art is invention from end to end, in Dutch art no slightest trace of
invention is to be found; one art is purely imaginative, the other is
plainly realistic; and yet, at an essential point, the two arts
coincide; in neither does the subject prevail; and if Dutch art is
more truthful than Italian art, it is because they were unimaginative,
stay-at-home folk, whose feet did not burn for foreign travel, and
whose only resource was, therefore, to reproduce the life around them,
and into that no element of curiosity could come. For their whole
country was known to them; even when they left their native town they
still continued to paint what they had seen since they were little
children.

And, like Italian, Dutch art died before the subject had appeared. It
was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the subject
really began to make itself felt, and, like the potato blight or
phylloxera, it soon became clear that it had come to stay. I think
Greuze was the first to conceive a picture after the fashion of a
scene in a play--I mean those domestic dramas which he invented, and
in which the interest of the subject so clearly predominates--"The
Prodigal Son", for instance. In this picture we have the domestic
drama exactly as a stage manager would set it forth. The indignant
father, rising from table, prepares to anathematise the repentant son,
who stands on the threshold, the weeping mother begs forgiveness for
her son, the elder girl advances shyly, the younger children play with
their toys, and the serving-girl drops the plate of meat which she is
bringing in. And ever since the subject has taken first place in the
art of France, England, and Germany, and in like measure as the
subject made itself felt, so did art decline.

For the last hundred years painters seem to have lived in libraries