had so often painted, and streams of music at the same moment filled the room.

Would that the artist could have lived for many years to enjoy the position he had earned for himself!

"But no,

Death will not have it so,"

and four and a half years after he passed peacefully away.

CHAPTER VII

JOSEF ISRAELS

JOSEF ISRAELS has long occupied the position Born 1824. of leader and father of the Dutch school of painters. He comes in order of time only a few years after Bosboom, and contemporary with Weissenbruch. He was born fourteen years before Mauve and is twenty years older than William Maris. He is the leading figure painter in Holland, and paints also many landscapes, seashore scenes, and other out-door subjects, but always associated with men and women, and these are the more important parts of the pictures. But the chief reason of his prominent position is that Israels, besides being a great artist, is in every way a striking character. A Jew by descent, he has many of the strong qualities of his race; a painter, he has shown his originality in departing from conventional methods and adopting a style and depicting subjects of his own choosing; a man intellectually powerful and well informed,

he became an innovator in art, and though not the first to break with the past, coming as he did after Bosboom, he yet has been the greatest force in dethroning in his own country the historical and romantic views and theories about painting that prevailed there; a man of very sociable habits, he is a good friend and agreeable companion, and is thought so highly of by his fellow artists that he is usually their representative in art matters and the chief speaker at their entertainments.

Israels was born in 1824. He first studied at Groningen, and in 1840 went to Amsterdam, where he was much impressed with that large city and especially with the life in the Jews' quarter. Then, having saved a small sum of money, he went for two years to Paris, but he derived little benefit from the schools there. On his return to Holland he made a new departure on his own account and, leaving the historical subjects which he chose at first, commenced to paint the scenes around him, not looking for pretty things so much as trying to express the inner spirit of the lives of the people. He was the first to give