The spirit by which Dutchmen achieved political success was pre-eminent in the qualities which brought them to the front rank in art.

There were literally hundreds of painters in Holland, few of them bad.

That does not mean that all Dutchmen had the magical power of vision belonging to the greatest artists, the power that transforms the objects of daily view into things of rare beauty, or the imagination of a Tintoret that creates and depicts scenes undreamt of before by man.

Many painted the things around them as they looked to a commonplace mind, with no glamour and no transforming touch.

When we see their pictures, our eyes are not opened to new effects.