The House of Claes was so richly supplied with furniture, pictures,
and objects of art of priceless value, that it was difficult to add
anything worthy of what was already there. The tastes of the family
through long periods of time had accumulated these treasures. One
generation followed the quest of noble pictures, leaving behind it the
necessity of completing a collection still unfinished; and thus the
taste became hereditary in the family. The hundred pictures which
adorned the gallery leading from the family building to the
reception-rooms on the first floor of the front house, as well as some
fifty others placed about the salons, were the product of the patient
researches of three centuries. Among them were choice specimens of
Rubens, Ruysdael, Vandyke, Terburg, Gerard Dow, Teniers, Mieris, Paul
Potter, Wouvermans, Rembrandt, Hobbema, Cranach, and Holbein. French
and Italian pictures were in a minority, but all were authentic and
masterly.
Another generation had fancied Chinese and Japanese porcelains: this
Claes was eager after rare furniture, that one for silver-ware; in
fact, each and all had their mania, their passion,--a trait which
belongs in a striking degree to the Flemish character. The father of
Balthazar, a last relic of the once famous Dutch society, left behind
him the finest known collection of tulips.
Besides these hereditary riches, which represented an enormous
capital, and were the choice ornament of the venerable house,--a house
that was simple as a shell outside but, like a shell, adorned within
by pearls of price and glowing with rich color,--Balthazar Claes
possessed a country-house on the plain of Orchies, not far from Douai.
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