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Never mind!" she concluded, consoling herself, as usual, with considerations that were beneath her. "Hobbema will sell at my death for a bigger price than I gave for him that's one comfort!" She looked again at Felix; a smile of mischievous satisfaction began to show itself in her face. "Anything wrong with your watch-chain?" she asked.
The pastoral peace that hovers like a golden benison about Giorgione's Concert at the Louvre, the slow, widowed smile of the Mona Lisa, the cross-rhythms of Las Lanzas, most magnificent of battle-pieces, in the Velasquez Sala at the Prado, even the processional poplars of Hobbema at the National Gallery, or the clear cool daylight which filters through the window of the Dresden Vermeer these and others do not always give me the buoyant sense of self-liberation which great art should.
The most wonderful Rembrandt, Velasquez, Turner, Hobbema, Van Dyck, Raphael, Frans Hals, Romney, Gainsborough, Whistler, Corot, Mauve, Vermeer, Fragonard, Botticelli, and Titian reproductions followed in such rapid succession as fairly to daze the magazine readers. Four pictures were given in each number, and the faithfulness of the reproductions astonished even their owners.
The approach was by a straight open road, bordered by thin lank trees, all sloping away from the south-west wind-quarter, and the scene bore a strange resemblance to certain bits of Dutch landscape which have been imprinted on the world's eye by Hobbema and his school.
MINDERT HOBBEMA was a pupil of Jacob Ruysdael, and this is almost all that is known of him personally; but his pictures show that he was a great landscape painter. They sell for enormous sums, and many of the best are in England. Most of those seen in the continental galleries are not those he should be judged by.
The hills tumble this way and that; below is the great weald of Sussex, blue with vapour, spotted with gold fields, level as a landscape by Hobbema; Chanctonbury Ring stands up like a gaunt watcher; its crown of trees is pressed upon its brow, a dark and imperial crown.
Sums as large as four thousand pounds have been paid more than once for a Hobbema, yet his name was not found in any dictionary of art or artists for more than a century after his death. The English were the first to acknowledge Hobbema's merit, and nine-tenths of his works are in England, where he is the most popular Dutch landscape painter.
The Rembrandt hangs on the staircase, as though it were a mere daub; the Hobbema faces the Rubens in his study; the Titian, which my sister-in-law Mary sent me from Madrid, adorns the boudoir. The beautiful furniture picked up by Felipe looks very well in the parlor, which the architect has decorated most tastefully.
Sixty-seven pictures adorned the walls of this magnificent apartment, among them the four masterpieces, the loss of which is the most tragic incident in the melancholy story of poor old Pons. There were a "Chevalier de Malte en Priere," by Sebastian del Piombo; a "Holy Family," by Fra Bartolommeo; a "Landscape," by Hobbema; and a "Portrait of a Woman," by Albert Durer.
I did not see much which my poor taste covets; a Hobbema much admired is, I think, as tame a piece of work as I ever saw. I promised to try to get a good picture or two for the young Duke. Dined with the old Club, instituted forty years ago.
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