POURBUS, Pieter (THE YOUNGER), Flem ish painter : b. probably Gouda,1510 or 1513; d. Bruges, 1584. He was a pupil of his father and of Lancelot Blondeel whose daughter he married. In 1540 he entered the Serment des Arbaletriers de S. George and in 1543 became a free master of the Guild of Saint Luke, of which he was °doyen) in 1569 and 1580: As he did not buy his citizenship at it is argued that his father may have moved thither from Gouda before his birth. He worked as deco rator and surveyor, having remarkable gifts as a geometrician; but he is known, chieey as a portrait painter. His portrait of Dr. Ambroise Pare is owned by the New York Historical Society. Other works by him are in churches of Antwerp and Bruges and in museums of Brussels, Paris, Rotterdam and Vienna.
POURTALkS, poor'ta-las', COUNT (Graf) Friedrich von, German diplomat: b. 24 Oct. 1853, He is descended from a noble French Huguenot family domiciled in' Switzerland since the revocation of the Edict of Naittes. Three
brothers were made Prussian counts •in 1815, and members of the family have long served Germany in bureaucratic, military and diplo matic capacities. The subject of this sketch served as lieutenant of Hussars in the German army and was attached to the Foreign Office in 1880. After serving in secretarial positions in Vienna, at The Hague and Saint Petersburg (Petrograd), he became Ambassador to Hol land in 1899, to Munich in 1902, and to Russia in 1907. In the last-mentioned post he handled the negotiations preceding the European War. He did not figure prominently in the diplomatic history of that war, though the British Am bassador in Petrograd telegraphed to Sir Ed ward Grey on 29 July 1914: °I fear that the German Ambassador will not help to smooth matters over, if he uses to his own government the same language as he did to me to-day.)