Heda's Banquet Piece, Frans Hals' Willem Coymans, and Rembrandt's Lucretia. Paintings by these and other masters attracted the American collectors P. A. B. Widener, his son Joseph, and Andrew W. Mellon, whose bequests form the heart of the National Gallery's distinguished and remarkably cohesive collection of ninety-one Dutch paintings.
The stunning beauty and diversity of 17th-century Dutch still-life painting raises many questions about developments in style and technique. What materials did artists use to produce these works? How were they made? Did all the still-life painters of the period use the same methods and materials? Can we relate differences in materials and methods to differences in style? These questions are explored by the conservators and curators of the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum and scientists attached to the Molart project (Molecular aspect of aging in art) in an examination of paintings by Jan Brueghel, Balthasar van der Ast, Jan Davidsz de Heem, Willem Kalf, Rachel Ruysch, and Jan van Huysum.
The appealing genre paintings of great seventeenth-century Dutch artists - Vermeer, Steen, de Hooch, Dou and others - have long enjoyed tremendous popularity. This comprehensive book explores the evolution of genre painting throughout the Dutch Golden Age, beginning in the early 1600s and continuing through the opening years of the next century. Wayne Franits, a well-known scholar of Dutch genre painting, offers a wealth of information about these works as well as about seventeenth-century Dutch culture, its predilections and its prejudices. The author approaches genre paintings from a variety of perspectives, examining their reception among contemporary audiences and setting the works in their political, cultural and economic contexts. The works emerge as distinctly conventional images, Franits shows, as genre artists continually replicated specific styles, motifs and a surprisingly restricted number of themes over the course of several generations. Luxuriously illustrated and with a full representation of the major artists and the cities where genre painting flourished, this book will delight students, scholars and general readers alike.
This long-awaited publication presents one of the world’s finest collections of Dutch paintings, which come together for the first time in one volume as a major addition to existing scholarship on Dutch art. The volume presents over 100 paintings in colour, many including colour details. Each painting is accompanied by an artist’s biography, a detailed commentary, technical analysis, endnotes, bibliographic references, an exhibition history and full provenance. Over 140 comparative illustrations provide vital art historical context to the featured paintings. The range and scope of the works presented in this volume is truly impressive, from sedate church interiors and conventional landscape subjects to bawdy peasant interiors and magnificent still lifes.
This volume will mark the first time Johannes Vermeer's iconic painting will be seen in the Southeast. The painting headlines the exhibition, which highlights the artistic genius of Dutch Golden Age painters, including Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals and Jan Steen, through the presentation of more than 35 exceptional works. Through landscapes and portraits, this book will explore the idea that Dutch artists more readily embraced paintings of everyday subjects than their southern European contemporaries, focusing on capturing commonplace scenes of daily life. Dutch artists not only recorded representations of the domestic interior, still lifes and boisterous crowds, but often imbued these scenes with moral undertones and humorous, sarcastic wit. (Exhibition: High Museum of Art, Atlanta, USA (22.6.-29.9.2013)).
This beautifully illustrated, expansive overview of Dutch and Flemish art during the 17th century illuminates the creative achievements of one of the most important eras in western art. The Golden Age in Holland and Flanders roughly spanned the 17th century and was a period of enormous advances in the fields of commerce, science--and art. Still lifes, landscape paintings, and romantic depictions of everyday life became valued by the increasingly wealthy merchant classes in the Dutch provinces, while religious and historic paintings as well as portraits continued to appeal to the Flemish patronage. The Golden Age brought us Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens, and Van Dyck, but it was also the period of Frans Hals' revolutionary portraiture, Adriaen Brouwer's depictions of the working class at play, Jan Brueghel's velvety miniatures, and Hendrick Avercamp's lively winter landscapes. Norbert Wolf applies his vast understanding of the interplay between history, culture, and art to explore the forces that led to the Golden Age in Holland and Flanders and how this period influenced later generations of artists. Accompanied by luminous color illustrations, Wolf's accessible text considers the complex political, religious, social, and economic situation that led to newfound prosperity and, thus, to an enormous artistic output that we continue to marvel at and enjoy today.
This is an authoritative and perceptive study of Dutch painting from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Slive focuses on the major artists of the period discussing the kinds of painting that became specialities.
At the time of the great tulip speculation of the 1630s in Holland, the most desirable tulip bulbs were auctioned for more money than the most expensive houses in Amsterdam. At the same time flower paintings which were remarkable for their apparent realism were produced all over Holland and purchased by Dutch families as enduring substitutes for the real thing. This beautiful book reveals the fascinating genesis and growth of a whole genre of paintings that has rarely been studied. Paul Taylor begins by discussing Holland's 'tulipomania' and its effect on the way people thought about floral still lifes. He then considers the religious messages associated with the flower paintings, exploring how religious writers spoke of flowers as moral signposts from God and how some flower paintings were meant to remind viewers of the transience of earthly existence. Flower paintings were not bought only as records of luxury objects or for moral edification, however. They were also enjoyed as works of art, as masterpieces of illusion, composition and colour harmony, so Taylor analyses the art-theoretical writings of the time in order to understand how artists and connoisseurs responded to flower pieces. He concludes by analysing the paintings themselves, tracing the development and refinement of the actual practice of flower painting.
"The paintings of Willem van Aelst are known for their remarkably fine finish, carefully balanced compositions and elegant subject matter. Each work featured in this monograph represents a phase of the artist's career"--Nielsen Book Data.
