At this point the young nobility of the Lowlands began to take up arms against the oppressor. Another visitor added, "They would prefer to die of hunger surrounded by their shining cauldrons and sparkling crockery rather than prepare any dish that might possibly disarrange this perfect symmetry"- an observation that seems not quite so far-fetched after a study of the spotless kitchens portrayed in so many seventeenth-century canvases. The men who profited most from this knowledge, and who became the key figures in all aspects of Dutch society, were the merchants of the nation's great cities-Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Delft and Haarlem. Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape
Still life with violin and glass ball, The secret life in Dutch Golden Age paintings: the real world behind the looking glass, Prince Charles Louis of the Palatinate with his teacher Wallradar background Placenam, The boy in the cloak and turban (Portrait of Prince Rupert of the Palatinate), Portrait of a bearded old man in the blue beret, Mobile apps for galleries, museums and exhibition projects. In fact, so closely did the birth of the new school of painting coincide with the birth of the nation that a French art historian has remarked that it was as if "the right to having a free and national school of painting had been part of the stipulations of the treaty of 1609.". Most of these goods had come into Holland through the port of Amsterdam, whose importance as a commercial center grew prodigiously. Century, Masters of
The high level of literacy led to a flourishing printing trade in Dutch- language books. These were rough and ready mariners who banded into a semi military organization to bedevil the Spaniards wherever they could. For example, newborn children were often welcomed with a kindermaal celebration and its requisite round of sweet kandeel; the feast of Saint Nicholas, New Year's Day, and Twelfth Night were similarly recognized with specialty foods. Instead of negotiating with them, the King's representative in the Netherlands had taken them prisoner. Later in the seventeenth century, tea became a popular item in the tropical trade. 2022 Smithsonian Magazine What made such a prolific artistic production possible and, above all, what led the United Provinces to write a fundamental chapter in the history of European art? The other prince they were turning to was William of Orange, and to King Philip it now seemed that this man was the sole cause of his troubles. Marit Westermann, Rembrandt, London: Phaidon Press, 2000. There may be no other country in which in the brief span of a hundred years so many paintings were executed as during the seventeenth century in the United Provinces, in Holland, as this land is commonly called abroad, or the Netherlands, to use the name it gave itself. As a firm Protestant, the average burgher had no interest in traditional ornate religious art. The result was not only a vivid portrait of a nation and a time but a brilliant chapter in art history as well. To allow us to provide a better and more tailored experience please click "OK". For or example, in 1644 the Board of the Dutch East India Company stated that their holdings in the Far East were not Dutch conquests but "the property of private merchants, who were entitled to sell those places to whomever they pleased, even if it were to the King of Spain." In 1585, cartographer Lucas Wagenaef published his Mariner's Mirror, two volumes of sailing directions and charts which were immediately translated, copied and printed all over Europe. A large number of painters produced a wide variety of subject matter including scenes from daily life known as "genre": brawls in a tavern, women busy in their domestic chores, soldiers playing cards and brothels are some of the most exploited. Rather than see prices go down or leave something for a competitor, they burned down plantations, deported entire villages and turned the natives into virtual slaves. Highlighting female artists contributions not as muses, but as creators in their own right, is a crucial turning point in righting art historical records, NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling says in a statement. Most of the paintings cast an aura of calm well-being, an illusion that may well have represented the Dutchman's longing for a security and tranquility he had never actually known. But in their dogged defense against the troops of the Duke of Alva, the people of Leiden had opened the dikes and flooded their land to hinder the foe, the Sea Beggars actually sailed in over the fields when they went to Leiden's rescue. There was no longer any bond strong enough to keep the people of Amsterdam in one empire with the monarch in Madrid. " technique of advertising. Economic Study of the Seventeenth
In addition to providing Netherlanders with a plentiful and varied selection of foodstuffs during the Golden Age, the rich trade economy was also largely responsible for the nation's notable prosperity during this period. These countries were amazed and annoyed by Holland's success and consoled themselves by thinking it could not last long. It was almost as if the war had brought together all the ingredients necessary for the spontaneous generation of an artistic flame. Leiden is not a port. Thematic Evolution, Art in History/History
Much less wealth seeped down to the lowest classes than is often assumed from the neat streets and well-ordered households that appear in so many of the era's paintings. Even with this new interest in luxuries, daily life for the most part remained simple. Why Did Europeans Evolve Into Becoming Lactose Tolerant? Cookie Settings, Courtesy of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, catalogue raisonn of the works of the most eminent Dutch painters of the seventeenth century. Painting. 1654
Museum of Art, Denver, 2001. It is estimated that between 1600 and 1700 no less than 5 million paintings were executed in small and large centers of painting, a figure that is even more surprising if you think of the distrust of holy images professed by Calvinism from the very beginning of its spread. Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age
and London: Yale Universtiy Press, 2004. Simon Schama, The Embarrassment
By 1650 Amsterdam had become the focal point not only of Holland's trade network, but also of the European Money market. Please try again. Portrait of Abraham del Court and his
Grard, who had spent two years on his plot, was immediately captured, and his only reward was a quick trial, torture and death at the hands of an outraged citizenry. Amsterdam's Bank of Exchange, founded in 1609, set up a credit system, a stable rate of exchange and an efficient arrangement of checking accounts. Defying the convention of Italian mannerism that was so prevalent in his era, Brueghel instead looked back to the Gothic age of Hieronymus Bosch. Economic Study of the Seventeenth
Reports of this fact were written at the time for example, by two frequently quoted English travelers. A contemporary of Bosch, van Leyden was equally radical in his own way. A new exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts spotlights eight unheralded 17th- and 18th-century artists. The first turning point in the war came in 1574, when the Spanish siege of Leiden was broken by Dutch seagoing guerrilla fighters called Sea Beggars. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.et al. Town after town in the Lowlands was besieged, taken and ravaged. He demanded of the Dutch a three-million-guilder tribute to Spain in addition to the taxes already being paid, suppression of all Protestant sects and submission to his half-sister Margaret, the Duchess of Parma, whom he had made regent of the Lowlands. Albert Blankert et al. William's role is comparable to that played by George Washington 200 years later in the American Colonies: he was by every measure the father of the new republic. 16001720, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. These policies paid enormous dividends to the investors in the trade. In the 14th Century, Dutch ships had begun carrying grain and timber from the Baltic Sea ports to Western Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The Dutch were exceptionally literate since reading was important in a Protestant society which maintained that the individual must pursue the Bible by himself. Inscriptions and coats of arms may sometimes grace the memorial tablets and sporadic images decorate the balustrades of the galleries, but everything else is strictly image less. Now, an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C. is working to rectify this imbalance: Titled Women Artists of the Dutch Golden Age, the show features 20 paintings and prints by female painters active in the Netherlands during the 17th and early 18th centuries. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Wife Maria de Keerssegieter
Most are familiar with towering figures like Rembrandt or Vermeer, but there is more to an art movement than two figures. The northern provinces had been part of the duchy of Burgundy in the past, which was still alive in the seventeenth century. Soldiers there are in plenty, but they are shown enjoying themselves, and it is as if Hollanders had seen all the fighting and violence they could stand, and wanted no more of it in their art. The rebellion that flared after the Counts of Egmont and Hoorn were executed in 1568 had actually started brewing more than a decade earlier. By using our website you accept our conditions of use of cookies to track data and create content (including advertising) based on your interest. Wine was imported from France, Italy and Spain, and beer from Germany. The World of Vermeer: 16321675
Today, the large churches in Dutch towns still welcome the faithful with bare whitewashed plastered walls, with plain, stark spaces, where there is no indulgence in decoration. A considerable proportion of the inhabitants of Dutch towns had more than sufficient income to provide for their fundamental needs. He writes: [The Netherlands] was not a dietary democracy, much less a culinary utopia. The social system in the south was still feudal, dominated by an aristocracy that was largely French-speaking and not nationally oriented. The mariners built strong points on distant shores to protect their ships and stores tram natives or marauding European ships; the strong points became forts, the forts led to further conquests. Along with this characteristic another outstanding aspect of Dutch art is the domestic scene in an interior setting. Whereas the masterworks created by women in paintings past have often been left undiscovered, Rachel Ruysch achieved international fame in her own lifetime over a very long career specialising in flower paintings full of the vibrancy of colour and delicate interplay of light and darkness we have come to expect from Dutch Golden Age painting. One thing besides money and art that particularly concerned the Hollander was education. 2939. Before the month-long holocaust was over, vast treasures of medieval art had been destroyed. Grand Rapids, 1999. Painting from the Heinz Family Collection, Fashion
The lack of censorship, moreover, made Holland, and especially Holland, the clearing houses for many works by refugees from England, France and Spain. cat., Grand Rapids Art Museum. Most popular was the Bible, in a new official Dutch translation; next came the poems of Jacob Cats, whose homilies and morality verses were found in almost every own household-by 1665 an illustrated collection of Cast's works had sold 50,000 copies. Leyster and her studio specialized in everyday scenes, portraits of musicians, and self-portraits, which were a favorite subject among Dutch artists well before the Instagram era elevated selfies into an art form. In an age where paintings were only available to a rich clientele, Leydens engravings of his paintings were a crucial way for the the emerging Dutch style to become known to a continent-wide audience. But today, these mens female contemporariesamong others, Judith Leyster, Maria Sibylla Merian and Magdalena van de Passeremain little-known, their contributions to the Golden Age of Dutch Painting overlooked in favor of presenting a male-dominated artistic canon. Five years after the successful defense of Leiden, eight of the northern provinces-Utrecht, Holland, Zeeland, Guelderland, Overijssel, Friesland, Groaning and Drenthe-signed a treaty called the Union of Utrecht. One was poverty. Gods,
We cant find a country that matches your search. (The Dutch national anthem stems from those days, and still contains a line in which William says, "I have always honored the King of Spain.") Crowds attacked Catholic churches with Reformation zeal, threw down statues, and burned and smashed everything connected with the hated priesthood. Above all, the house was clean. Without this, put simply, Rembrandts portrait would not have anything like the prestige that they do, and portraiture leading right up to Lucian Freud would have taken a very different path indeed. In 1601, Oliver van Noort, former pirate and Rotterdam innkeeper, sailed west through the Strait of Magellan to the Moluccas, south of the Philippines, and home around Africa. Women and Domesticity in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art. At that time Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, abdicated; he left Spain and the 17 provinces of the Low Countries to his son, Philip Il. Prince William's court was in Delft, which, being strategically located and easily defendable, was a stronghold of the revolutionary cause. and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in
Love Letters: Dutch Genre Paintings in the Age of Vermeer, exh. In the confusion that followed its leader's death, the cause of Dutch freedom did in fact suffer for a while, but Holland's anger over its hero's death was too intense to burn out William's son Maurice took over as commander-in-chief and the fighting went on. For the Dutch revolution was, of course, not the brainchild of one man or his family. Century Dutch Culture, Santa
Many Dutch burghers even celebrated jokmaalen, a feast of inversion during which masters and mistresses waited on their servants. Amsterdam: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1987. Until then, trade had been based mainly on spices, textiles and tulip bulbs, but it gradually extended to paintings as well, and that is the reason why many Dutch paintings are not very large. This economic and educational background was fundamental for the explosive cultural growth which was to follow. Its Commercial Exchange, established in 1585 after the Spanish captured the trading center of Antwerp, prospered enormously and occupied one of the most splendid buildings in the city. From stunning originals like Hieronymus Bosch through to the Dutch Golden Age of the 1650s, The Netherlands produced countless masterpieces across every category of painting. William was only 26 when King Philip left for Spain, but was already widely known as a brilliant diplomat and a man of culture as well as a dashing ladies' man. Now these eight provinces were bound in a "firm union" for the common defense. Wayne Franits, Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and
The highest rewards carne tram the trade in spices, the most coveted product of the East Indies. exh. The famous diarist John Evelyn was at the Rotterdam fair in the following year, and he wrote that even farmers' houses were full of paintings. A number of accomplished painters had to earn their living by other means."1. Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape
Many elements contributed to Holland's sudden upsurge. William disapproved of their unsavory tactics and only reluctantly recognized them as part of his forces. We make it easy to collect and publish everything about art, manage collections, and buy, sell and promote artworks. Art: Convention, Rhetoric, and
1983. Terms of Use Washington, 1989. Books about the new voyages and adventures in far countries were also sold in astounding numbers. of Riches: An Interpretation
The artists, now completely reliant on the private citizen's patronage, responded to his demands with an energy and genius that more than matched the vigor and imagination of the merchants themselves. Books were published in great numbers and institutes for higher education. Peter Mundy, who was in Amsterdam in 1640 commented on the love of paintings he observed. He quickly, became the center of resistance in the fight, its voice, its general. By no means all the goods brought in from abroad were sent on to foreign markets. That was the age that belonged to the men who had fought for and won their freedom: hard men, sober but given to sudden gambles; religious, proud and vain-the men who look at us from the portraits for which they posed with such obvious pride. November 11, 2008 to February 15, 2009. Increasingly wealthy and numerousin Amsterdam alone, the population had grown from 60,000 inhabitants in 1600 to 135,000 in 1640and in step with the European nobility, the urban upper class had discovered that paintings were a symbol of power, objects to be collected avidly. A colleague wrote a little book, subsidized by the East India Company, extolling tea's virtues-perhaps the first-known example of the "Doctors recommend. They had no quarrel with Charles V, who in the first place was one of them, having been born in Ghent, and who had allowed them a high degree of autonomy in conducting their own affairs. The interest in porcelain led to the creation of the famous Delft Blue pottery industry, which still thrives. In the second place, the Netherlands learned to relate to art is a different way from the other European countries. Just as surely as they guided Holland's politics and economics, these prosperous merchants were also instrumental in the development of Dutch art. It was still going on when Vermeer was born (as it had been when his father and probably his grandfather were born); more important, it shaped the character of the whole Dutch nation, and had a direct effect on the development of seventeenth Century Dutch art. Typically, Hals work featured looser, freer brushwork than any who had come before him, introducing a lively sense of movement and a lived-in quality to many of studies, with his most famous example of this being The Laughing Cavalier. A fascinating anomaly in the evolution of Dutch art. With almost a crusading spirit the Dutch began pushing Holland to greatness, and their weapon was trade. The most distinguishing characteristic of Dutch art is probably the close scrutiny of the natural world. At the beginning of the war, each Dutch province had fought on its own under the loose control of William of Orange. Artsys Cath Pound reports that the exhibition is the first of its kind in the United States. It was always trade, rather than colonizing, that provided the prime motivation far Dutch expansion, yet a colonial empire emerged in the process. This lead to a great demand for paintings, but almost exclusively paintings at low prices. Critics and scholars disagree over how many he undertook, but whatever the actual number, it is a staggering collection including approximately 45 paintings, 30 etchings and seven drawings. Although we can only verify a painting career that lasted less than a decade, this was a crucial decade for the development of Dutch painting, with Caravaggio as a direct ancestor. Bartholomeus van der Helst
in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-
Holland had spent decades fighting a bloody struggle, and yet there is practically no record of it in paintings except far a few sea battles and siege scenes. Dutch canvases such as those that Vermeer would create a few decades after Terbrugghens death. The Prodigal Son in the Tavern (Self Portrait with Saskia on her Lap), Self-portrait in the image of laughing Zeuxis, Rembrandt the collector: a rich man, a beggar, a weirdo, Allegory of Painting or Painter in His Studio, the artist's workshop, Young man and woman in the hotel (Junker Ramp and his sweetheart), The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company, Group portrait of Regents shelter for the elderly in Harlem, Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill, , , , Vanitas. (In the English language such books are still called "Waggoners" by old-fashioned skippers.) Now carne the satins, rugs and porcelains; oak gave way to fine Oriental woods; tea tables, mosaics, marble, bronze and crystal artifacts were imported to grace the more elaborate houses. The evolution of these two schools of painting was clearly related to the political developments of the war. That morning at 10 o'clock sharp the terms of the peace treaty with Spain had been read out in a sober ceremony in the Dutch Supreme Court of Justice in The Hague. Pillars such as. Marit Westermann, Art and
Thematic Evolution, New Haven
Women Artists of the Dutch Golden Age is on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) through January 5, 2020. All this was strictly a business operation. Although their collective consciousness told them that the Spanish king against whom they rebelled had shamefully usurped the Burgundian heritage, leading it to ruin and abolishing their ancient privileges, their loyalty to the good government of the dukes of Burgundy was still intact and in their name the stadolder, who held the highest political office, were elected. As a matter of fact, it did not. Rembrandt van Rijn, Self Portrait with Two Circles | Wmpearl/Wikicommons, Rembrandt van Rijn, Self Portrait with Two Circles, Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Peter Brueghel the Elder, Hunter in the Snow (Winter), Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hendrick Terbrugghen, Esau Selling His Birthright, File Upload Bot (Eloquence)/Wikicommons. Other products, faithfully recorded in the art of the day, added a cosmopolitan touch of luxury to the homes of the merchants who had gambled fortunes to import them: besides porcelain there were fine silk and\ satin fabrics, rare woods, and Turkish carpets (used as rugs, wall hangings or tablecloths). Most of the old liberal men of noble birth had died during the war, the new leaders were merchants and Protestants. It would be two centuries before Belgium emerged as a stable, independent nation. Dutch Portraits, exh. In European waters, by the middle of the seventeenth Century, the Dutch merchants were handling three quarters of the enormous Baltic grain trade and they virtually monopolized the Bordeaux wine trade. Peter C. Sutton et al., Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, exh.cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art. Art in History/History
Mostly working in prestigious epic painting, he brought softness and vibrancy to an often hard and dull tradition. A Moral Compass: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Painting in the Netherlands, exh. In all countries the middle classes were strong believers in simple virtues, in the family and the home, but there was an important difference in Holland: there the middle class set the tone for the whole country. Explore Holland with our guide to its best Old Masters. As early as the sixteenth century, Erasmus had commented on the unusually high number of educated people in Holland, and in the mid-1600s the Portuguese emissary in The Hague reported with considerable exaggeration that "there is not a cobbler here who does not add French and Latin to his own language." Cookie Policy Manage My Data His Biblical scenes and etchings are also superb, but it is those portraits that are his legacy. Another popular Far Eastern product was porcelain. Every art history student knows the names Rembrandt van Rijn and Johannes Vermeer. What Protestants there were in: the south fled north many of these were businessmen from Antwerp, and their loss debilitated the southern provinces as much as did the continued Spanish occupation there. Landscape, portraiture and still life, which had existed for centuries, were re-examined in a fresh light and brought to hitherto unprecedented levels of naturalness. There, on July 10, 1584, while William was meeting with the States-General to establish a national government, a fanatic Catholic named Balthasar Grard sneaked into the Prince's house and shot him dead. Thus during the entire seventeenth century, the Netherlands was governed by a mercantile upper middle class, a business oligarchy of some 10,000 families. When the eight northern provinces formed their "firm union," they created a permanent division within the Lowlands, drawing a boundary that has stayed much the same to the present day. One English observer said of such a riot that it "looked like hell where were above 1,000 torches brandying and syche a noise! and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-
Madlyn Millner Kahr, Dutch
But during most of the seventeenth century, these tendencies had not yet come to the surface. They were, nevertheless, an effective weapon in the fight against Spain. The fact that they were easy to handle and were less bulky made it easier to place them on the market. The Renaissance and the Reformation had swept aside the circumstances in which nations and populations could be passed around and inherited like so much real estate. A laborer worked 14 hours or more a day far a few pennies; an able seaman, who ran a 50-50 chance of not coming back from an Indies voyage, made two or three guilders a week, the equivalent of a weekly salary of about $10 today. A long period of stagnation followed far Holland, and its art languished along with it. Using the camera obscura that became available in the Netherlands in the mid-17th century, Vermeers best works generally feature windows, and Vermeer would use his new tool to depict the light shining through them in ways never before seen in his time. However, Alva's harshness and the King' s refusal to compromise slowly pushed William toward an ever-more-extreme position. Century. Often they were more pirates than guerrillas, harassing peaceful shipping for their own benefit, and even occasionally raiding English coastal towns. 2006. Dutch painters have monumentalized it in their art, the most humble household of the poor and the most elegant dwellings of the well-to-do were both treated with respect and human participation and sometimes with warm humor. Privacy Statement Even the interiors of churches are humanized. By 1568 groups of 30, 40 and 50 people at a time were being condemned to die; their property was confiscated by the Crown. Then, before a mute crowd in Brussels, they were beheaded, and the people pushed past the Spanish soldiers to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood of the first martyrs of the long war. The merchants lost their daring; prosperity induced lethargy; godliness became self-righteousness. The new republican society had shun itself of its worldly and ecclesiastic princes. Specific paintings or engravings of a sea theme are also called marines. Arthive is a community of artists, collectors and art dealers. Though they look so solid in their pictures, the successful Dutch burghers must at times have had anxious moments when they wondered how they had come such a long way in so short a time, and whether it could last. cat., Rijksmuseum,
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. et al., Still Lifes of the Golden Age: Northern European
Lesser eventsincluding a child's beginning school or apprenticeship, the purchase of a new house, or a loved one's departure on a long journey or his return homewere also acknowledged with feasts. However, celebratory feasts were a phenomenon of Golden Age Dutch culture, and most Netherlanders indulged in excess at least a few times a year. New York: Vintage, 1987. They never seem to stop washing and scrubbing all the wooden furniture and fittings." After 1600, there was very little left of the aristocratic way of life in the United Provinces. Contemporary travelers from England, France and Italy, after noting the abundance of food and absence of beggars in Holland, often exclaimed about the immaculate appearance of the interiors. Spices such as black pepper, cloves and cinnamon helped preserve and make palatable the dreary food of an age whose only other means of food preservation were pickling and salting. To any man who would murder William, the ban offered forgiveness for all crimes, a patent of nobility from the Spanish crown, and 25,000 gold crowns. The Dutch not only initiated new, efficient trading methods, but they also understood sooner than most some of the laws of modern capitalism involving credit, interest and investment. The Dutch rounded out their diet with the plentiful fish, butter, cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables that were produced domestically. * Madlyn Miller Kahr, Dutch Painting in the Seventeenth Century, New York: Routledge, 1992, Hans Koningsberger
in Art: Studies in Seventeenth-
John Michael Montias, Artists
But while Flemish masters such as Rubens and Van Dyke continued brilliantly into the seventeenth Century in the traditional vein of European art, the Dutch school moved on its own way toward an ever-more-searching realism, and established itself as a separate stream. The first effect of Philip's harsh policies, enforced by the Duchess of Parma, was to arouse the Lowlands' Protestants, already inflamed by the anti-Papist preaching of the Calvinists. NMWA is committed to presenting exhibitions that challenge traditional views, expand our thinking about art history and rectify omissions of the past.. Moreover, as historian Simon Schama points out, those who did suffer from poverty were treated with greater dignity than they might have been. Holland emerged from these upheavals as an aggressive, Protestant republic with a capitalistic economy and a bourgeois society. New York, 1967, pp. As Karen Rosenberg wrote for the New York Times in 2009, The Dutch artist had her own workshop, her own students and her own style, one that combined the spontaneity of [Frans] Halss brushwork with a Caravaggist chiaroscuro.. and the Art of Painting, New York and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Marieke de Winkel, Fashion
Saints and Heroes: Dutch Painting
National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Find out more about what data we collect and use at, Quick search helps finding an artist, picture, user or article and prompts your previous searches, Login to use Arthive functionality to the maximum, Register to use Arthive functionality to the maximum, This action is only available to registered users, The list ofartists ofthe Dutch Golden Age isnot limited tojust this ten.