His brush was very broad in its sweep, very sure, very
true. Occasionally in his late painting facility ran to the
ineffectual, but usually he was certainty itself. His best work was in
portraiture, and the most important of this is to be seen at Haarlem,
where he died after a rather careless life. As a painter, pure and
simple, he is almost to be ranked beside Velasquez; as a poet, a
thinker, a man of lofty imagination, his work gives us little
enlightenment except in so far as it shows a fine feeling for masses
of color and problems of light. Though excellent portrait-painters,
Ravesteyn (1572?-1657) and De Keyser (1596?-1679) do not provoke
enthusiasm. They were quiet, conservative, dignified, painting civic
guards and societies with a knowing brush and lively color, giving the
truth of physiognomy, but not with that verve of the artist so
conspicuous in Hals, nor with that unity of the group so essential in
the making of a picture.
[Illustration: FIG. 82.--REMBRANDT. HEAD OF WOMAN. NAT.
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