Still lifes were a great opportunity to display skill in painting textures and surfaces in great detail and with realistic light effects. Food of all kinds laid out on a table, silver cutlery, intricate patterns and subtle folds in tablecloths and flowers all challenged painters. Dutch painters produced still lifes in great numbers, revealing the Dutch "love of domestic culture". The English term "derives from the Dutch word ''stilleven''", which came into use about 1650.
Several types of subject were recognised: ''banketje'' were "banquet pieces", ''ontbijtjes'' simpler "breakfast pieces". Virtually all still lifes had a moralistic message, usually concerning the brevity of life – this is known as the
vanitas theme – implicit even in the absence of an obvious symbol like a skull, or less obvious one such as a half-peeled lemon (like life, sweet in appearance but bitter to taste). Flowers wilt and food decays, and silver is of no use to the soul. Nevertheless, the force of this message seems less powerful in the more elaborate pieces of the second half of the century.
Initially the objects shown were nearly always mundane. However, from the mid-century ''
pronkstilleven
''Pronkstilleven'' (Dutch for 'ostentatious', 'ornate' or 'sumptuous' still life) is a style of ornate still life painting, which was developed in the 1640s in Antwerp from where it spread quickly to the Dutch Republic.
Development
Flemish artis ...
s'' ("ostentatious still lifes"), which depicted expensive and exotic objects and had been developed as a subgenre in the 1640s in Antwerp by Flemish artists such as
Frans Snyders and
Adriaen van Utrecht, became more popular. The early realist, tonal and classical phases of landscape painting had counterparts in still life painting.
Willem Claeszoon Heda
Willem Claesz. Heda (December 14, 1593/1594c. 1680/1682) was a Dutch Golden Age artist from the city of Haarlem devoted exclusively to the painting of still life. He is known for his innovation of the late breakfast genre of still life painting. ...
(1595–c. 1680) and
Willem Kalf
Willem Kalf (1619 – 31 July 1693) was one of the most prominent Dutch still-life painters of the 17th century, the Dutch Golden Age. We first get acquainted with Willem Kalf through Arnold Houbraken, in his Groot Schilderboek, who speaks very ...
(1619–1693) led the change to the ''pronkstilleven'', while
Pieter Claesz (d. 1660) preferred to paint simpler "ontbijt" ("breakfast pieces"), or explicit ''vanitas'' pieces.
In all these painters, colours are often very muted, with browns dominating, especially in the middle of the century. This is less true of the works of
Jan Davidsz de Heem
Jan Davidsz. de Heem or in-full ''Jan Davidszoon de Heem'', also called ''Johannes de Heem'' or ''Johannes van Antwerpen'' or ''Jan Davidsz de Hem'' (c. 17 April 1606 in Utrecht – before 26 April 1684 in Antwerp), was a still life painter wh ...
(1606–1684), an important figure who spent much of his career based over the border in
Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504, . Here his displays began to sprawl sideways to form wide oblong pictures, unusual in the north, although Heda sometimes painted taller vertical compositions. Still life painters were especially prone to form dynasties, it seems: there were many de Heems and Bosschaerts, Heda's son continued in his father's style, and Claesz was the father of Nicholaes Berchem.
Flower paintings formed a sub-group with its own specialists, and were occasionally the speciality of the few women artists, such as
Maria van Oosterwyck and
Rachel Ruysch
Rachel Ruysch (3 June 1664 – 12 October 1750) was a Dutch still-life painter from the Northern Netherlands. She specialized in flowers, inventing her own style and achieving international fame in her lifetime. Due to a long and successful caree ...
. The Dutch also led the world in botanical and other scientific drawings, prints and book illustrations. Despite the intense realism of individual flowers, paintings were composed from individual studies or even book illustrations, and blooms from very different seasons were routinely included in the same composition, and the same flowers reappear in different works, just as pieces of tableware do. There was also a fundamental unreality in that bouquets of flowers in vases were not in fact at all common in houses at the time – even the very rich displayed flowers one by one in
delftware
Delftware or Delft pottery, also known as Delft Blue ( nl, Delfts blauw) or as delf,
is a general term now used for Dutch tin-glazed earthenware, a form of faience. Most of it is blue and white pottery, and the city of Delft in the Netherlands ...
tulip-holders.
The Dutch tradition was largely begun by
Ambrosius Bosschaert
Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (18 January 1573 – 1621) was a Flemish-born Dutch still life painter and art dealer. (1573–1621), a Flemish-born flower painter who had settled in the north by the beginning of the period, and founded a dynasty. His brother-in-law
Balthasar van der Ast (d. 1657) pioneered still lifes of shells, as well as painting flowers. These early works were relatively brightly lit, with the bouquets of flowers arranged in a relatively simple way. From the mid-century arrangements that can fairly be called Baroque, usually against a dark background, became more popular, exemplified by the works of
(1627–1683). Painters from
Leiden, The Hague, and Amsterdam particularly excelled in the genre.
Dead game, and birds painted live but studied from the dead, were another subgenre, as were dead fish, a staple of the Dutch diet –
Abraham van Beijeren did many of these. The Dutch were less given to the Flemish style of combining large still life elements with other types of painting – they would have been considered prideful in portraits – and the Flemish habit of specialist painters collaborating on the different elements in the same work. But this sometimes did happen – Philips Wouwerman was occasionally used to add men and horses to turn a landscape into a hunting or skirmish scene, Berchem or Adriaen van de Velde to add people or farm animals.
File:Willem van Aelst - Bloementuil.jpg, , ''Still life with a watch'' (c. 1665), with typical dark background.
File:Heda, Willem Claeszoon - Breakfast Table with Blackberry Pie - WGA.jpg, Willem Claeszoon Heda
Willem Claesz. Heda (December 14, 1593/1594c. 1680/1682) was a Dutch Golden Age artist from the city of Haarlem devoted exclusively to the painting of still life. He is known for his innovation of the late breakfast genre of still life painting. ...
, ''Breakfast Table with Blackberry Pie'' (1631); Heda was famous for his depiction of reflective surfaces.
File:Jan Davidszoon de Heem, Still-life with Books and Skull (Vanitas).JPG, Jan Davidszoon de Heem
Jan Davidsz. de Heem or in-full ''Jan Davidszoon de Heem'', also called ''Johannes de Heem'' or ''Johannes van Antwerpen'' or ''Jan Davidsz de Hem'' (c. 17 April 1606 in Utrecht – before 26 April 1684 in Antwerp), was a still life painter wh ...
, '' Vanitas'' (1629)
File:Jan Weenix 003.jpg, Jan Weenix
Jan Weenix or Joannis Wenix (between 1641/164919 September 1719 (buried)) was a Dutch painter. He was trained by his father, Jan Baptist Weenix, together with his cousin Melchior d'Hondecoeter. Like his father, he painted various subjects, but ...
, ''Still Life with a Dead Peacock'' (1692), set in the gardens of a large country house.
Foreign lands
For Dutch artists, Karel van Mander's ''Schilderboeck'' was meant not only as a list of biographies, but also a source of advice for young artists. It quickly became a classic standard work for generations of young Dutch and Flemish artists in the 17th century. The book advised artists to travel and see the sights of Florence and Rome, and after 1604 many did so. However, it is noticeable that the most important Dutch artists in all fields, figures such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Steen, Jacob van Ruisdael, and others, had not made the voyage.
Many Dutch (and Flemish) painters worked abroad or exported their work;
printmaking was also an important export market, by which Rembrandt became known across Europe. The
Dutch Gift to
Charles II of England
Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685.
Charles II was the eldest surviving child of ...
was a diplomatic gift which included four contemporary Dutch paintings. English painting was heavily reliant on Dutch painters, with Sir
Peter Lely followed by Sir
Godfrey Kneller
Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1st Baronet (born Gottfried Kniller; 8 August 1646 – 19 October 1723), was the leading portrait painter in England during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and was court painter to English and British monarchs from ...
, developing the English portrait style established by the Flemish
Anthony van Dyck
Sir Anthony van Dyck (, many variant spellings; 22 March 1599 – 9 December 1641) was a Duchy of Brabant, Brabantian Flemish Baroque painting, Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England after success in the Sou ...
before the
English Civil War. The marine painters van der Velde,
father
A father is the male parent of a child. Besides the paternal bonds of a father to his children, the father may have a parental, legal, and social relationship with the child that carries with it certain rights and obligations. An adoptive fath ...
and
son
A son is a male offspring; a boy or a man in relation to his parents. The female counterpart is a daughter. From a biological perspective, a son constitutes a first degree relative.
Social issues
In pre-industrial societies and some curren ...
, were among several artists who left Holland at the French invasion of 1672, which brought a collapse in the art market. They also moved to London, and the beginnings of English landscape painting were established by several less distinguished Dutch painters, such as
Hendrick Danckerts.
The
Bamboccianti
The ''Bamboccianti'' were genre painters active in Rome from about 1625 until the end of the seventeenth century. Most were Dutch and Flemish artists who brought existing traditions of depicting peasant subjects from sixteenth-century Netherlan ...
were a colony of Dutch artists who introduced the genre scene to Italy.
Jan Weenix
Jan Weenix or Joannis Wenix (between 1641/164919 September 1719 (buried)) was a Dutch painter. He was trained by his father, Jan Baptist Weenix, together with his cousin Melchior d'Hondecoeter. Like his father, he painted various subjects, but ...
and
Melchior d'Hondecoeter
Melchior d'Hondecoeter (; 1636 – 3 April 1695), Dutch animalier painter, was born in Utrecht and died in Amsterdam. After the start of his career, he painted virtually exclusively bird subjects, usually exotic or game, in park-like landsca ...
specialized in game and birds, dead or alive, and were in demand for country house and shooting-lodge
overdoor
An "overdoor" (or "Supraporte" as in German, or "sopraporte" as in Italian) is a painting, bas-relief or decorative panel, generally in a horizontal format, that is set, typically within ornamental mouldings, over a door, or was originally intend ...
s across Northern Europe.
Although the Dutch control of the northeast sugar-producing region of
Dutch Brazil turned out to be brief (1630-54), Governor
Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen invited Dutch artists to paint scenes which are valuable in showing the seventeenth-century landscape and peoples of the region. The two most well known of these artists were
Frans Post
Frans Janszoon Post (17 November 1612 – 17 February 1680) was a painter during the Dutch Golden Age. He was the first European artist to paint landscapes of the Americas, during and after the period of Dutch Brazil In 1636 he traveled to ...
, a landscapist, and a still life painter,
Albert Eckhout
Albert Eckhout (c.1610–1665) was a Dutch portrait and still life painter. Eckhout, the son of Albert Eckhourt and Marryen Roeleffs, was born in Groningen, but his training as an artist and early career are unknown. A majority of the works attrib ...
, who produced ethnographic paintings of Brazil's population. These were originally displayed in the Great Hall of the Vrijburg Palace in
Recife
That it may shine on all (Gospel of Matthew, Matthew Sermon on the Mount, 5:15)
, image_map = Brazil Pernambuco Recife location map.svg
, mapsize = 250px
, map_caption = Location in the state of Pernambuco
, p ...
. There was a market in Amsterdam for such paintings, and Post continued to produce Brazilian scenes for years after his return to the Netherlands. The
Dutch East Indies were covered much less well artistically.
File:Landschap_bij_de_rivier_Senhor_de_Engenho,_Brazilië_Rijksmuseum_SK-A-2334.jpeg, Landscape with sugar mill, Frans Post
Frans Janszoon Post (17 November 1612 – 17 February 1680) was a painter during the Dutch Golden Age. He was the first European artist to paint landscapes of the Americas, during and after the period of Dutch Brazil In 1636 he traveled to ...
File:Frans_Post_-_Brazilian_Landscape_with_a_Workers_House.jpg, Landscape with a worker's house, Frans Post
Frans Janszoon Post (17 November 1612 – 17 February 1680) was a painter during the Dutch Golden Age. He was the first European artist to paint landscapes of the Americas, during and after the period of Dutch Brazil In 1636 he traveled to ...
File:Albert Eckhout - Brazil.jpg, Brazilian Indian warrior, Albert Eckhout
Albert Eckhout (c.1610–1665) was a Dutch portrait and still life painter. Eckhout, the son of Albert Eckhourt and Marryen Roeleffs, was born in Groningen, but his training as an artist and early career are unknown. A majority of the works attrib ...
File:Albert Eckhout - Bananas, goiaba e outras frutas.jpg, Bananas, goiaba, and other fruits, Albert Eckhout
Albert Eckhout (c.1610–1665) was a Dutch portrait and still life painter. Eckhout, the son of Albert Eckhourt and Marryen Roeleffs, was born in Groningen, but his training as an artist and early career are unknown. A majority of the works attrib ...
Subsequent reputation
The enormous success of 17th-century Dutch painting overpowered the work of subsequent generations, and no Dutch painter of the 18th century—nor, arguably, a 19th-century one before
Van Gogh—is well known outside the Netherlands. Already by the end of the period artists were complaining that buyers were more interested in dead than living artists.
If only because of the enormous quantities produced, Dutch Golden Age painting has always formed a significant part of collections of
Old Master paintings, itself a term invented in the 18th century to describe Dutch Golden Age artists. Taking only Wouwerman paintings in old royal collections, there are more than 60 in
Dresden and over 50 in the
Hermitage. But the reputation of the period has shown many changes and shifts of emphasis. One nearly constant factor has been admiration for
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consi ...
, especially since the Romantic period. Other artists have shown drastic shifts in critical fortune and market price; at the end of the period some of the active Leiden
fijnschilders had enormous reputations, but since the mid-19th century realist works in various genres have been far more appreciated.
Vermeer was rescued from near-total obscurity in the 19th century, by which time several of his works had been re-attributed to others. However the fact that so many of his works were already in major collections, often attributed to other artists, demonstrates that the quality of individual paintings was recognised even if his collective oeuvre was unknown. Other artists have continued to be rescued from the mass of little-known painters: the late and very simple still lifes of
Adriaen Coorte in the 1950s, and the landscapists
Jacobus Mancaden
Jacobus Sibrandi Mancadan (c. 1602 in Minnertsga – 4 October 1680 in Tjerkgaast) (subscription only) was a Dutch Golden Age painter mostly known for his pastoral landscapes.
Biography
Mancadan is considered one of the most important Fris ...
and
Frans Post
Frans Janszoon Post (17 November 1612 – 17 February 1680) was a painter during the Dutch Golden Age. He was the first European artist to paint landscapes of the Americas, during and after the period of Dutch Brazil In 1636 he traveled to ...
earlier in the century.
Genre paintings were long popular, but little-regarded. In 1780
Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whig politician.
He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twi ...
disapproved that they "invite laughter to divert itself with the nastiest indelicacy of boors". Sir
Joshua Reynolds, the English leader of 18th-century
academic art
Academic art, or academicism or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie ...
, made several revealing comments on Dutch art. He was impressed by the quality of Vermeer's ''Milkmaid'' (illustrated at the start of this article), and the liveliness of Hals' portraits, regretting he lacked the "patience" to finish them properly, and lamented that Steen had not been born in Italy and formed by the
High Renaissance, so that his talent could have been put to better use. By Reynolds' time the moralist aspect of genre painting was no longer understood, even in the Netherlands; the famous example is the so-called ''
Paternal Admonition'', as it was then known, by
Gerard ter Borch. This was praised by
Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tre ...
and others for the delicacy of its depiction of a father reprimanding his daughter. In fact, in the view of most (but not all) modern scholars it is a proposition scene in a brothel – there are two versions (Berlin & Amsterdam) and it is unclear whether a "tell-tale coin" in the man's hand has been removed or overpainted in either.
In the second half of the 18th century, the down-to-earth realism of Dutch painting was a "
Whig taste" in England, and in France associated with
Enlightenment rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy'' ...
and aspirations for political reform.
[Reitlinger, I, 11-15. Quote p.13] In the 19th century, with a near-universal respect for realism, and the final decline of the hierarchy of genres, contemporary painters began to borrow from genre painters both their realism and their use of objects for narrative purposes, and paint similar subjects themselves, with all the genres the Dutch had pioneered appearing on far larger canvases (still lifes excepted).
In landscape painting, the Italianate artists were the most influential and highly regarded in the 18th century, but
John Constable was among those Romantics who denounced them for artificiality, preferring the tonal and classical artists.
In fact, both groups remained influential and popular in the 19th century.
See also
*
Art of the Low Countries
The art of the Low Countries consists of painting, sculpture, architecture, printmaking, pottery and other forms of visual art produced in the Low Countries, and since the 19th century in Belgium in the southern Netherlands and the Netherland ...
*
Delft School (painting)
The Delft School is a category of mid-17th-century Dutch Golden Age painting named after its main base, Delft. It is best known for genre painting: images of domestic life, views of households, church interiors, courtyards, squares and the streets ...
*
Dutch School (painting)
*
List of Dutch painters
*
List of painters from the Dutch Golden Age
Notes
References
* "Ekkart": Rudi Ekkart and Quentin Buvelot (eds), ''Dutch Portraits, The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals'', Mauritshuis/National Gallery/Waanders Publishers, Zwolle, 2007,
* Franits, Wayne, ''Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting'', Yale UP, 2004,
* Fuchs, RH, ''Dutch painting'', Thames and Hudson, London, 1978,
* Ingamells, John, ''The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Pictures, Vol IV, Dutch and Flemish'', Wallace Collection, 1992,
*
Lloyd, Christopher, ''Enchanting the Eye, Dutch Paintings of the Golden Age'', Royal Collection Publications, 2004,
* MacLaren, Neil, ''The Dutch School, 1600–1800, Volume I'', 1991, National Gallery Catalogues, National Gallery, London, ; the main source for biographical details
* Prak, Maarten, (2003) "Guilds and the Development of the Art Market during the Dutch Golden Age." In: ''Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art'', vol. 30, no. 3/4. (2003), pp. 236–251. Expanded version is Prak (2008)
* Prak, Maarten, (2008)
''Painters, Guilds and the Art Market during the Dutch Golden Age'' in Epstein, Stephen R. and Prak, Maarten (eds), ''Guilds, innovation, and the European economy, 1400–1800'', Cambridge University Press, 2008, ,
*
Reitlinger, Gerald; ''The Economics of Taste, Vol I: The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices 1760–1960, Barrie and Rockliffe, London, 1961
*
Schama, Simon
Sir Simon Michael Schama (; born 13 February 1945) is an English historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University.
He fir ...
, ''
The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age'', 1987
*
Shawe-Taylor, Desmond and Scott, Jennifer, ''Bruegel to Rubens, Masters of Flemish Painting'', Royal Collection Publications, London, 2008,
*
Slive, Seymour, ''Dutch Painting, 1600–1800'', Yale University Press, 1995,
Further reading
*
Alpers, Svetlana. ''The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983,
reviewby
Ernst Gombrich)
* Franits, Wayne E., ''Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting : Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution'', 2018, Yale University Press
* Grijzenhout, F., and Veen, Henk, ''The Golden Age of Dutch Painting in Historical Perspective'', 1999, Cambridge University Press
* Hochstrasser, Julie, ''Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age'', 2007, Yale University Press
*
*
Alois Riegl
Alois Riegl (14 January 1858, Linz – 17 June 1905, Vienna) was an Austrian art historian, and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. He was one of the major figures in the establishment of art history as a self-sufficient ac ...
, ''The Group Portraiture of Holland'', reprint 2000,
Getty Publications
The Getty Research Institute (GRI), located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts". , , 9780892365487, first published in German in 1902
fully available online* Fully available online.
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dutch Golden Age Painting
01
01
*Painting
.01
Baroque painting
*
Dutch painting
Dutch Golden Age painting
Netherlandish art
Western art
17th-century Dutch artists
painting