Note (return) — Chapter XIII · 50

Adrian van Ostade was born at Haarlem in 1610 and died in his native town in 1685. He has been called 'the Rembrandt of genre painters,' and, like Rembrandt, he was without the sense of human beauty and grace, for even his children are ugly; yet it is the purer, happier side of national life which he constantly represents, and he had great feeling for nature, with picturesqueness and harmony of design and colouring, as well as mastery of the technique of his art. He suffered many hardships in his youth, and grew up a quiet, industrious, family man. He left a very large number of pictures, nearly four hundred, many of them good, and not a few in England. 'The Alchemist' 53 is in the National Gallery.