This article and its sequel tomorrow try to set some of the finest paintings of the Golden Age in the context of major events in the history of the Dutch Republic.

Constituents of the Dutch Republic are shown in red, orange and yellow in this map. Its centres of art included The Hague, its de facto capital, Utrecht, Leiden, Delft, Harlem, and Amsterdam. To the south were the lands composing the Spanish Netherlands, notably Flanders and Brabant, including the cities of Antwerp and Brussels.

1565-1599

1568 Start of the Eighty Years’ War with Habsburg Spain.
1575 Leiden University founded by Prince William.
1579 The Union of Utrecht laid the foundation for the Dutch Republic.
1585 The city of Antwerp in Brabant was taken by Habsburg forces; to the north, Holland and Zealand started accepting migrants from southern areas under Habsburg control.

One of the driving forces behind Dutch Golden Age painting was the art flourishing in Brabant to the south. Two of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s major paintings from 1565 were formative influences on what was to come: The Harvesters above is a complete account of the grain harvest in the Low Countries, and Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap below is a pure landscape.

1600-1619

1602 The United East India Company (in Dutch, the VOC) was founded as a chartered trading company in Amsterdam, to profit from the spice trade.
1609-21 Twelve Years’ Truce.
1612 The first synagogue was built in Amsterdam.
1618 The first newspaper, the Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c., was published as a weekly broadsheet in Amsterdam.
1619 Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) was made the Asian headquarters of the United East India Company.

Hendrick Avercamp’s Winter Scene on a Canal from about 1615 follows on from Brueghel with its rich detail. In the right of the painting are two tents with flags flying. These are popular koek-en-zopie, literally ‘cake and eggnog’ cafés, selling handheld snacks like cake and pancakes, together with alcoholic drinks such as beer laced with home-made rum.

Clara Peeters trained in Antwerp, then painted an outstanding series of still lifes in the Dutch Republic. Among those is her still life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels from about 1615, a celebration of the sensuous pleasures of food.

In 1617, Michiel van Mierevelt and his son Pieter, specialists in portraiture, painted The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Willem van der Meer, one of the earliest portraits of a social group from the Golden Age. These are thought to be members of the Surgeons’ Guild of the city of Delft, who commissioned this work.

1620-1629

1620 The Pilgrim Fathers, English families from Nottinghamshire who had fled to Leiden in 1607-08, set sail from Delfshaven for America.
1621 The Chartered West India Company was founded as a trading company in Amsterdam, to profit from a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies, including participation in the Atlantic slave trade.
1625 A fort was built at New Amsterdam, the southern tip of Manhattan Island, New York, to protect the West India Company’s fur trade.

Gerard van Honthorst’s The Soldier and the Girl from about 1621 is a good example of markedly secular painting and the early influence of Caravaggio. This young woman is lighting her candle from a burning coal.

1630-42

1630 Dutch commercial colonies were established in Brazil.
1635 The Dutch Republic made a treaty with France against Habsburg Spain, leading to the Franco-Spanish War.
1637 The speculative bubble of Tulip mania, which had gathered pace from 1634, collapsed dramatically.
1639 The United East India Company became Japan’s exclusive Western trading partner.
1642 Abel Tasman discovered Tasmania and New Zealand.

In 1631 the young Rembrandt moved his studio to Amsterdam, the centre of trade and business for the Dutch Republic, and growing rapidly from a population of about 50,000 in 1600 to exceed 200,000 in the 1660s. Among his early commissions there is this Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp from 1632, a group portrait of distinguished members of the Surgeons’ Guild in their working environment.

Rembrandt’s outstanding painting of Belshazzar’s Feast was made in about 1635-38, when he was developing his distinctive techniques of depicting decorative metals.

Artists such as Albert Eckhout accompanied expeditions overseas, and it’s thought that he painted this Study of Two Brazilian Tortoises in about 1640 when in Brazil.

Rembrandt’s vast group portrait of The Night Watch (1642) is perhaps the most famous of all those of militia in the Dutch Republic. It’s more correctly titled Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, and features the commander and seventeen members of his civic guard company in Amsterdam, and took the artist three years to complete from his first commission to its display in the guards’ great hall.

Simon de Vlieger was born in Rotterdam, and painted in Delft and Amsterdam, where he was best known for his landscapes. His Beach View from 1643 uses boats, many figures, and careful composition to swell the land over the bottom of its panel. It shows well, though, how important is the sky, marvellously rendered here, with a small group of white birds shown against the grey of the clouds.