He remains the most lovable painter in Holland, and the tenderest--in a country where tenderness is not easily found.
Look, for example, at the two pictures at The Hague which are reproduced opposite pages 74 and 80.

The first represents the Steen family.

The jolly Jan himself is smoking at the table; the old brewer and the elder Mrs.Steen are in the foreground.

I doubt if any picture exists in which the sense of innocent festivity is better expressed.

It is all perhaps rather a muddle: Mrs.Steen has some hard work before her if the house is to be restored to a Dutch pitch of cleanliness and order; but how jolly every one is! Jan himself looks just as we should expect.
The triumph of the "Oyster Feast," on the opposite page, seems to me to be the girl kneeling in the corner.