Links to each of the articles in this series, and to many other previous articles. Covers painting in the provinces forming the Dutch Republic between 1600-72.
Netherlands
The main driving forces were a rich diversity in both Dutch society and its painted themes, and the popularity of paintings among the republic’s citizens. Visual art thrived.
Views from Monet’s two visits, in 1871 and 1874, and the common people and places seen by George Breitner, to Max Liebermann’s view of the Jewish quarter.
From major fires lighting the night sky, a vegetable market, the elegant houses of the Golden Bend, City Hall with Atlas above, to the most picturesque synagogue in Europe.
From the end of the Thirty Years’ War, settlement of Cape Colony, the United East India Company as the largest in the world with a private army of 10,000, Vermeer’s Milkmaid, to invasion by France and decline in 1672.
From the start of the Eighty Years’ War with Habsburg Spain, through the Union of Utrecht, foundation of the East India Company, tulip mania, and abundant Rembrandts.
After the Disaster Year of 1672, the art market collapsed. Dutch artists reverted to the more traditional, but their impact on secular themes, and genres including landscapes and still life has endured.
Watermills by Jacob van Ruisdael and Meindert Hobbema, and a selection of windmills by Rembrandt, Jan van Goyen, and a later copy by John Constable.
At the end of the Golden Age, he specialised in painting the Dark Arts, with astrology, rejuvenation, witchcraft, and faerie allegories.
Five paintings of women in trouble: Ariadne on Naxos, Mary Magdalen, an allegory of logic, the disillusioned Medea, and Cydippe with the apple of Acontius.
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