not, as in our day, in portraiture, but in genre; in shaping, refining, and giving new distinction to the tendency for genre pictures that the Hollanders had inherited from the united School of Flanders. In a previous chapter we have spoken of the encouragement which Hals’s example gave to the still-life painting; it was no less effective in encouraging the use of still-life in genre. The motive of the new genre became less that of depicting an incident than of picturing the environment of home life, its accompaniments of furniture and belongings; and these were made contributory to recreating the spirit of the life.