EVERDINGEN. Three painters of this name are recorded in the history of Dutch art, - all of them related; but one only deserves to be remembered.

ALLART VON EVERDINGEN (1621-11675), the son of a Government clerk at Alkmaar, was born, it is said, in 1621, and educated, if we believe an old tradition, under Roeland Savery at Utrecht. He wandered in 1645 to Haarlem, where he studied under Peter de Molyn, and finally settled about 1657 at Amsterdam, where he remained till his death. It would be difficult to find a greater contrast than that which is presented by the works of Savory and Everdingen. Savery inherited the gaudy style of the Breughels, which he carried into the 17th century ; whilst Everdingen realized the large and effective system of coloured and powerfully shaded landscape which marks the precursors of Rembrandt. It is not easy on this account to believe that Savery was Everdingen's master, while it is quite within the range of probability that he acquired the elements of landscape painting from De Molyn. Pieter de Molyn, by birth a Londoner, lived from 1624 till 1661 in Haarlem. He went periodically on visits to Norway, and his works, though scarce, exhibit a broad and sweeping mode of execution differing bat slightly from that transferred at the opening of the 17th century from Jan van Goy-en to Solomon Rnysdael. His etchings have nearly the breadth and effect of those of Everdingen. It is still an open question when De Molyn wielded influence on his clever disciple. Alkmaar, a busy trading place near the Texel, had little of the picturesque for an artist except polders and downs or waves and sky. Accordingly see find Allart at first a painter of coast scenery. But on one of his expeditions he is said to have been cast ashore in Norway, and during the repairs of his ship lie visited the inland valleys, and thus gave a new course to his art. In early pieces ho cleverly represents the sea in motion under varied, but mostly clouded, aspects of sky. Their general intonation is strong and brown, and effects are rendered in a powerful key, but the execution is much more uniform than that of Jacob Rnysdael. A dark scud lowering on a rolling sea near the walls of Flushing characterizes Everdingen's Mouth of the Schelde in the Hermitage at St Petersburg. Storm is the marked feature of sea-pieces in the Stfedel or Robartes collections ; and a strand with wreckers at the foot of a cliff in the Munich Pinakothck may be a reminiscence of personal adventure in Norway. But the Norwegian coast was studied in calms as well as in gales ; and a fine canvas belonging to Professor Piloty at Munich shows fishermen on a still and sunny day taking herrings to a smoking lint at the foot of a Norwegian crag. The earliest of Everdingen's sea pieces belongs to Mr Von Friesen at Dresden, and bears the date of 1640. After 1645 we meet with nothing but representations of inland scenery, and par- ticularly of Norwegian valleys, remarkable alike for wild- ness and a decisive depth of tone. The master's favourite theme is a fall in a glen, with mournful fringes of pines interspersed with birch, and log huts at the base of rocks and craggy slopes. The water tumbles over the foreground, so as to entitle the painter to the name of " inventor of cascades." It gives Everdingen his character as a precursor of Jacob Ruysdael in a certain form of landscape composition; but though very skilful in arrangement, and clever in effects, Everdingen remains much more simple in execution; he is much less subtle in feeling or varied in touch than his great and incomparable countryman. Five of Everdingen's cascades are in the museum of Copenhagen alone : of these, one is dated 1647, another 1649. In the Hermitage at Petersburg is a fine example of 1647; another in the Pinakothek at Munich was finished in 1656. English public galleries ignore Everdingen ; but one of his best-known masterpieces is the Norwegian glen belonging to Lord Listowel. Few Continental museums lack pictures by this master. Their value in the market is about a third to a half of those of Ruysdael ; but excepting the later and more neglected pieces, they are all clever and generally attractive. At Amsterdam, we may think, Everdingen chiefly produced etchings and drawings, of which there are much larger and more numerous specimens in England than elsewhere. Being a collector as well as an engraver and painter, he brought together a large number of works of all kinds and masters ; and the sale of these by his heirs at Amsterdam on the 11th of March 1676 gives an approximate clue to the date of the painter's death.