Ostade, and Jan Steen became famous for the surpassing truth of their
peasants and domestic scenes. To this low but happily-treated school
also belonged the cattle-pieces of Berchem and Paul de Potter, whose
"Bull and Cows" were, in a certain respect, as much the ideal of the
Dutch as the Madonna had formerly been that of the Italians or the
Venus di Medici that of the ancients.

Landscape-painting alone gave evidence of a higher style. Nature,
whenever undesecrated by the vulgarity of man, is ever sublimely
simple. The Dutch, as may be seen in the productions of Breughel,
called, from his dress, "Velvet Breughel," and in those of Elzheimer,
termed, from his attention to minutiae, the Denner of landscape-
painting, were at first too careful and minute; but Paul Brill, A.D.
1626, was inspired with finer conceptions and formed the link between
preceding artists and the magnificent Claude Lorraine (so called from
the place of his birth, his real name being Claude Gelee), who resided
for a long time at Munich, and who first attempted to idealize nature
as the Italian artists had formerly idealized man. Everdingen and
Ruysdael, on the contrary, studied nature in her simple northern garb,
and the sombre pines of the former, the cheerful woods of the latter,
will ever be attractive, like pictures of a much-loved home, to the
German. Bakhuysen's sea-pieces and storms are faithful representations
of the Baltic. In the commencement of last century, landscape-painting
also degenerated and became mere ornamental flower-painting, of which
the Dutch were so passionately fond that they honored and paid the
most skilful artists in this style like princes. The dull prosaic
existence of the merchant called for relief. Huysum was the mosrt
celebrated of the flower-painters, with Rachel Ruysch, William von
Arless, and others of lesser note. Fruit and kitchen pieces were also
greatly admired. Hondekotter was celebrated as a painter of birds.