These and other group-pictures, such as _The Prince’s Birthday_ of the Rijks Museum, are works of genius, unique in painting. For they are not constructed according to the methods of the schools, but are the products of a natural gift of seeing and rendering naturally a glimpse of busy life. Yet with a tact that avoids confusion; places everything in its own plane of space with admirable precision and propriety; leaves no intervals of uncertainty or obscurity; but secures to the whole an artistic reasonableness and completeness; and all this with an art that conceals art, and makes the scene appear to be one of complete naturalness. No other artist has ever reconciled nature and art quite so happily; and when one passes from the technical appreciation to a study of the varieties of character, depicted in the personages of all ages from the baby to the grandparents, and notes the mingling of humor and tenderness in the sentiment and the embracing large-heartedness that has inspired the whole, it is to marvel at and rejoice in the uniqueness of Steen’s genius. Then, by way of contrast, mark his treatment of a subject in which only a few persons figure. To myself his series of medical visits presents perhaps the most charming example of this concentrated phase of his art. Witness _The Sick Lady_ of the Rijks Museum, where the young woman sits with her head supported by a pillow, its whiteness against the pallor of her face, while the doctor stands counting her pulse. It is a masterpiece of tender characterization, for here the physician also is gentle and solicitous. However, he is not so in _A Doctor Visiting a Sick Young Woman_ (No. 166) of the Hague Gallery. There he is boorish in appearance and suggests ignorance; in rough contrast to the pathetically fragile little lady, lying in bed and so ruefully gazing at the medicine-glass in the maid’s hand. The picture is not dated, but I wonder if it was painted after the artist’s rude experience with the apothecary who sold him up for ten florins! Again, in _The Doctor’s Visit_ of the National Gallery, the man presents a different trait of behavior. It is not tenderness toward a delicate young thing as in the Amsterdam picture, but respectful solicitude toward an older woman, who, by the way, reminds one of Steen’s wife, Margaret. She is dressed in a jacket of old rose, edged with fur, and a silvery-blue skirt, while the doctor wears a suit of black with olive velvet sleeves. In the Amsterdam picture his black costume is relieved by a silk cloak of ashy brown, while the young woman is in pearly-gray satin, trimmed with white fur, a peep of blue slipper appearing from beneath the skirt. In fact, the color of these pictures is exceedingly choice; differing from the richness and liveliness of the family groups; corresponding in its subtle delicacy to the delicate pointedness of the characterization that is not without a certain dry flavor of wit.