More challenging than figurative paintings, landscapes painted in the studio could avoid shadows altogether, or adopt other solutions to look right even if not optically faithful.
van Ruisdael
Paintings of Jacob van Ruisdael, probably the first in which species can be distinguished reliably, and leaf forms are depicted accurately, plus delights from Paulus Potter and Jan van der Heyden.
Humans have lived with trees since our origins, and trees feature in many paintings. This explains the importance of sketching them from life, and shows examples of different species and contrasting artists from Rubens and van Ruisdael to van Gogh and CĂ©zanne.
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.
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.
With much of the Dutch Republic close to water, views of the coast became marines, those of cities showed boats busy nearby, and the countryside was overrun by rivers.
Active in Haarlem and Amsterdam during and after Poussin’s later years, his depiction of trees is outstanding, and his old oaks are lifelike.
Unusual paintings to add novelty to a collection, with maritimes, river views, cloudscapes, Amsterdam burning, and a couple of distinctive ‘negatives’.
How the first cloudscapes were painted of the flat lands of the Dutch Republic, and their supports were turned to devote even more space for the sky.
A woman spinning in front of her bed, a view of a street, a waterfront, marketplace, boats on the river, canals, windmills, a sandy beach, clouds, and frozen rivers – everyday life in the Golden Age.
The Eclectic Light Company 