We saw how the brilliant skies and pearly buildings of Venice made Venetian painters the gayest colourists of the world.

So the Dutch painters took their sober scale of landscape colouring as it was dictated to them by the infinitely varied yet sombre loveliness of their own land.

In the great flat expanses of field, intersected by canals and dotted with windmills, the red brick roof of a water-mill may look 'loud,' like an aggressive hat.

But the shadows cast by the clouds change every moment, and in flat country where there is less to arrest the eye the changes of tone are more marked.
In an etching, Rembrandt could leave a piece of white paper for the spot of highest sunlight, and carry out all the gradations of tone in black and white, until he reached the spot of darkest shadow.

A painted landscape he indicated in the same way by varying shades of dull brown.