Entering the door one is immediately beneath the bold and laughing scrutiny of a host of genial masterful arquebusiers, who make merry on the walls for all time.

Such a riot of vivid portraiture never was! Other men have painted single heads as well or better: but Hals stands alone in his gusto, his abundance, his surpassing brio.

It is a thousand pities that neither Lamb nor Hazlitt ever made the journey to Haarlem, because only they among our writers on art could have brought a commensurate gusto to the praise of his brush.
I have reproduced one of the groups opposite page 150, but the result is no more than a memento of the original.

It conveys, however, an impression of the skill in composition by which the group is made not only a collection of portraits but a picture too.

If such groups there must be, this is the way to paint them.