Dutch Art and Architecture

I

Introduction

Dutch Art and Architecture, the visual arts and architecture of the country now known as the Netherlands. This country became an independent state in the early 17th century; its official name at this time was the Republic of the United Netherlands, but it was often referred to as the United Provinces or the Dutch Republic.

Before it achieved independence, the country, like its southern neighbour Flanders (roughly corresponding with modern-day Belgium), was ruled by the Holy Roman Empire (from 1477) and then Spain (from 1556; Philip II of Spain inherited the territories from his father, the emperor Charles V). The two regions, which were made up of various provinces, are often called the Northern and Southern Netherlands. In 1568 a revolt broke out against Spain's oppressive rule, the start of what turned into a long and bloody struggle for liberty (see Dutch Wars of Independence), and in 1579 seven of the Northern provinces banded together as the Republic of the United Netherlands: the most important of these provinces was Holland, from which today's informal name of the country derives. Spain did not officially recognize the new country's independence until 1648, but in effect this was achieved in 1609, when a 12-year truce was agreed between them.

In only a few decades the Dutch Republic developed from a small country fighting for its life into one of Europe's major powers, its mastery of the seas helping it to achieve great wealth through worldwide trade. At the same time it had an equally remarkable cultural flowering—in literature, music, and science, but particularly in painting. Previously the region had been an artistic backwater, but in the 17th century the Dutch Republic (in spite of its small size) boasted more notable painters than any other country, and the capital Amsterdam became one of the main centres of the European art trade.

Before independence was achieved in 1609, it is difficult to separate Dutch art from Flemish art, as the Northern Netherlands (which were mainly agricultural) were culturally a satellite of the Southern Netherlands (which were much more urbanized and one of the most prosperous areas of Europe). In the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries many artists from the north moved to the south, to work in such major art centres as Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, and Ghent. Dirk Bouts, for example, came from Haarlem, but he spent his career in Louvain (Leuven), and the sculptor Claus Sluter also moved from Haarlem, working mainly in Dijon (this is now in France, but in Sluter's time it was part of the Duchy of Burgundy, which ruled large parts of the Netherlands and neighbouring territories).

Some notable artists of the period did spend their careers in the Northern Netherlands, for example Hieronymus Bosch, who lived in 's-Hertogenbosch, and Jan van Scorel, who worked mainly in Utrecht, but they do not form part of a continuous tradition in the way that their contemporaries in the Southern Netherlands do. Consequently the terms “Flemish” and “Netherlandish” tend to be used loosely and interchangeably when referring to art before the 17th century, and although the term “Dutch” is occasionally applied to such 15th- and 16th-century artists as Bosch and van Scorel, it is more usually reserved for artists of the 17th century onwards, as it is in this article. The article deals mainly with painting, for it is in this field that the Dutch contribution has been by far the most important, but there are occasional references to sculpture and architecture. For earlier “Dutch” art, see Flemish Art.

The amazing flowering of Dutch painting in the 17th century is hard to parallel and equally hard to explain, but certain political, economic, and social factors contributed to a situation in which the arts could flourish and develop. Years of fighting the Spanish had given the Dutch a nationalistic pride in their cities and landscape and in institutions such as the militia companies and guilds, which had contributed to the country's economic and military success. During the struggle the war-hit Flemish city of Antwerp declined in importance, conceding to Amsterdam its place as the chief port of the northern seaboard (between 1610 and 1640 Amsterdam's population tripled, from about 50,000 to 150,000). Dutch ships explored new trade routes, bringing back a rich variety of commodities such as shells, tulips, and fine carpets. Such exotica were avidly collected and became a source of inspiration for still life painters. Whereas previously many artists had gone from the Northern Netherlands to the Southern Netherlands in search of work, now the traffic was mainly the other way, and several Flemish-born painters played significant roles in the early development of Dutch art.

The merchants and businessmen who created the country's wealth were also the main patrons of artists. There was virtually no land-owning nobility and there was comparatively little demand for religious art, as the country was largely Protestant and consequently had few images in churches. Dutch painters therefore worked for a market that was very different from the kind found in other European countries, where the church and the aristocracy were still the main patrons. Instead of high-flown religious and mythological scenes, the Dutch middle classes favoured paintings that expressed pride in their country, their achievements, and their possessions—landscapes, seascapes, townscapes, portraits, still lifes, everyday life scenes, and so on. These paintings tended to be of fairly modest size, as they were intended for bourgeois houses rather than palaces, and even humble households could often afford some kind of picture to adorn the walls: in 1641 the English writer John Evelyn visited Rotterdam's annual fair and was astonished at the number and cheapness of the paintings he saw for sale, which were purchased even by “common farmers”.

To meet the huge demand for pictures—often bought like everyday commodities rather than specially commissioned—Dutch painters tended to cultivate a particular section of the market. Rembrandt, who was highly versatile, is the towering exception, but most of his contemporaries were specialists. Frans Hals, for example, stuck to portraits (he also painted a few religious pictures and genre scenes, but these too have a portrait-like character); Jan Vermeer occasionally tried other subjects, but most of his pictures are quiet scenes of middle-class life; Jacob van Ruisdael was the greatest landscape painter of the day and did not see any need to experiment with sidelines. Many painters concentrated on specialities within specialities—moonlit or winter landscapes, for example, or still lifes of fish or objects on a breakfast table. In such a competitive market, even highly skilled painters sometimes found it difficult to make a living, and it was fairly common for artists to have a second profession to supplement their incomes: Jan Steen, for example, worked as a brewer and then an innkeeper.

Dutch artists were diverse not only in terms of subject-matter but also geographically, for numerous towns developed vigorous traditions of painting and several of them became particularly associated with specific types of work. Haarlem, for example, was the main home of landscape painting, as Utrecht (the country's principal centre of Catholicism) was of religious painting. Delft is associated particularly with scenes of everyday life, and many Leiden painters specialized in small, very detailed and polished pictures on various subjects; these artists are known as fijnschilders (fine painters).

Just as this golden age of Dutch painting blossomed almost out of nothing, so it faded remarkably quickly once it had passed its peak. A series of inconclusive wars (1652-1674) against England, the other great sea power of the age, had a disastrous effect on the Dutch economy (including the art market), and in 1672 the country was invaded by France, which was allied with England at the time. This marked the beginning of a period in which Dutch art fell under French influence and lost much of its vigour, originality, and diversity. There were still many talented Dutch painters at work in the final quarter of the 17th century, but the golden age was over.

II

Portraiture

Portraiture was one of the dominant strands in 17th-century Dutch art, for as the country grew in prosperity, many ordinary citizens commissioned images of themselves as permanent memorials to their success. These portraits tend to stress the sober, hard-working qualities of the sitters, characteristically showing them in a down-to-earth way, their solemn black costumes starkly contrasting with their white ruffs and cuffs. One leading specialist, Michiel van Miereveld, claimed to have painted about 10,000 portraits, and although he must surely have been greatly exaggerating, a vast number of portraits of the period do survive, many of unidentified sitters.

In view of his large output, it is not surprising that Miereveld's paintings tend to be formulaic. Many other portraitists similarly produced well-crafted but rather dull works, but there were also some truly outstanding portraitists, including the first great figure in 17th-century Dutch painting, Frans Hals. Hals worked in Haarlem, and the museum named after him there has a superb collection of his work, including several great group portraits. These are mainly of members of the local militia companies that were organized to combat the fear of attack from Spain; as the threat receded, the militiamen tended to meet for social reasons, and it was thus that Hals portrayed them. The first of his paintings of this type is the Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company (1616, Hals Museum, Haarlem), which brilliantly captures the lively movement and animated expressions of the participants—symbols of the strength and optimism of the new republic. Later Hals's work became more sober, as in his poignant group portraits of the Regents and Regentesses of the Old Men's Alms House (c. 1664, Hals Museum, Haarlem). Hals also painted many superb individual portraits, of which the most famous is The Laughing Cavalier (1624, Wallace Collection, London).

The greatest of all Dutch portraitists was Rembrandt, whose strength and subtlety of characterization have never been surpassed. He was highly versatile, and also ranks as the greatest religious painter of his time, but portraiture provided the backbone of his career, accounting for about two thirds of his output. Most of his career was spent in Amsterdam, where he arrived from his native Leiden in 1631 or 1632. He quickly became the leading portraitist in the city, with a stream of commissions from wealthy citizens, who appreciated his polished technique as well as his ability to convey a vivid sense of human presence. His most famous work is a group portrait of a militia company in the tradition of Hals, which is generally referred to as The Night Watch (1642, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

From about the time he painted this picture, however, Rembrandt began to turn his back on conventional portraiture, his work becoming more introspective. This is seen particularly in his self-portraits—the most memorable sequence of such works ever created. Rembrandt painted himself throughout his career (he also drew and etched his own features), showing himself developing from showy youth to dignified old man and reflecting some of the varied fortunes of his career: although he was highly successful for a time, his extravagance led him into financial trouble in his later years. In his late paintings his technique became very bold and free, in contrast with the tight, detailed finish he had employed in his early career, when his success as a fashionable portraitist depended partly on his skill in depicting the varied textures and fine details of expensive clothes.

The other notable portraitists of the time included several who had been pupils of Rembrandt (he was the greatest teacher of the day). When he began to paint more to please himself in the 1640s they took over something of his market. Among them were Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck. However, the main inheritor of Rembrandt's position as Amsterdam's leading portraitist was Bartholomeus van der Helst, whose style was elegant and polished but sometimes bland in characterization (Portrait of a Lady in Black Satin with a Fan, 1644, National Gallery, London).

III

Landscape

Landscape first emerged as an independent subject in Western art in the 16th century, and in the 17th century it became a major strand in painting. It flourished in various countries, but above all in the Dutch Republic, which boasted the most remarkable concentration of outstanding landscape painters in the history of European art. Initially much of the impetus came from the Southern Netherlands, where a vigorous landscape tradition was established in the 16th century by artists such as Pieter Bruegel and his son Jan. This tradition was taken north by Flemish immigrants such as Gillis van Coninxloo, who left Antwerp as a Protestant refugee and settled in Amsterdam in 1595. He was an important figure in the transition from the rather artificial type of landscape characteristic of 16th-century Flemish art to the much more naturalistic idiom associated with 17th-century Dutch art (Forest, c. 1600, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). His pupils included Esias van de Velde and Hercules Segers, two of the leading landscapists of their generation.

Segers specialized in sombre and dramatic mountain scenes—imaginary in conception, but realistic in their treatment of light and atmosphere (Mountain Landscape, c. 1630, Uffizi, Florence); his work was admired by Rembrandt, whose own rare landscape paintings are in a similar brooding style. Van de Velde was more typical of the time in preferring quiet, unremarkable stretches of countryside, which he depicted with a muted palette of browns, greys, and greens. His achievement was built on by his pupil Jan van Goyen and by Salomon van Ruysdael, who are the finest representatives of what is sometimes called the “tonal” phase of Dutch landscape painting, when artists concentrated on the subtle depiction of atmosphere. Both these artists, whose work is sometimes hard to tell apart, specialized in virtually monochromatic scenes of rivers, canals, and estuaries, with low horizons and clouded skies.

Many other Dutch landscape painters concentrated on one or two fairly narrow specialities. Meindert Hobbema, for example, is best known for sunny forest scenes and views of watermills, Philips de Koninck painted majestic panoramic views, and Aert de Neer is renowned for moonlit views and winter landscapes. However, the most famous Dutch landscape painter, Jacob van Ruisdael, was entirely different in outlook, for he was a great all-rounder, trying his hand at most of the types of landscape favoured by his contemporaries and excelling at almost all of them. He was one of the best and most prolific painters of waterfalls and mountain torrents for example, even though he had not seen mountain scenery in real life (he never travelled far from his native Haarlem). The emotional force of his work sets him apart from his contemporaries just as much as his versatility, for his pictures have a solemn dignity and convey a sense of the grandeur and mystery of nature (A Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Church, c. 1665-1670, National Gallery, London). His work has been revered by many other landscape painters and has had an enduring influence in his own country and elsewhere. One of his greatest admirers was John Constable, who wrote of one of Ruisdael's pictures: “It haunts my mind and clings to my heart.”

Several Dutch landscape artists visited Italy and brought back a pastoral idiom influenced by the work of Claude Lorrain, the French-born, Rome-based painter who was the most famous landscape specialist of the day. The best-known of these “Dutch Italianates” are Nicolaes Berchem and Jan Both, both of whom enjoyed successful careers with their warm, idyllic scenes and were much imitated by their countrymen. Another notable Italianate painter was Aelbert Cuyp. He never actually visited Italy, spending his whole life in Dordrecht, but his glowing light effects memorably capture the spirit of Claude (A Hilly River Landscape with a Horseman Talking to a Shepherdess, c. 1660, National Gallery, London).

IV

Animal Painting

The love of rural life that helped inspire landscape painting was also expressed in pictures of animals. Many landscape painters included animals in their work (cows were almost a trademark of Aelbert Cuyp) and several notable painters specialized in pictures in which animals are the central feature in one way or another. Abraham Hondius, for example, painted lively scenes of hunting and of animals fighting, and Philips Wouwerman had a highly successful career with pictures involving horses in landscape settings—cavalry engagements, travellers at an inn, and so on. Melchior d'Hondecoeter was the most famous bird painter of the period (he depicted both domestic and exotic species), and Paulus Potter was a specialist in cattle and sheep. His most famous painting is the life-size Young Bull (1647, Mauritshuis, The Hague). Another of Potter’s paintings, Punishment of a Hunter (c. 1647, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg), shows animals hunting humans, a reversal of normal roles.

Sometimes animals in paintings had an allegorical or symbolic significance. An unusual example is The Threatened Swan (c. 1650, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) by Jan Asselyn, who more typically painted Italianate landscapes. The swan is shown protecting its nest from a dog, and the picture has been interpreted as a nationalistic allegory, the nest representing the Dutch Republic, which fights fiercely against its enemies.