Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [186]
Dutch art | The Golden Age | Genre painting |
Jan Steen
The English critic E.V. Lucas dubbed Teniers, Brouwer and Ostade “coarse and boorish” compared with Jan Steen (1625–79) who, along with Vermeer, is probably the most admired Dutch genre painter. Steen’s paintings offer the same Rabelaisian peasantry in full fling, but they go their debauched ways in broad daylight, and nowhere do you see the filthy rogues in shadowy hovels favoured by Brouwer and Ostade. Steen offers more humour, too, as well as more moralizing, identifying with the hedonistic mob and reproaching them at the same time. Indeed, many of his pictures are illustrations of well-known proverbs of the time – popular epithets on the evils of drink or the transience of human existence that were supposed to teach as well as entertain.
Dutch art | The Golden Age | Genre painting |
Gerrit Dou, Nicholas Maes and their contemporaries
Leiden’s Gerrit Dou (1613–75) was one of Rembrandt’s first pupils. It’s difficult to detect any trace of the master’s influence in his work, however, as Dou initiated a style of his own: tiny, minutely realized and beautifully finished views of a kind of ordinary life that was decidedly more genteel than Brouwer’s – or even Steen’s for that matter. He was admired, above all, for his painstaking attention to detail; and he would, it’s said, sit in his studio for hours waiting for the dust to settle before starting work. Among his students, Frans van Mieris (1635–81) continued the highly finished portrayals of the Dutch bourgeoisie, as did Gabriel Metsu (1629–67) – perhaps Dou’s most talented pupil – whose pictures often convey an overtly moral message. Another pupil of Rembrandt’s, though a much later one, was Nicholas Maes (1629–93), whose early works were almost entirely genre paintings, sensitively executed and with an obvious didacticism. His later paintings show the influence of a more refined style of portraiture, which he had picked up in France.
Dutch art | The Golden Age | Genre painting |
Gerard ter Borch and Pieter de Hooch
As a native of Zwolle, well to the east of Amsterdam, Gerard ter Borch (1619–81) found himself far from all these Leiden/Rembrandt connections; despite trips abroad to most of the artistic capitals of Europe, he remained very much a provincial painter. He depicted the country’s merchant class at play and became renowned for his curious doll-like figures and his ability to capture the textures of different cloths. His domestic scenes were not unlike those of Pieter de Hooch (1629–84), whose simple depictions of everyday life are deliberately unsentimental, and have little or no moral commentary. De Hooch’s favourite trick was to paint darkened rooms with an open door leading through to a sunlit courtyard, a practice that, along with his trademark rusty red colour, makes his work easy to identify and, at its best, exquisite. That said, his later pictures lose their spartan quality, reflecting the increasing opulence of the Dutch Republic; the rooms are more richly decorated, the arrangements more contrived and the subjects far less homely.
Dutch art | The Golden Age | Genre painting |
Jan Vermeer
It was Jan Vermeer (1632–75) who brought the most sophisticated methods to painting interiors, depicting the play of natural light on indoor surfaces with superlative skill – and the tranquil intimacy for which he is now famous the world over. Another observer of the better-heeled Dutch household and, like de Hooch, without a moral tone, he is regarded (with Hals and