El Greco’s uniquely painterly brushstrokes, the oil sketches and studies of Rubens, and Rembrandt, the first major artist to intentionally leave brushstrokes in prominent passages.
Rembrandt
With great interest in optics, depicting shade and shadows advanced in the 17th century, in paintings by van Honthorst, Judith Leyster, and above all Rembrandt, whose promoter was the father of Christiaan Huygens.
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.
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.
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.
How Dutch painters studying in Italy came to be influenced by Caravaggio, and took his style back to Utrecht, where they became known as Utrecht Caravaggists.
Composition and effects of different types of varnish, with its visual effects, and how it can make a painting unreadable when it contains accumulated dirt.
Tiny jewels fashioned from blobs of white paint, Rembrandt’s textured paint layers. Turner’s scratchings, and van Gogh’s textured Wheat Field with Cypresses, seen in fine detail.
Citizens of the Dutch Republic joined organisations such as guilds for different occupational groups, civic militia, and the administration of charity. And they loved to be painted in group portraits.
The Eclectic Light Company 