Dutch Golden Age Art Movement

The Netherlands, 1590 - 1702

Dutch Golden Age Art Movement, History, Oil Paintings & Artists of the Dutch Golden Age.

The Dutch Golden Age was a period in the history of the Netherlands, spanning over the seventeenth century. Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world.

Dutch Golden Age painting took after several propensities that overwhelmed Baroque workmanship in different parts of Europe, for example, Caravaggesque and naturalism. However, it was the pioneer in building up the subjects of still life, landscape, and genre painting. Portraiture was also prevalent, yet history painting, generally the most-elevated genre, struggled to find buyers. Church art was non-existent. While art collecting and painting for the open market were also common in other parts of the world, art historians credit the growing number of wealthy Dutch middle-class and successful mercantile patrons as the primary impetus behind the prominence of certain pictorial subjects.

This pattern, alongside the absence of Counter-Reformation church support that overwhelmed expressions of the human experience in Catholic Europe, led to a considerable number of "scenes of regular daily existence," or genre paintings, and other secular subjects. For instance, landscapes and seascapes, mirror the land recovered from the ocean and the wellsprings of exchange and maritime power that characterized the Republic's Golden Age. One subject that is quite characteristic of Dutch Baroque painting is the large group portrait, particularly of community and volunteer army organizations. This was often the subject of Rembrandt van Rijn's The Night Watch.

The first few decades of the sixteenth century witnessed a major turning point in Flemish and Dutch art. The decline of the last generation of accomplished masters in the fifteenth-century tradition made way for a revolutionary current, based on the reworking of the novel trends in Italian art, experienced firsthand on journeys to the south and combined with the decorative exuberance and descriptive detail typical of Flemish art. The star of Antwerp shone ever brighter as the port at the mouth of the Scheldt became the main commercial and artistic center along the North Sea coast.

Painters like Bosch, Metsys, Mabuse, and Scorel traveled to Venice and Rome to study Italian art. As well as acquiring the monumental sense of Italian perspectives, they also met leading European artists. The northern European artists did not travel to Italy simply to gain knowledge, but also to make their decisive contributions to the evolution of the painting of the High Renaissance and the birth of the " modern manner". The Antwerp "Italianate painters" formed a clearly recognizable movement, in close contact with the art centers of the northern provinces, where Durer's influence was strongest.

At the end of the sixteenth century, after a bitter war against Philip II of Spain, the seven United Provinces of the Low Countries gained independence. One of these was Holland, where the main cities and activities were concentrated. The United Provinces, a republic ruled by stadtholders (governors) of the House of Orange, though they had a great deal of local autonomy, suddenly found themselves a major European power. In the space of a few decades, this small population, living in a flat landscape crisscrossed with canals and dotted with windmills and constantly battling against the sea, emerged from anonymity to become the envy of the entire continent. Thanks to the East India Company, the ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam flourished as financial and trading centers.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, having established a secure basis of widespread wealth, the Dutch felt united and proud. The culture of seventeenth-century Holland is amply reflected in its paintings. Thousands of small episodes depict distant, monotonous landscapes, with children skating happily on the frozen canals; the quiet life of the hard-working women, who sweep and scrub the house as they wait for their husbands; well-off, slightly hefty cavaliers, easily tempted by the pleasures of the tavern; and drinking sessions with their old comrades in arms. There are also images of craftsmen and professionals gathered in sedate meetings of confraternities and guilds; good-natured, reliable village doctors; cunning peasants and pipe smokers; adorable children in their starched caps; and young servant girls with shining eyes. The markets are shown overflowing with merchandise, and spices from the Orient are shown on the quayside of the ports. But above all, there are images of neat, bright rooms in perfectly kept homes, with a child's forgotten toy on the polished floor, tables just abandoned by the diners, with a twist of lemon peel, a Chinese porcelain vase, crumbs of a clumsily sliced cake, and some pieces of a broken walnut. The more closely one examines Dutch paintings, the more details one sees light sparkling on pewter, shining glass windows, and the immaculate lane in front of a house. Rarely in art history has an entire population been so fully revealed in their painting.

The Birth of Still Life Oil Painting. A New Genre Destined to Change the Art Market.

At the end of the Renaissance, the art market was no longer limited to the aristocracy and high-ranking prelates but expanded to include the wealthy bourgeoisie and the rising merchant class. This change encouraged the introduction of a variety of subjects. The depiction of inanimate objects became a separate theme that excluded the presence of human figures. This genre acquired the dignity of its own thanks to the work of talented specialists and was soon much sought after by new clients. Significantly, Caravaggio claimed that a successful floral piece is as difficult to paint as a composition of figures. This is provided by a sublime and perhaps unsurpassed example of the genre in the Basket of Fruit now in Milan. A special genre of still life was the so-called pronkstilleven (ostentatious still life). This style of luxurious still-life painting was created in the 1640s in Antwerp by Flemish craftsmen, for example, Frans Snyders, Osias Beert, Adriaen van Utrecht, and a whole generation of Dutch Golden Age painters. They painted still lifes that stressed wealth by depicting a diversity of objects, fruits, flowers, and dead game, often together with living people and animals. The style was soon adopted by artists from the Netherlands. During this period, the still life genre developed throughout Europe, particularly in the northern countries.

The fame of Jan Bruegel, son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, is based above all on his ability to "arrange" and depict lavish bouquets, sometimes accompanied by unusual small objects such as coins, insects, or jewels. In his letters from Antwerp and Brussels to Milanese Cardinal Frederico Borromeo, his most ardent admirer and patron, Bruegel stressed the fact that composing these bouquets, consisting of dozens of different flowers, was an exhausting task. All of his compositions were painted from real life, and he, therefore, had to wait for the various varieties to bloom, sometimes months apart. Thanks to his favorable relations with the ruling Archduchess of the Netherlands, he had access to the royal conservatories. Here unusual plants and flowers were cultivated, including some of the first European tulips.

Baroque Europe During the Seventeenth Century.

Europe underwent significant political, social, and cultural changes. This caused a crisis between the traditional powers and the presence of new countries in a situation that stretched out over the seas to distant continents. Yet, the seventeenth century was also full of surprising contrasts. During this time, the arts developed a creative style while the sciences started to expand the guidelines of modern methods of inquiry. Economics saw the birth of bourgeois capitalism, and the sovereigns of Europe built magnificent royal residences. Italian culture and tastes spread all through Europe when Italy was consigned to the sidelines of international trade. In spite of these conditions, the Baroque age was a fascinating period of artistic development and exchange, with an increased circulation of ideas. The continent's national schools also became consolidated during this time and homogeneous stylistic features spread throughout the continent, one being the domestic intimacy of the Dutch School.

The Astronomer. Johannes Vermeer's friendship with scientists, including the inventor of the microscope Adrian van Leeuwenhoek, explains his sensitive portraits of thinkers and scholars. The portraits are full of intelligence, intuition, and concentration, evoking almost a sense of genius and knowledge.

The Antwerp school was one of the most triumphant currents of European Baroque art, and Jacob Jordaens was perhaps its most spectacular exponent. In Jordaens' Family in a Garden, the artist does not depict himself at the easel or in a painter's smock, but in extremely elegant attire. He holds a lute instead of a palette. His family is enjoying the relaxing atmosphere and the shade of the garden in full bloom at the end of summer. There is a gushing fountain and a young maid carrying a basket of ripe grapes. The delightfully innocent blond girl is portrayed smiling and timidly, with a gentle blush suffusing her cheeks and an expression that is both coy and curious; a figure worthy of Renoir.

Although Peter Paul Rubens was brought up in Antwerp in the Spanish Netherlands, he studied painting under Tobias Verhaecht, Adam van Noort, and Otto Vaenius was admitted into the Antwerp painters' guild in 1598, was appointed court painter to Archduke Albrecht of the Netherlands, and had over a hundred assistants in his Antwerp workshop. He is not considered a Dutch Golden Age painter.

The Dutch Golden Age art movement was compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist.

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