Looking to shake off Moscow’s cultural influences, Kyiv has been seeking to highlight the Ukrainian roots of Kazimir Malevich, a renowned avant-garde painter.

© Oksana Parafeniuk for The New York Times

The Hollywood Classic cinema in Seoul is popular in a country where 70-year-olds now outnumber people in their 20s.

The standard advice is to hold off, but most retirees claim the benefit as soon as they can, at age 62. Here’s what to know when you’re planning the unplannable.

© Richard Beaven for The New York Times

One of the enduring memories of my childhood, spent partly in London, is walking in smog, then commonly known as a pea-souper. The combination of dense fog and smoke was so thick I could barely make out street lights, and the streets were for once almost empty, as vehicles could only proceed at walking pace.

This weekend I present a selection of paintings of mist, fog and maybe even a touch of smog on the River Thames, in and near London. Today’s paintings come from the pioneers of the nineteenth century, and tomorrow’s from the twentieth.

Many of JMW Turner’s greatest paintings take advantage of the optical effects of mist and fog. Being a Londoner, he must have experienced these all too frequently.

These peaked in Turner’s famous painting of a Great Western Railway train crossing the River Thames at Maidenhead: Rain, Steam, and Speed, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844. The whole image is fogbound and vague, and proved a precursor to the approach of the Impressionists after his death.

Less than thirty years later, when he was taking refuge from the Franco-Prussian War, Claude Monet’s The Thames below Westminster (1871) is less Impressionist. Painted from the Embankment to the north of Westminster Bridge, near what is now Whitehall, the three towers to the south are almost superimposed, and aerial perspective is exaggerated by the mist. The river is bustling with small paddleboat steamers. In the foreground a pier under construction is shown almost in silhouette. Small waves and reflections on the river are indicated with coarse brushstrokes, suggesting this is a rapid and spontaneous work.

A decade later, The Houses of Parliament is Winslow Homer’s faithful representation of the Palace of Westminster when viewed from the opposite bank of the Thames, to the north (downstream) of the end of Westminster Bridge. The tide is high under the arches of Westminster Bridge, and small boats are on the river. This classic watercolour makes an interesting contrast with Monet’s later oil paintings I show tomorrow: Homer provides little more detail, the Palace being shown largely in silhouette, but works with the texture of the paper and careful choice of pigment to add granularity. He provides just sufficient visual cues to fine detail, in the lamps and people on Westminster Bridge, and in the boats, to make this a masterly watercolour.

The following year, Jules Bastien-Lepage paid a return visit to the city, when he painted The Thames, London. This view of industrial docklands further downstream maintains detail into the far distance, except where it’s affected by the smoky and hazy atmosphere typical of the city at that time. It was this section of the river that was also painted on several occasions by James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

Tom Roberts’ Fog, Thames Embankment (1884) is painted from a similar location to Monet’s The Thames below Westminster above, on the Embankment to the north of Westminster Bridge, but is cropped more tightly, cutting off the tops of the Victoria and Elizabeth Towers. The Palace and first couple of arches of Westminster Bridge appear in misty silhouette, with moored barges and buildings on a pier shown closer and crisper. He renders the ruffled surface of the river with coarse brushstrokes, different from those of Monet.

Among six paintings that Camille Pissarro started work on during his visit to England in 1890 was this view of Charing Cross Bridge, London from Waterloo Bridge. For this he made a sketch in front of the motif, then following his return to his studio in Éragny he painted this in oils. This looks south-west, towards a skyline broken by the Palace of Westminster and the familiar tower of Big Ben.

In Frederick Childe Hassam’s Houses of Parliament, Early Evening (1898), the sun has already set, and he is viewing the Palace in the gathering dusk from a point on the opposite (‘south’) bank, perhaps not as far south as Lambeth Palace. The Victoria Tower is prominent in the left of the painting, the Central Tower is in the centre, and the most distant Elizabeth Tower is distinctive with its illuminated clock face. Moored boats in the foreground provide the only other detail. His rough facture gives a textured surface to the water.

in the seventeenth century, series paintings such as the four seasons and five senses tend to be created by Flemish rather than Dutch masters. There’s at least one notable exception, which also includes some of the most overt visual humour of the Dutch Golden Age, painted by Jan Miense Molenaer (c 1610-1668).

Molenaer seems to have spent much of his life in Haarlem, where he’s thought to have been an apprentice of Frans Hals. Other than marrying a fellow apprentice, Judith Leyster, in 1836, and the couple moving their shared studio to Amsterdam for eleven years, little seems known about his life.

The Dentist, painted in 1630, is one of his earlier paintings, and declares his interest in everyday life. A small crowd has gathered outside a church, where a fashionably dressed man is pulling a tooth from a local. The victim is dressed in tatters, with large holes at both his knees and worn-out shoes. Most around him have their hands clasped in prayer, presumably that the victim doesn’t break free and hit his dentist.

Several of Molenaer’s surviving paintings show the making of music, including A Young Man playing a Theorbo and a Young Woman playing a Cittern from about 1630-32. This is set in the interior of an upper middle class home, with a maid serving a meal in the right background. A theorbo is a member of the lute family, and is plucked, while a cittern has metal strings and is more like an ancestor of the guitar.

Several musical instruments also feature in his Allegory of Vanity from 1633, one of his vanitas paintings. An older woman is passing a fine-tooth comb through the long tresses of a younger woman, to check and remove parasites like lice. She is holding a mirror, and resting a foot on a human skull rather than a foot-warmer. The conventional lapdog is replaced by a golden statue, and the young boy in front of her is holding a device used to make bubbles. The woman’s jewellery is on display on a table at the right, and her make-up shown in a dressing table on the left.

Molenaer painted many scenes inside taverns and other places where drinking and gambling took place. His Card Players by Lamplight from about 1634 shows a card game in progress by the light of a lamp mounted on a stand in the foreground. The player looking directly at the viewer clearly thinks he holds the winning ace.

In about 1635, Molenaer painted his family playing music together. Judging by the portraits hanging behind them, the artist is at the extreme left, but his wife Judith Leyster only seems to be shown in her portrait.

Two years later, he painted The Five Senses, relatively small works on panels whose origins are obscure. Most series like these are commissioned, as the chances of finding a purchaser for the whole series are low. These appear to have been completed when he was in Amsterdam, and were only purchased for the Mauritshuis in 1893.

Sight is one of the more straightforward to read, with a man gazing wistfully into an empty flask by the light of the lamp on the table in front of him.

Hearing is more of an allusion, as three men carouse noisily over a mug of drink.

Taste stays in the same drinking room, as one man savours the last drop of drink, while another lights his pipe from the hot embers in a small earthenware container.

Touch is rich in ribald humour. The man on the left has thrust his left hand up to grope inside the woman’s skirts, for which she is about to bring her slipper down forcefully on his head.

Smell completes the series with the best of his visual jokes. The woman on the right is cleaning up the bum of the infant on her lap. This also shows severe fading on her skirt, which was painted using indigo with lead white. The original was far darker, as can be seen by the deeper blue at the edge of the panel, where the frame has shielded the pigment from light.

Although Molenaer continued to paint prolifically, this series marks his zenith, with fine examples of genre paintings during the Dutch Golden Age.

Centrist governments are failing badly in Europe’s leading economies, setting the stage for a far-right sweep.

By about 1650, Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691) had demonstrated his proficiency in painting a wide variety of subjects and genres, from mythological landscapes to farm animals. He had become influenced by Jan Dirksz Both (c 1610-52), who had recently returned from working with Claude Lorrain in Rome.

At their best, Cuyp’s coastal landscapes, such as The Maas at Dordrecht from about 1650, are full of rich light, earning him the title of the Dutch Claude Lorrain. This shows another passage boat packed with passengers, together with its drummer.

Also thought to have been painted in about 1650, shortly before his father’s death, it’s possible that Two Cavalry Troopers Talking to a Peasant is a collaboration between father and son. Although there’s a slight awkwardness in the figures, the horses are finely painted with great detail on their saddlery, including glinting buckles.

Some of his landscapes from this period appear to have been painted in very different terrain. His Migrating Peasants in a Southern Landscape from about 1652 shows people dressed for the more temperate climate of northern Europe in a landscape that could be further south.

Cuyp’s grand view of The Valkhof at Nijmegen from about 1652-54 shows the Imperial castle that was demolished in 1798, on its small hill beside the river. The landscape is bathed in golden light, and broken clouds are tinged with similar Claudean colour as they drift through its lucent sky.

In about 1655, Cuyp painted this narrative landscape with the story of Saint Philip Baptising the Ethiopian Eunuch, referring to the account of Philip the Evangelist in chapter 8 of the Acts of the Apostles. Following the instructions of an angel, Philip went to the road between Jerusalem and Gaza, where he met the treasurer to Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians. As the Ethiopian Eunuch was sitting reading Old Testament scripture in his chariot, Philip explained the text and taught him the Gospel of Jesus. The eunuch was converted and baptised as a result.

Cuyp sets this story in a golden Claudean landscape more akin to the south of France or even Italy, with rich detail in the riverside plants, the figures and animals.

Although Cuyp doesn’t appear to have painted many winter scenes, his Ice Scene Before the Huis te Merwede near Dordrecht from about 1655 is up with the leaders. Notable here are his foreground reflections, and another wonderful sky with its warm clouds. This castle was built to the south-east of Dordrecht in the early fourteenth century, and ruined a hundred years later.

A Senior Merchant of the Dutch East India Company is a fascinating double portrait painted during 1650-59. It’s thought to show Jacob Mathieusen and his wife, against a background of the company fleet in Batavia roads. This city in what was then the Dutch East Indies is now the site of Jakarta in Indonesia. There’s no record of Cuyp ever having visited this imagined location, and he appears to have painted the background on the basis of contemporary topographic images, then painted his subjects in the studio.

A Road near a River from about 1660 is the last of Cuyp’s paintings for which I have a date, and perhaps his finest closing summary. It’s a landscape in the style of Claude Lorrain, with long shadows and the warmth of the setting sun. There’s a small flock of sheep and a sleeping dog, the shepherd chatting with a friend. Further down that road are two more figures, one of them sat on a pony. On the other side of the river with its broken reflections, is a cottage and more people. In the distance is a thoroughly alien crag and the ruins of a castle. Above all this is the peaceful sky of settled weather, divided into two by a pair of finely crafted trees.

Cuyp’s undated Interior of a Cowshed is a fine portrait of a cow leading the herd into a shed, with good use made of chiaroscuro and details of the tools, tackle and equipment inside.

In 1658, Cuyp married Cornelia Bosman. Within two years, he had apparently stopped painting completely, and was a deacon of the Reformed Church. It has been speculated that it was his marriage that brought an end to his art. Whether that’s true or not, for the final thirty years of his life he seems not to have made another painting.

Reference

Wikipedia.

Ken Stern on why Americans should stop classifying 65 as “old.”

Artists like Rembrandt and Vermeer are exceptional in any period in history. Among the thousands of artists in the Dutch Republic, there were a few dozen who never achieved such greatness, but whose paintings have endured the collapse of the market in the late seventeenth century. Among them is Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691), who is also a bit of a mystery in that he appears to have stopped painting soon after 1660, although he lived for another thirty years.

Cuyp was born into an artistic family, who were also quite rich. He was taught to paint by his father, Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp, who was primarily a portrait painter, and lived in Dordrecht. Trained as a landscape painter, he often used views as a platform for genre scenes, animal and human portraits, and more, and seems to have been both happy and highly proficient at painting almost anything. During his early career, he was mostly under the influence of the prolific artist Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), but doesn’t appear to have been his pupil.

Cuyp is thought to have painted this Landscape with Cattle when he was only about nineteen, in 1639. It’s set against the background of the city of Dordrecht, situated on the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt river delta. The herdsman and animals in the foreground are engaged in diversions from that landscape: the man is taunting a billy goat, while the cow at the far right is urinating copiously. Above them is a lucent sky with slightly unnatural clouds.

Cuyp was soon using his landscapes with more diverse themes. Orpheus with Animals in a Landscape from about 1640 is one of at least two different paintings he made of this story from mythology. Here he has included a wide range of both domestic and exotic animals and birds, including a distant elephant, an ostrich, herons and wildfowl.

Throughout his career, Cuyp seems to have made detailed sketches in front of the motif, to inform his studio paintings. This View of Arnhem from the South from about 1642-46 was made using grey wash, watercolour and black chalk.

His dramatic Thunderstorm over Dordrecht from about 1645 is amazingly effective and accurate, considering it was painted more than two centuries before anyone saw high-speed photographic images of lightning.

Many of Cuyp’s landscapes show more varied terrain than he could ever have seen in the Republic. Although the cliffs at the right of his Herdsmen with Cows (c 1645) may have been fairly local, the more substantial crags in the left distance are far from being Dutch. It’s not known whether he travelled to other countries, or perhaps relied on the paintings of artists who did.

His paintings of domestic animals also took him indoors, for example in this fascinating painting of Sheep in a Stable from about 1645. The sheep are faithfully depicted, and surrounded by objects suggesting this was more of a still life. In the foreground are empty mussel shells, a couple of earthenware pots, and two wickerwork baskets with some scarlet cloth. He also renders the texture of the fleeces using painterly brushstrokes, particularly that of the standing ram.

View on the Rhine also from about 1645 appears to have been the result of a trip up river into steeper terrain inland. It’s wonderfully painterly, and might even be mistaken for one of Turner’s landscapes from nearly two centuries later.

In the mid-1640s, Cuyp is believed to have come under the influence of Jan Dirksz Both (c 1610-52), who had returned to Utrecht by 1646 following a formative period spent in Rome. When he was in Italy, Both transformed his painting thanks to the work of, and working with, Claude Lorrain. As a result, Cuyp changed the direction of light in his landscapes to elongate shadows and enrich his colour ranges. His father was still alive for much of this period, and it’s thought that in some paintings prior to about 1650, the son painted the landscape and father the figures.

Cuyp continued to make fine studies in front of the motif, such as this View of the Groote Kerk in Dordrecht from the River Maas from about 1647-48, made using a combination of black and brown chalk and watercolour washes. Like the previous study, it sadly wasn’t intended to be seen by the public.

He also painted a few nocturnes, including this view of the Sea by Moonlight from about 1648, where he extends his exploration of the effects of light.

Although Cuyp never seems to have become a more dedicated marine specialist, his paintings of ships including The Passage Boat from about 1650, are landmarks at the height of his career. This ferry was most probably run between Dordrecht and Rotterdam, a distance of little more than twelve miles (20 km) by river. The figures in the boat are finely detailed, including a drummer towards the stern, and the clouds are also finely crafted.

Reference

Wikipedia.

The absence of young people from conventional protests is both a problem and a warning.

One of the small villages on the southern edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau grew into an artist’s colony in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Grez-sur-Loing is on the bend of the River Loing where it turns to the east to head for Moret-sur-Loing and empty into the River Seine at Saint-Mammès. The village lies between the road north from Nemours to Fontainebleau, and the river meandering in its floodplain.

Among those who painted there are John Singer Sargent, Carl Larsson who met his wife there, Bruno Liljefors the Swedish animal painter, PS Krøyer and other Nordic Impressionists of the Skagen group, Theodore Robinson and Willard Metcalf from the US, and the Glasgow Boys.

Like many others, the British artist Louis Welden Hawkins came to Grez from Paris, in his case by about 1880. He painted rural scenes in a style strongly reminiscent of Jules Bastien-Lepage, who was only slightly older than Hawkins, and at the time making a great impression at the Salon. This is Hawkins’ Peasant Woman from about 1880.

Hawkins’ first success came with Orphans (1881), which shares Bastien-Lepage’s muted colours, attributed to the light supposedly peculiar to Grez. A young brother and sister are in a neglected graveyard, looking together at a pauper’s grave, apparently of one or both of their parents. This painting was awarded a third-class medal at the Salon that year, and marked the start of a run of his paintings exhibited at the following three Salons. It was purchased by the state in 1887 for 10,000 francs, and was also exhibited at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900.

Hawkins continued this style in The Last Step (c 1882), showing an elderly woman walking slowly with a stick in what may be the same graveyard. In the distance, a gravedigger is digging a new grave through the stony soil. The two engage in conversation, probably discussing where she will be buried in the not too distant future.

By 1882, the colony at Grez was becoming popular with Nordic painters who were developing their skills in France. Among them were the Swedish artists Carl Larsson and Karin Bergöö, who met there and later married.

Larsson’s paintings from Grez also appear to have been influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage. His watercolour of The Old Man and the Nursery Garden from 1883 shows similar muted colours, and common rural themes.

Larsson painted this touching portrait of The Bride at Grez the same year. It almost certainly shows his wife Karin, and was presumably intended as a wedding gift to her.

In the Country (1883) is typical of a number of views that Larsson painted of the rural poor in and around Grez, in the same realist style with soft colours. That year, he had his first painting accepted by the Paris Salon, and was getting valuable commissions for book illustrations.

The single figure in Larsson’s watercolour Autumn (1884) is dressed anachronistically in clothing from the previous century. This was most probably to please the Salon jury, as eighteenth century scenes were fashionable at the time. Its setting at Grez and his soft realism combine to make this one of his finest watercolours of this period.

Well before the Glasgow Boys came, John Lavery visited from Glasgow. Although he was born in Belfast, he moved to Glasgow when he was a child. After initially attending the Haldane Academy in Glasgow, he went to Paris in the early 1880s, where he was a student at the Académie Julian, where he was influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage and Millet, and painted at Grez-sur-Loing in 1884.

Lavery’s plein air oil sketch of The Principal Street at Grez from 1884 shows one of the many artists at work in the village, which had become popular internationally. Although following the course recommended for Naturalist painters, Lavery’s style is here thoroughly Impressionist.

At its height, Grez drew artists from all over the world, including some of the pioneers from Japan. In 1889 Asai Chū founded the first group of western-style (yōga) painters in Japan, and in 1898 was appointed professor of the forerunner of the Tokyo University of the Arts. In 1900 he moved to Paris for two years of study of Impressionism, and went to Grez to paint en plein air.

His Washing Place in Grez-sur-Loing shows small huts used by the village women to wash laundry in 1901.

The following year he painted this Bridge in Grez-sur-Loing before returning to Japan.

For much of that time, just over 12 km (7 miles) downstream, one of the great landscape artists of French Impressionism had been painting alone.

By happy coincidence, while I’m exploring paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, one of its outstanding artists celebrates the four hundredth anniversary of his infant baptism on 20 November 1625: Paulus Potter, who died tragically young in early 1654, but in that short period established himself as a founding father of animal painting.

He was born in Enkhuizen, a busy port in the north of the Dutch Republic, but moved to Leiden and then Amsterdam while still a child. His father was a painter, and young Paulus learned and worked as an apprentice in the family workshop.

He painted God Appearing to Abraham at Sichem in the middle of his apprenticeship, in 1642, making it one of his earliest surviving works. The human figures at the left have some odd proportions indicating his inexperience, but the most striking feature is the magnificent pair of cows stealing the centre. How these cattle came to dominate this painting is a mystery: it’s as if he was told to paint the Biblical story, but lacked interest and decided to liven it up according to his desires.

Once he had completed his apprenticeship he moved to Delft, where he became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke (the painters’ guild) in 1646.

Peasant Family with Animals (1646) appears to be another example of a hijacked motif, of a peasant family with a curiously grotesque young daughter, their cottage, and some wizened trees. Potter has added to that an extensive collection of farm animals, including two cows (one being milked), a calf, and sundry sheep, lambs, and a goat, in a sampler of farm animals.

His Figures with Horses by a Stable from 1647 shows his maturing composition. The farmer and his wife, who is feeding a child at her breast, still have a slight awkwardness about them, but the horses, chickens, dog, and distant cattle are finely painted, as is the magnificent tree in the centre. The sky contains several birds, another consistent feature of his mature works.

He completed his development in his Driving the Cattle to Pasture in the Morning (1647) with a superb dawn sky, providing the warm backlighting to the cattle and barren trees. The farmer’s child has grown, but is still feeding at the breast, as was common at the time. At the far left a pair of pigs are shown in repose.

His first masterpiece, for the next couple of centuries ranked alongside Rembrandt’s finest, is The Bull (also widely known as The Young Bull) (1647), which is almost life-sized, and vivid in its surface details. Originally intended just to be a portrait of the central bull, Potter enlarged the canvas to accommodate (from the left) a ram, lamb, ewe, herdsman, cow, and above them a bird of prey, possibly a buzzard. Beyond them are more cattle in the meadows receding to the church of Rijswijk, between Delft and The Hague. There are also many finer details including a frog in the foreground, textured bark and lichen on the tree, and several flies on the cattle.

A Husbandman with His Herd (1648) is a variation on a similar theme, this time with a lifelike cow-pat in the centre foreground.

In 1649, Potter moved to The Hague, where he married, and worked until 1652. His wife’s family were well-connected and provided entry to the upper class. At this time he apparently painted a work showing a cow pissing that was bought with glee by Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, Princess of Orange by marriage.

His Two Pigs in a Sty (1649) shows two hairy pigs at rest inside. Many of the older breeds of pig were hairier than modern varieties, and Potter has painted their coats realistically, as well as skilfully lighting the face of the sow sat on her haunches.

Two Horses near a Gate in the Meadow (1649) shows that Potter still had some room for improvement in his equine works: the head of the horse in the centre has some slightly peculiar proportions.

The Bear Hunt (1649) is another large canvas, showing a swarthy man armed with a scimitar, his hounds, and others attacking two Eurasian brown bears. Although the bear had become extinct through hunting in the British Isles by about 1000 CE, it may still have been rarely encountered in the Netherlands in Potter’s day. His first-hand knowledge of the animal appears limited, though, as their body proportions are quite different to those shown here.

Orpheus and Animals (1650) is one of Potter’s most unusual paintings, showing a wide range of different species, some of which weren’t well-known then, and one of which (the unicorn) didn’t even exist. They include a Bactrian camel (two humps), donkey, cattle, ox, wild pig, sheep, dog, goat, rabbit, lions, dromedary (one hump), horse, elephant, snake, deer, unicorn, lizard, wolf, and monkey.

In 1652, Potter moved to Amsterdam.

Cattle in the Meadow (1652) develops the effects of light together with the early autumn season almost to the point of being impressionist in its use of colour. In addition to the cattle, the painting is enhanced with a sow and her piglets in the right foreground, and exuberant lichen growth on the split tree-trunk by them.

Resting Herd (1652) shows another variation of his standard composition for cattle.

His Cows Grazing at a Farm (1653) was one of his last paintings, and apart from its meticulous detail, its rich lighting effects might have been more typical of Corot two hundred years later.

In 1654, when Paulus Potter was still in Amsterdam, he died from tuberculosis at the age of only 28. In his tragically brief career, he had painted over a hundred oil paintings, most of which survive today. His faithful depictions of farm animals set the standard for art for the next couple of centuries, and were inspiration to Constant Troyon and others who painted animals.

It happened that the Dutch Golden Age coincided with some of the coldest years during the Little Ice Age. In the previous century, the pioneering Flemish landscape painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder recorded the snow and ice during those exceptionally cold winters.

Brueghel’s masterpiece Winter Landscape with Skaters and Bird Trap from 1565 is one of the first paintings to show Netherlandish people on the ice in the winter. Although a few similarly wintry views were painted in and around Antwerp, they didn’t really catch on until the middle of the following century. Among their earliest exponents in the Dutch Republic was Hendrick Avercamp, who was born in Amsterdam but painted for most of his career in Kampen, to the north-east, and was probably the first to specialise in winter landscapes.

Avercamp’s Winter Landscape with Skaters is seen in his 1608 version above, and from around 1630 below. The whole population seems to have spilled out from the warmth of buildings to take to the ice. The fashionable parade in their best clothes and company, children play, and the occasional less able skater ends up sitting on the ice.

His Winter Scene on a Canal from about 1615 is even richer in detail. In the right of the painting are two tents with flags flying. These are popular koek-en-zopie, literally ‘cake and eggnog’ cafés, selling handheld snacks like cake and pancakes, together with alcoholic drinks such as beer laced with home-made rum.

Avercamp’s Kolf Players on Ice from 1625 features another common sight, the game of kolf, an ancestor of modern golf that became popular in the Netherlands during the thirteenth century, and has all but vanished today. Although also played indoors, it was played widely on frozen bodies of water during these cold winters. This involved striking a ball around a simple course with a club, with the aim of reaching the opponents’ starting point first. In this painting, the player about to strike their ball might be aiming for the post being held in the distance.

Adriaen van de Venne’s early painting of The Winter from 1614 shows two ice yachts under full sail, and dense crowds in the distance.

Although Aelbert Cuyp doesn’t appear to have painted many of these, his Ice Scene Before the Huis te Merwede near Dordrecht from about 1655 is among the finest. Notable here are his foreground reflections on the mirror-like surface, and the wonderful sky with its warm clouds. The castle seen here was built to the south-east of Dordrecht in the early fourteenth century, and ruined a hundred years later.

Skating on the ice using long curved blades of wood or metal, seen on the shoes of the man in the left foreground, was also popular. Younger adults made it a sport, and there were long-distance races.

Aert van der Neer’s beautifully-lit Sports on a Frozen River (c 1660) includes several kolf players. The reflection of the low sun on the ice is particularly well shown here, giving the ice a polished sheen.

Van der Neer was another specialist in painting these views. These contrasting Winter Landscapes show his command of light and skies in his mature works. That above dates from about 1660, and that below from about 1665-70.

Adriaen van de Velde’s Kolf Players on the Ice near Haarlem (1668) affords a closer view of a game in progress, with a koek-en-zopie tent in the distance, ready to warm the players up.

殿堂，这个词最先指代那些承载着历史与文化的宏大建筑。

但随着时间推移，它很快成为一种表露资格的形容词，一旦一件作品被冠上殿堂二字，就意味它足以登堂入室，接受全世界的审视。

过去，登上巴黎大皇宫这种殿堂级艺术空间的，是传世油画、雕塑，以及那些定义了摄影史的大师杰作，而现在，一群拿着手机的人，用他们的照片，让这座百年艺术圣殿，为同一个故事，第三次亮起了灯——

2025 华为影像大赛颁奖盛典暨年度影像展，正在巴黎大皇宫展开，超百组获奖作品汇聚，共同展出。

这场影展，正在指明一个极具张力的事实：

从此开始，千千万万个日常瞬间的力量，与殿堂里的不朽杰作，并无二致。

一个理念，三个板块，万般精彩

风掀起红幕，日光照亮墙壁，一个剪影伫立其间。

这是影展主视觉《街头剧场》，由 XMAGE 100 获奖者黄利勇拍摄。他诠释道：

街头的色彩与光影，像极了一个巨大的剧场，每个人都可以是主角。

细看画面，风、光、人，多种力量汇聚，形成微妙张力，向观众发问：风从何来？光如何蜿蜒？此人是谁？

若再好奇些，我们还可以继续发问：如果将被风掀起的幕布视为舞台的开幕，那么黑暗里的人，到底是等待开场的演员，还是隐于暗处的观众？接下来会展开什么样的故事？

回答一系列问题的，是本次影像展的主题：

The World, You and Me.

看世界，看见你。

六个字，隐藏着三个主体——世界、你，还有一个藏在镜头后面的我。

多样的视角、角色、主题，在六个静态文字中动态交融，其内涵由影展的三个板块来承载。

 

看山是山：世界颗粒（I capture, therefore I am）

这是我们与世界的「初见」。

数码照片，由密密麻麻的像素组成，「世界颗粒」的回环形多媒介装置，就基于这个理念打造。

在《街头剧场》旁边的立体装置上，照片、镜面装置与电子屏幕穿插并置，在 XMAGE 100 获奖照片的间隙中，每个人都能看见自己模糊的掠影，电子屏幕则在观众与物理装置间，插入了第三个动态维度，世界的多样性与复杂性，在我们面前缓缓铺开——

这些来自全球的作品与观者本身，共同拼凑出我们对世界的基础感知。

我拍故我在，这是「影像力量」的第一层基石：「记录与见证的力量」。

 

看山不是山：视野交锋（The Constructed, The Perceived）

移步向前，在世界的表面之下，一些微妙的矛盾开始涌现，如果说世界颗粒是「看山是山」，那么视野交锋就进入到「看山不是山」的境地。

一张照片，不再是表面那样确凿且客观，事实和歧义在画面中交织融合，真实开始出现错位。

来自 XMAGE 100 年度摄影师 Gheorghe Popa 的《空灵线条》，呈现出一幅色彩奇幻、纹理细腻的抽象画，这是盖亚马纳矿湖的化学物质留下的痕迹。

看山不是山，眼见的美丽与其背后的现实在这一刻发生了剧烈的交锋，这是一种和谐而矛盾的共存，照片有多美丽，揭示这份反差时的冲击就有多么震撼，评委王川一针见血：

视觉上越美丽，图像的力量就越强大。

这场交锋得以成立的基石，是华为Pura 80 Ultra 对色彩表现的极致还原，在红枫原色摄像头的帮助下，Pura 80 Ultra 得以精准地捕捉到画面中错落的光线和奇幻色彩，并使其一并定格。

可以设想，若是色彩还原不准确，明暗失衡，这种美丽便无从谈起，背后的发问也将失去力量。

同样，XMAGE 100 获奖作品《一线希望》，则在光与暗的边界上交锋。

XMAGE 100 获奖者 Rhon Velarde 在黑暗中用一束蓝光勾勒出主体轮廓，华为的暗光表现，没有粗暴地照亮黑暗，而是精准地控制了黑暗，让光晕象征的束缚与发现与人脸的静谧紧张感得以交织并存。

曾经手机摄影难以把控的极限暗光影调，在华为的美学调校下，变得克制而富有层次，技术没有压倒叙事，最终才成就了这张充满张力的照片。

在「视野交锋」，我们总能在照片里看到，一些巧合与误会正隐藏在和谐之中，这种巧合颇有乐趣、耐人寻味，当然也不乏尖锐的矛盾。

这种微妙的平衡以及背后蕴藏的巨大能量，惟有影像，才能捕捉——这是「影像力量」的第二层进阶：「解构与发问的力量」。

 

看山还是山：如它所述（In Their Own Words）

我们晃眼看过了世界的表象，又捕捉到了表面之下的微妙，是时候回归「看山还是山」的本质——影展走入了最后一个板块。

在这里，聚光灯收束，聚焦在具体的人和事物上，矛盾与错位开始消融，情感通过镜头的桥梁，将力量汹涌而纯粹地传递，直击人心。

年度摄影师 Mehmet Emin Corus 拍摄的《新生命》，是这种纯粹力量的开篇——没有交锋的矛盾，只有看山还是山的质朴，农夫抱着新生的小牛，母牛本能地紧跟在后。

评委王川用一段话准确地指出了《新生命》的绝妙之处：

这是一张质朴而简洁的照片，记录着日常轮回中生命的最初，一切都不能再自然，摄影师也没有上任何“手段”，正是这种尊重、理解和欣慰，成就了一幅看似无奇却极富感染力的好照片。

另一幅年度摄影师作品《雪源》，聚光灯聚焦在女孩叶丽娜的传承故事上——作为察纳（人类最早滑雪的工具）毛皮雪板非遗传承人的爷爷斯兰别克，亲手为她制作了毛皮雪板，并带领她在雪山上学习滑雪。

在这个间隙，陈冠宏敏锐地捕捉到这幅画面，女孩直视镜头的目光、传统服饰的细腻纹理、乃至毛皮风帽的蓬松质感，都在讲述雪源和血缘的故事。

当叙事需要质感的支撑时，技术的力量便会润物无声。

华为影像 XMAGE 中的「真实感」与「沁润感」，在这张照片上体现得淋漓尽致——技术的意义，是为了以不打扰的方式，将一个具体的人、一个具体的故事，以及背后的情感，用最清晰、最真实的质感呈现给你。

如果说《雪源》的力量在于凝望的质感，那么《向远方》的力量则更为轻松与自在。

车内的剪影、车顶的行囊、天边的飞鸟——三个互不相干的元素，共同指向远方这个颇具浪漫色彩的主题。

要将这三个元素编织进一个画面，是技术与叙事的两全其美——需要长焦带来压缩感，才能将远处的飞鸟与近处的行囊拉入同一个时空；需要色彩的还原力，让天空的蓝与车身的黄形成高对比度的情绪；更需要抓拍的决定性瞬间，在飞鸟掠过的刹那按下快门。

这些元素汇聚在一起，成为华为影像 XMAGE 所蕴含力量的综合体现：它将华为在长焦、色彩、瞬时抓拍上的技术积累，融合成一种随手可得的叙事能力，让普通人也能捕捉到路途中的诗意。

越过真实与歧义，穿透矛盾与和谐，这是「影像力量」的最终归宿：「叙事与共情的力量」。

从看见世界，到连接你我，影展的三个板块根据流线设计，从宏观到内心，形成一个完美的回环，也恰好契合「看山是山」到「看山还是山」这样充满辩证哲思、由表面到本质的渐进。

有心者一定有注意到，这次影像盛典的获奖方式，并不像我们熟知的那样，在每个类别中分出冠亚季军，而是有了一个更具包容性的统一名字——XMAGE 100。

华为认为，一张照片的维度，远比一个标签要丰富，用类别的条条框框去定义它，无异于削足适履。

更何况，世界大千，又岂是几个标签所能概括？

打破组别排名的另一个好处，则是真正让影像这件事儿，更为平权——

当一张照片不再仅仅作为谋组的优胜者、而是直接作为「100 个精彩瞬间之一」被看见时，那扇一度被少数人把持的殿堂大门，便向每一个普通人平等地敞开了。

跳脱框架外，才是真包容。

至此，这场影展用看山三境的哲思，淋漓尽致地展现了「影像力量」的三个层次：记录、发问与共情，也见证了影像的力量，从少数人走向大众，再由大众走向殿堂的大门。

但这份力量，并非凭空而来。

这种人人皆可主角的平权，是如何从百年前少数人的特权，一步步走到今天的？

问题的答案不在别处，依旧在这座巴黎大皇宫中。

带着千千万万人，重返大皇宫

1888 年，刚刚推出第一台便携式相机 Kodak Camera 的柯达，确定了自己核心经营理念——让相机变得像铅笔一样方便，并由此提出了一句著名的广告语：

You press the button, we do the rest.
你只管按快门，剩下的交给我们。

那时候，摄影还不算是个完全普及的玩意，一张照片的背后，是昂贵的摄影器材、笨重的玻璃底片、复杂的曝光计算以及近乎炼金术一般的冲洗知识。

可以说，彼时的摄影艺术，是专业摄影师与富裕爱好者的特权，其门内，堪称往来无白丁。

十二年后，也就是 1900 年，巴黎为盛大的世界博览会，献上了巴黎大皇宫这座辉煌的殿堂。

同年，柯达的创始人乔治·伊士曼，带着售价仅一美元的勃朗尼相机（Brownie Camera）和革命性的胶卷系统，作为二十世纪最前沿的科技成果参加了这场盛会，被授予了博览会的最高奖，极低的相机成本、工业化生产的胶卷，用户拍照它冲洗的模式，极大程度地降低了摄影的门槛，柯达在 1888 年提出的那句广告，迈出了第一步。

殿堂和平权的开端，在 1900 年的巴黎大皇宫里，戏剧性地交汇了。

此后一个多世纪的浮光掠影中，这座建筑见证了艺术的流转，既仰望过野兽派与印象派留在画布上的经典，也审视过布列松、安德烈亚斯与舍曼等定义了摄影史的名字与他们的作品。

遗憾的是，虽然相机和胶片开始进入家庭，但在成本和冲洗流程的限制下，影像，依旧离普罗大众还有相当远距离，这种情况一直持续到数码相机时代，才又一次出现变化——

2018 年，华为全球新品发布会在巴黎大皇宫举办，此后两年，华为新影像大赛的优秀作品均在这里展出，这是中国品牌首次在这里举办重要活动，手机拍摄的照片，第一次与世界级摄影作品并肩。

殿堂依旧，但影像，已经经由「软硬芯云」，将复杂的流程彻底压缩进人人口袋中那个方寸大小的设备里，回望来时路，从华为P8 开始延续的影像探索之路，到华为Pura 80 Ultra 的一镜双目长焦，华为的每一代，都在解决一个具体的问题，最终积累出庞大的技术解决方案——华为影像 XMAGE。

极致的影像技术，激发了人们的想象力、创造力与鉴赏力，并使其得以落地成真，进而推进影像平权的发展，增添了独属于移动影像的力量。

六年后的今天，华为携手 Paris Photo 与 UCCA Lab，以全球合作伙伴的身份，带着华为影像 XMAGE 的技术底座、影像力量的美学主张、三大板块的策展论述，汇聚来自 78 个国家、超过 74 万件作品，以及背后千千万万个抬手就能拍摄照片的用户，再次推开巴黎大皇宫的大门。

一次叫特例，两次是偶尔，三次成常态。

这样的常态，宣告了华为影像 XMAGE 的核心价值——影像的力量，不止于技术，还有平权。

一个由科技与大众人文主义共同驱动，迄今为止最年轻、也正年轻的媒介，也由此真正推开了殿堂厚重的大门，让每个人都能「登堂入室」。

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Painting in the Golden Age didn’t occur in isolation, but was greatly influenced by artists of Flanders and Brabant to the south, many of whom visited or migrated to the Dutch Republic. Some Dutch artists effectively exported their landscape and other skills to Italy, where there was a group of emigrés known as the Bentvueghels (meaning birds of a feather) between about 1620-1710.

From the late 1590s until well into the following century, the distinctive style of Caravaggio (1571-1610) drew followers across Europe, most of whom saw his paintings when they were training in Italy. This wave of Caravaggism spread when those painters returned to their native lands, including the states of the Dutch Republic.

Caravaggio’s style was by no means unique, and his use of chiaroscuro had been anticipated a century earlier in this wonderful nocturne by the early Netherlandish painter Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Nativity at Night, thought to be from about 1490. Chiaroscuro makes narrative sense here, and results in a scene of great tenderness and reverence, thanks to its soft transitions of tones.

Caravaggio’s third painting of Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist was completed in about 1609-10, shortly before his death, and illustrates his style at its height.

Artemisia Gentileschi’s father was a well-known Caravaggist, and she followed suit for the early years of her career. Her painting of Judith Slaying Holofernes followed a decade later in 1620-21. Over that period, Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerrit van Honthorst, Dirck van Baburen and Jan van Bijlert became influenced when in Italy, and returned to Utrecht, where they have become known as the Utrecht Caravaggists.

Van Honthorst’s The Soldier and the Girl from about 1621 is a good example, where the young woman is lighting her candle from a burning coal.

Van Honthorst’s dimly lit indoor scenes are associated with pleasures, often fairly sinful ones, as in his Merry Company from 1623. He shows here how directional lighting can transform appearance, turning quite ordinary or ugly faces into caricatures.

As music was breaking out of seedy dens of iniquity into mainstream culture, learning to play an instrument and playing to others became fashionable, as shown in van Honthorst’s merry Concert on a Balcony from 1624.

During the 1620s his paintings became more narrative and less Caravaggist, as seen in his Solon and Croesus from 1624. This shows the elderly Greek statesman getting a hostile reception from Croesus, with his court laughing at his responses. Included are two slaves supplicating themselves before the king, in an interesting condemnation of slavery for its time.

Some more mainstream artists also showed Caravaggist tendencies.

Rembrandt’s very early painting of The Operation from 1624-25 shows a barber-surgeon and his assistant performing surgery on the side of a man’s head, by the light of a commonplace candle on a candlestick holder.

Hendrick ter Brugghen’s religious narrative of Jacob Reproaching Laban for Giving him Leah in Place of Rachel is from the later years of Caravaggism, in 1627.

Although remarkably little is known of the paintings of Judith Leyster, she appears to have been influenced when painting in Haarlem.

Like most of her surviving paintings, A Game of Tric-Trac was made before her marriage to Jan Miense Molenaer, in this case in 1630.

Although Rembrandt’s use of chiaroscuro is best known from his later paintings, Saint Peter in Prison (The Apostle Peter Kneeling) dates from 1631.

Later interiors and genre works show the more lasting influence imported from Italy.

A glance at a map of the Dutch Republic during its Golden Age reveals that very little was far from the sea, or one of the large rivers that flow through its countryside and cities. In the middle was the Zuiderzee, a large inland sea only kept at bay by a great many dikes.

With the popularity of landscape painting, it was inevitable that the sea, rivers and other bodies of water became a common feature in those views. This article shows a small selection from some of the most famous artists of the time.

Jan van Goyen’s View of Dordrecht with the Grote Kirk Across the Maas (1644) shows a familiar view of the city, with particular interest in its buildings. Its skyline is dominated by the still-unfinished 65 metre tower of the Grote Kerk, built between 1285-1470. There are many small boats at work on the choppy water, here depicted in an older fashion similar to works from the Renaissance.

Aelbert Cuyp’s View on the Rhine from the following year appears to have been the result of a trip up river, into steeper terrain inland. It is wonderfully sketchy, and might even be mistaken for one of Turner’s landscapes from nearly two centuries later. In the Netherlands, the lower reaches of this river form part of the great Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, which includes both the major port and city of Rotterdam, and Dordrecht.

Inevitably, many of Cuyp’s finest landscapes show his home city, such as this View of the Maas at Dordrecht from about 1645-46. This makes best use of an extreme panoramic panel, now commonly used for such marine landscapes.

Cuyp also painted a few marine nocturnes, including this view of the Sea by Moonlight from about 1648, where he extended his exploration of the effects of light.

Philip de Koninck’s Wide River Landscape from about 1648-49 refers to a wide landscape rather than river, I believe. All seems at peace in the countryside, with livestock in the field in the foreground, and a small boat making its way under sail along the river.

Although Cuyp never seems to have become a more dedicated marine specialist, his paintings of ships including The Passage Boat from about 1650, are landmarks at the height of his career. Passage boats were those engaged in regular ferry trips between set ports, in this case probably Dordrecht and Rotterdam, a distance of little more than twelve miles (20 km) by water. With the Republic’s extensive networks of rivers and canals, these were a popular means of transport at the time. The figures in the boat are finely detailed, and include a drummer towards the stern.

At their best, Cuyp’s coastal landscapes, such as The Maas at Dordrecht from about 1650, are full of rich light, earning him the title of the Dutch Claude Lorrain. This shows another passage boat packed with passengers, together with its drummer.

Salomon van Ruysdael’s View of Alkmaar from the Sea (c 1650) is unusual in showing such a flat coastal landscape on a panel orientated not in landscape mode, but in portrait to include its fine cloudscape.

Cuyp’s grand view of The Valkhof at Nijmegen from about 1652-54 shows the Imperial castle that was to be demolished in 1798, on its small hill beside the river. The landscape is bathed in golden light, and broken clouds are tinged with similar Claudean colour as they drift through its lucent sky.

Jacob van Ruisdael’s The Shore at Egmond-aan-Zee from about 1675 was painted to the west of Alkmaar, on the North Sea coast in North Holland, with its stormier weather.

De Koninck’s River Landscape from the following year shows a single oarsman taking a small group of people along the river.

Many of de Koninck’s panoramas are painted on panels or canvases of normal proportions, and just look wide. Flat Landscape With a Broad River is more unusual for his use of a proper marine format. It also appears more sketchy, and has little staffage, as if it may even have been painted in front of the motif.

（Abstract）利用自己喜欢的视频片段来记单词是一种效率比较高的方式。

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Of the several hundred landscape painters of the Dutch Golden Age, the best-known and most influential is Jacob van Ruisdael, whose paintings were described by Vincent van Gogh as “sublime”. Van Ruisdael was starting his career just as Nicolas Poussin was reaching his zenith in Rome, and the two were major influences on all subsequent landscape artists, particularly Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable and JMW Turner.

Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael (1628/9-1682) was born in Haarlem into a family of painters. Presumably apprenticed within the family workshop, he was admitted to the local Guild of Saint Luke in 1648, and from the outset appears to have specialised in landscape painting.

Van Ruisdael’s earliest landscapes contained trees, as they would at a time when trees and woods were more extensive in their coverage across the whole of Europe. The view in Landscape with a Church (c 1645) looks familiar, as its composition was used by Gainsborough, Constable, and many other later artists. Prominent at the left, and forming repoussoir, is the hulk of an old tree, younger branches sprouting from the remains, a recurrent theme in Gainsborough as well as van Ruisdael. A recession in depth on the right leads to the brighter-lit church in the middle distance.

The trees here are painstakingly constructed from the anatomy of their branches, with leaves painted individually in the foreground, but delicately en masse in the further distance. Bark colour, texture, and rich lichen growth are also shown in fine detail.

Van Ruisdael soon showed a deep understanding of the stages in the life and looks of oak trees. In Road through an Oak Forest (c 1646-7) he captures the later life of a stag-headed oak, that long ago lost its crown, on the left, a flush of new growth on a fallen trunk, and another still clinging onto life despite a great split at its base.

Judging from the girth of their trunks, the oak trees shown here are around 400 years old, making it likely that they were saplings in the thirteenth century, possibly even earlier. They form a remarkable window back in time to the late Middle Ages.

Some of van Ruisdael’s sketches and drawings have also survived, among them Landscape with a Stone Bridge (c 1647). This shows his development of foliage from branch structure quite clearly, and the fact that he didn’t block in that foliage, preferring gestural squiggles and other marks.

Van Ruisdael was a faithful observer of the different species of tree and their forms, as shown in his timeless A Wooded Landscape with a Pond from about 1648. He has maintained careful, anatomical construction even in the prominent tree at the centre right, in the middle distance, and the canopies appear light and leafy.

Gentle rural decay is shown not only in the ruined buildings in Landscape with a Mill-run and Ruins (c 1653), but also in the stag-head tree in the centre of the painting.

He moved to Amsterdam in 1657, to take advantage of its growing prosperity. He appears to have travelled little, remaining within the European lowlands and venturing only just over the border into Germany. His only known student was Meindert Hobbema, who became an accomplished landscape painter who also depicted trees as important elements within his works.

Probably painted soon after he had moved to Amsterdam, The Great Forest (c 1655-60) shows travellers along a track passing at the edge of an ancient woodland, with an assortment of trees in various states of advancing age, including some reduced to stag-heads.

The upland landscape shown in The Forest Stream (c 1660) was clearly not one that van Ruisdael had ever seen, but must have been composed from studying the paintings of others, and talking to those more widely travelled. His trees remain much as before, with a gnarled and twisted stag-head at the right, and at the left a near-dead trunk poised in slow-motion collapse into the stream.

Although most of van Ruisdael’s paintings are in full daylight, as with his contemporaries he also explored more transient light effects, in A Marsh in a Forest at Dusk (c 1660). Now the ancient trees launching themselves out from the bank at the right have engaged with those growing in the marsh. The effect of the late dusk light on their canopies is spectacular, as are the thin banks of cloud above, lit by the setting sun. His careful leaf-by-leaf depiction of canopies of different tree species generates distinct and life-like textures.

In Landscape with Waterfall (c 1660-70), van Ruisdael revisited the distant church framed by nearer trees theme of Landscape with a Church above. Perhaps this time the church is a little too far away, though still an inspiration to Constable and Gainsborough. At the right a birch collapses off the edge, and there is a pair of ancient wizened oaks filling the centre.

He continued to develop the theme of old oaks and water in Oaks at a Lake with Water Lilies in about 1665. Again a dying ancient hulk stands like a prow from the bank at the left, and he shows bright flowers on the water-lilies.

Many of his woods are either unpopulated, or the few people providing staffage are barely visible against their surroundings. His undated A Road through an Oak Wood is different, with a couple of travellers on its road, and woodland activities of clearing and burning at the left.

The Golden Age was primarily based on prosperity from trade, not home production, but increasing demand from the affluent cities led to greater timber production, particularly for ships and buildings, and the clearing of woods to augment farmland.

My final selection is perhaps his most detailed essay on the effects of advanced age on trees, Three Great Trees in a Mountainous Landscape with a River (c 1665-70). Although the mountains are borrowed or imaginary, the three trees of the title seem almost impossibly intertwined. The nearest is struggling to survive, remains of its former glory resting, limbs in the air, at its foot.

When the Dutch economy collapsed in 1672, he appears to have remained relatively prosperous, and continued to work in Amsterdam until his death a decade later, in 1682.

References

Wikipedia
Slive, S (2005) Jacob van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape, Royal Academy of Arts, London. ISBN 978 1 903973 24 0.
Ashton, PS, Davies, AI & Slive, S (1982). “Jacob van Ruisdael’s trees”. Arnoldia 42 (1): 2–31; available from JSTOR.

At the height of his career, Johannes Vermeer’s paintings seem to have secured good prices, thanks to an affluent collector in Delft. They also appear to have been a significant influence on others, including Gabriël Metsu.

Music features in several of Vermeer’s paintings, in The Concert (c 1663-66) more particularly than any other. Two ladies are making music, one playing a decorated harpsichord (or similar), the other singing. In the left foreground is a cello resting on its back. Tragically, on 18 March 1990 this and a dozen other works were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA, and it remains unrecovered.

Soft edges are obvious in Vermeer’s renowned portrait of a Girl with a Pearl Earring, from about 1664-67. Seen even closer up in the detail below it’s obvious that he has softened most of its edges to some degree, even on highlights such as the white reflections on the pearl itself and the girl’s eyes.

His Mistress and Maid from about 1664-67 also has many soft edges, particularly those of the maid in the left distance, whose head and forearms are blurry. The crispest edges are those of the mistress’s forearms, particularly the left as it crosses her clothing. These also appear consistent with depth of field effect.

Vermeer painted at least two works showing women writing, of which the earlier is A Lady Writing a Letter from 1665-1666. The fur trimmings on her golden jacket confirm this is no country bumpkin, but the lady of an affluent and well-educated house. Rather than looking down at her quill, she stares the viewer out, her faint smile of confidence lit by sunlight coming through the window off to the left.

In Vermeer’s late The Art of Painting from about 1666-68, greatest sharpness is again slightly away from the geometrical centre of the canvas, in the woman holding a wind instrument, as shown in the detail below. The high tonal contrast between the marble tiles on the floor is softened in the foreground, and sharpens as they recede deeper into the picture, as would be expected in depth of field.

They also appear in Vermeer’s late painting of The Astronomer, from about 1668. He is studying his celestial sphere marked with the symbols of the constellations.

In The Geographer, visibly dated the following year, the figure holds a pair of dividers over an unidentifiable chart, with a fine globe tucked away behind and above him.

While there are some instances where Vermeer’s blurring could be consistent with motion, most of these paintings appear to show depth of field effects as might be observed through a lens with a shallow depth. They could also be consistent with his use of an edge hierarchy for compositional emphasis.

Recently, several attempts have been made to explain how Vermeer came to use blurring so successfully. One story that has gained some traction is that he used optical devices such as a camera obscura to lay out the forms within each of these scenes, a theory that has been repeatedly claimed by David Hockney among others. Most recently, though, it was realised that alone was insufficient to explain all the optical phenomena modelled so well in these paintings, and it has been proposed by Hockney and Tim Jenison that the artist coupled a concave mirror with another mirror, a system that took Jenison five years to develop and test.

It’s perhaps unsurprising that there’s no evidence whatsoever that Vermeer possessed or used a camera obscura or other optical device, although he was a close friend of the pioneer lens maker Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, at a time when there was considerable interest in optics.

Johannes Vermeer died in 1675, as the Dutch Golden Age was drawing to an end, and the market for paintings collapsed.

References

Vermeer’s popularity in the last century has ensured extensive supporting material. The following is a small selection of what I think is the very best.

Essential Vermeer, Jonathan Janson’s superb site

Gaskell I and Jonker M eds (1998) Vermeer Studies, Yale UP. ISBN 0 300 07521 9.
Liedtke W (2008) Vermeer, the Complete Paintings, Ludion/Harry N Abrams. ISBN 978 90 5544 742 8.
Liedtke W (2009) The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. ISBN 978 1 58839 344 9. (Available for download from here.)
Wheelock Jr AK (1997) Vermeer, the Complete Works, Abrams. ISBN 978 0 8109 2751 3.

Alain Jaubert, Palettes DVD: Le siècle d’or des Pays-Bas, Le grain de la lumière, Editions Montparnasse.
Tracy Chevalier’s fictional Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999) is also available as a movie under the same title (2003).

During his career in Delft, Johannes Vermeer had been respected as an artist, but soon after his death at the end of the Dutch Golden Age he slipped quietly into obscurity, alongside many hundreds of others. A few connoisseurs maintained an interest in his work, but it wasn’t until the middle of the nineteenth century that he was rediscovered. Since then his few remaining paintings have become among the most revered in the European canon.

Vermeer was born in the city of Delft in 1632, where he took over his father’s business as a dealer in paintings. He also trained as a painter, and at the end of 1653 was admitted to the city’s Guild of Saint Luke. The following year Delft was struck by a catastrophic explosion in a gunpowder store, destroying a large section of the city and its occupants.

Vermeer’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is his largest surviving painting, and probably one of his earliest, dating from about 1654-56. It’s unusual among them for its religious theme.

By about 1657-58, when he painted Officer and Laughing Girl, he had found form in the compositional approach for which he is most famous. Figures going about their everyday lives are seen in the daylight cast from windows on the left. The map depicted so meticulously has been identified as that made of Holland and West Friesland by Willem Blaeu and Balthasar Florisz van Berckenrode. Unfortunately, no other complete copy of that map has survived, but its second edition was published by Blaeu in 1621, and that’s believed to be on display here, as shown in the detail below.

Some of these paintings feature heavy curtains in the foreground, drawn back to reveal Vermeer’s subject behind. Among those is his Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window (c 1658), where its railed curtain gives an air of intimacy, suggesting the viewer is peeping past the curtain and gazing in at real and private life.

The Milkmaid, probably from about 1658-59, is perhaps Vermeer’s first true masterpiece, and introduces the optical effects for which he is now best-known.

A milkmaid is pouring milk from a jug, beside a tabletop with bread. In the left foreground the bread and pots rest on a folded Dutch octagonal table, covered with a mid-blue cloth. A wicker basket of bread is nearest the viewer, broken and smaller pieces of different types of bread behind and towards the woman, in the centre. Behind the bread is a dark blue studded mug with pewter lid, and just in front of the woman (to the right of the mug) a brown earthenware ‘Dutch oven’ pot into which the milk is being poured. An ultramarine blue cloth (matching the woman’s apron) rests at the edge of the table.

The woman, seen in three-quarter view, wears working dress: a stiff, white linen cap, a yellow jacket laced at the front, a brilliant ultramarine blue apron, and a dull red skirt underneath. Her right hand holds the handle of a brown earthenware pitcher, which she supports from below with her left hand. Her work sleeves are pushed up to lay both her weathered forearms bare to the elbow. Her strong-featured face and eyes are cast down, watching the milk as it runs into the pot.

More remarkable still is the visible blurring.

Edges and detail are sharpest around her left shoulder and upper arm, and soften as you look away towards her hands and the pitcher. Highlights on that pitcher and the pot below it are also decidedly blurry, suggesting this is intended as a depth of field effect.

Bread and other objects on the table in front of the woman also show controlled use of blurring, most obviously in the highlights on the wicker basket.

At some time around 1660, Vermeer painted a couple of cityscapes that are his only surviving non-figurative paintings.

Above is his view of a street and its occupants in The Little Street, and below is his View of Delft waterfront. A third cityscape of a House Standing in Delft has been recorded but is now apparently lost.

His Woman Holding a Balance from around 1662-64 shows a young woman who is pregnant holding an empty balance in front of a collection of pearls and gold. Its focus is noticeably softer than his earlier paintings. The edges of the tabletop in the centre of the canvas and the woman’s left hand are the crispest, and those further from that are softer, as would be consistent with depth of field effects.

Similar effects are seen in Vermeer’s better-lit Young Woman with a Water Pitcher from the same period. Here the central focus is in the upper chest of the figure, where the edge between the split in her white mantle and the underlying deep ultramarine clothing is crispest, and the reflections on the pitcher and bowl are blurry, again consistent with depth of field. So too is the window, which could indicate motion.

Amazingly, this painting was bought by Henry Gurdon Marquand in 1887 for a mere $800, and became the first of Vermeer’s paintings to enter an American collection.

Patronage is bad for art, particularly for paintings. Whether they come in the form of commissions for churches or by the powerful and wealthy, paintings to please others are inevitably constrained by what those others want to see. Until the seventeenth century, there were remarkably few depictions of ordinary, everyday people. Then, at about the same time, that changed in paintings by the likes of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682) in Spain, and the Brueghel family and David Teniers the Younger (1610–1690) in Brabant to the south of the Dutch Republic. In the Dutch Golden Age such paintings rose to popularity, and must have graced the walls of many Dutch homes. This article looks at a small selection of those that have survived.

Portraits of women washing linen first became popular in Dutch and Flemish ‘cabinet’ paintings, such as Gabriël Metsu’s Washerwoman (c 1650), along with other scenes of household and similar activities. This painting appears authentic and almost socially realist: the young woman appears to be a servant, dressed in her working clothes, with only her forearms bare, and her head covered. She’s in the dark and dingy lower levels of the house, and hanging up by her tub is a large earthenware vessel used to draw water. She looks tired, her eyes staring blankly at the viewer.

Metsu’s Kitchen Maid from 1656 is preparing a trussed-up chicken to be roasted on a metal skewer over an open fire. Behind her, hanging from a hook, is a small furry mammal probably intended to be a rabbit, although it worryingly looks more like a very large cat. Below it in the otherwise empty fireplace is a bowl of what look like potatoes.

Metsu followed his subjects beyond the home, here into The Vegetable Market in Amsterdam in about 1660-61. The mistress stands with a metal pail on her arm, detached from the housekeeper to the left of centre, who is bargaining with one of the vendors. Other figures are drawn from a broad range of classes, and there’s produce ranging from cauliflowers to chickens.

His Woman Selling Herring (c 1661-62) is going from door to door with her fish, here trying to convince an old woman standing with a stick at the door of her dilapidated cottage.

Out in the country, Metsu finds The Pancake Baker with a Boy (1655-58), again with fascinating detail. The cook in her roadside tent offers an impressive menu, with fish being supervised by a watchful cat, pancakes cooked to order from the batter in the earthenware pot by the woman’s left leg, and a few apples. Her trade seems to extend to shellfish too, with what appears to be a lobster peering from a wickerwork basket on the table, and a couple of empty mussel shells underneath it. This is the Dutch equivalent of the Spanish bodegone, popular in the earlier years of the century, and successfully painted by Velázquez early in his career.

Several of Vermeer’s masterpieces depict ordinary people in everyday life, among them his Milkmaid from about 1658-1661.

A maid is pouring milk from a jug, beside a tabletop with bread. In the left foreground the bread and pots rest on a folded Dutch octagonal table, covered with a mid-blue cloth. A wicker basket of bread is nearest the viewer, broken and smaller pieces of different types of bread behind and towards the woman, in the centre. Behind the bread is a dark blue studded mug with pewter lid, and just in front of the woman a brown earthenware ‘Dutch oven’ pot into which she is pouring milk.

Figures in the animal paintings of Paulus Potter and Gerard ter Borch were also thoroughly ordinary.

Paulus Potter’s Peasant Family with Animals (1646) shows a family with a curiously grotesque young daughter, their cottage, and some wizened trees.

Potter was reticent about showing milkmaids, though. In his Cows Grazing at a Farm, painted in 1653, the year before his early death, the milkmaid is almost hidden by the cow’s hindquarters.

Gerard ter Borch was prepared to put the milkmaid and her cow at the centre of this painting, A Maid Milking a Cow in a Barn from about 1652-54. As was universal at the time, milk was collected in a wooden bucket.

Isaac Koedijck is a bit more unusual in his Surgeon Tending a Peasant’s Foot (1649-50), with its wooden spiral staircase and collection of weapons and tools mounted high on the wall.

It’s easy to mistake Pieter de Hooch’s A Woman Drinking with Two Men from about 1658 for a Vermeer, and like the latter he decorates the far wall with a contemporary map. The Eighty Years’ War had not long ended, and the Dutch Republic was flourishing. Discarded objects are scattered on its black-and-white tiled floor. There’s a large and empty fireplace, and above it hangs a religious painting.

Finally, Gabriel Metsu’s Old Drinker (c 1650-67) is dressed in clothes almost as old as he is, and clutches a clay tobacco pipe in his right hand, and a pewter drinking tankard with his left.

How many of those paintings would have been commissioned by a patron?

Before the Dutch Golden Age, painting scenes at night had been restricted to religious and other narrative works, and very few if any landscapes had been depicted during the hours of darkness. After all, what’s the point of a view if it’s all dark and you can’t admire it?

The Dutch Republic changed that, in part because it was in Northern Europe, where for several months each year it’s mostly dark, and these nocturnes had novelty value. Among those of the middle class who could afford to, it was fashionable to cover the walls inside your house with paintings, and nocturnes, known then as maneschijntjes (moonshines), certainly brought variety to those collections.

Aelbert Cuyp’s view of the Sea by Moonlight from about 1648 is one of the earlier maritime nocturnes, something of a sub-sub-genre that must have been sought after. Unlike many others, this appears to be faithful to the original light.

During the 1640s, Aert van der Neer, a landscape painter in Amsterdam, started experimenting with his first nocturnes, and came to specialise in them.

His River View by Moonlight from about 1650-55 shows a bustling village on a river, with several boats under way and two windmills in the distance. The moon appears to be depicted faithfully in terms of size, without the common tendency to exaggerate that as a result of the Moon Illusion. Surviving studies for some of these nocturnes demonstrate that van der Neer initially sketched a landscape in daylight, and based the detail in his finished studio painting on that.

In about 1655, he painted this finely detailed River Landscape with Moonlight, with a larger moon lighting clouds dramatically.

Some of his best nocturnes are lit by a combination of the moon and the warmer light from a fire. This undated Estuary Landscape by Moonlight uses light from both sources to great effect. Landscape details are shown largely in silhouette, and lack internal detail except in the group gathered around the fire in the foreground. Van der Neer is unusually faithful to reality in this monochrome, the result of the severely impaired colour vision we all suffer in conditions of low light, when there’s insufficient to enable colour vision using the cone cells in the human retina.

At some stage, van der Neer started painting more destructive fires, including this undated Fire in Amsterdam by Night, leading to another sub-sub-genre that was taken up by others.

In mid 1652, Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten seems to have witnessed the destruction by fire of part of the centre of Amsterdam, which formed the basis of his studio painting of The Old Town Hall of Amsterdam on Fire, 7 July 1652 (1652-55). Local inhabitants are walking in orderly queues to boats, in which they escape from the scene. This may have been the same fire painted by van der Neer, above.

Egbert van der Poel specialised in these brandjes,, and probably painted more than any other artist in history. He moved to Delft in 1650, and four years later was a victim of the massive explosion in a gunpowder store there on 12 October 1654. That killed one of his children, and he moved again to Rotterdam.

It has been thought that most of van der Poel’s Fire of a Church with Staffage and Cattle from 1658 is a carefully-composed composite of his experiences. A small church at the edge of a village is well ablaze, and the inhabitants are abandoning it, taking all the possessions they can, including their horses and livestock, and leaving the fire to burn itself out.

Van der Poel’s undated A Fire at Night shows a similar scene and composition, set this time on the bank of a canal.

One established exception to this is van der Poel’s Fire in De Rijp of 1654, completed in 1662. This shows a fire that worked its way through more than eight hundred buildings in the town of De Rijp during the night of 6 January 1654. This left only the northern section of the town standing and inhabitable, and resulted in more casualties than did the more famous explosion in Delft at the end of that year.

Doubt is cast on this received account of van der Poel’s work by sketches such as this, of The Fire in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, in 1645, made in front of the motif using washes with touches of pen and brown ink. Perhaps he was the first ‘ambulance chaser’ who travelled out to sketch fires, from which he later painted his famous brandjes in the studio.

For the non-specialist like Jacob van Ruisdael, winter was an ideal opportunity to explore the effect of negative images, where objects that would normally be seen as dark on a light background were reversed to white on dark.

Van Ruisdael painted at least two such landscapes featuring trees. Both are now known by the same name, and are believed to be from the same decade. This Winter Landscape (c 1660-70), in the Mauritshuis, picks out frosted leaves in the half-light of dusk or dawn, by a hamlet at the water’s edge. In the far distance, to the left of the buildings, there is a church with a spire.

The other version of Winter Landscape (c 1660-70) is in Birmingham, Alabama. With similar sky, cloud, lighting, and composition, the water here appears to have frozen over. The frost on the trees is just as delicately handled.

Before the Dutch Golden Age, paintings of everyday life, now widely termed genre paintings, were seldom seen. That changed in the Dutch Republic, when they became among the most popular, if not the majority. Several of the best known artists of this period specialised in them, among them Gerard ter Borch (1617–1681) who made himself something of an international career as a result.

Ter Borch was born in the city of Zwolle, well to the east of Amsterdam. As his father was also an artist with the same name, he’s sometimes distinguished as Gerard ter Borch the Younger. He had already started to travel in 1632, when he was training in Amsterdam, and for the next twenty years or so he painted in England, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

For the thirty years between 1618-1648, central Europe had been engulfed in a bitter war between the Habsburg states, including the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, and their enemies, including the Dutch Republic. Ter Borch’s magnificent painting of The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, 15 May 1648 (1648) recorded the moment that the Thirty Years War ended, with the ratification of this treaty between the Dutch Republic and Spain. It also marked the birth of the Dutch Republic as an independent country.

The artist even seized the opportunity to include himself among the ranks of dignitaries: he is at the far left, with long hair and looking directly at the viewer. Although this may look a large and grand work, ter Borch painted it on copper, and it is little larger than a miniature.

But most of his surviving works are portraits and interior scenes of everyday life.

The Messenger, popularly know as Unwelcome News, from 1653, develops what came to be one of his favourite themes. The young man at the left is still booted and spurred from riding to deliver a message to this couple. Slung over his shoulder is a trumpet, to announce his arrival and importance. The recipient wears a shiny breastplate and riding boots, and is taken aback at the news. His wife leans on her husband’s thigh, her face looking serious.

The scene is the front room of a house in the Golden Age. Behind them is a traditional bed (typical in living areas at the time), with some of their possessions resting on a table between the couple and their bed. Hanging up on a bedpost is the husband’s sword, and behind them is a gun and powder horn. Is the letter news of his recall to military service, perhaps? Will he soon have to ride away from his wife, leaving her to bring up their family?

At about the same time, ter Borch painted A Maid Milking a Cow in a Barn (c 1652-54), incorporating its own still life of everyday farming objects including a winnowing sieve and an axe.

Mother Combing the Hair of Her Child (c 1652-53) shows a regular domestic routine, expressed more bluntly in its alternative title of Hunting for Lice. The mother is looking intently at her young daughter’s hair for traces of lice and nits, and running a fine-tooth comb through it to remove any.

Three Figures Conversing in an Interior (c 1653-55) is another of his narrative genre works, and more popularly known as Paternal Admonition. Standing with her back to us, wearing a plush going-out dress, is the daughter. To her left is a table, on which there is a small reading stand with books, almost certainly including a Bible. Her parents are young, and they too are fashionably dressed. Her mother appears to be drinking from a glass, but her father is at the very least cautioning his daughter, if not giving her a thorough dressing-down. He wears a sword at his side. Behind them is a large bed, and to the right the family dog looks on from the gloom.

Ter Borch’s half-sister Gesina, herself a painter, appears to have been his model for Woman Writing a Letter (c 1655), which makes obvious his connection with Vermeer. Move this woman to a desk lit through windows at the left, light her surroundings, and you have a painting very similar to some of Vermeer’s. This painting shows a heavy decorated table cover pushed back to make room for the quill, inkpot, and letter. Behind the woman is her bed, surrounded by heavy drapery, and at the lower right is the brilliant red flash of the seat.

The Spinner is dated to about 1655, but may well have been the pendant to Mother Combing the Hair of Her Child (c 1652-53), and uses the same model. Here she looks intently at her work, a small dog on her lap.

Long before its value in preventing scurvy was realised in 1747, or it was carbonated even later, still cloudy lemonade had become a popular soft drink. Extensive trade links of the Dutch Republic made this drink available to the middle classes, as celebrated in ter Borch’s The Glass of Lemonade (1655-60).

A fashionably-dressed young man is helping to prepare a glass of lemonade for a young woman, who is equally open about her love of fashionable clothing. Behind her is the woman’s nurse or maid, who is having to comfort her through the excitement of the experience. They’re surrounded by a contemporary Dutch interior, with the inevitable bed lurking in the dark at the right, a small but heavily-built wooden table to the right, and a lighter-weight table at the lower left.

The Letter from about 1660-62 returns to his favourite theme of the reading and writing of letters. Two young women are working together, apparently to write a reply to the letter which is being read by the woman on the right. A boy, perhaps their younger brother, has just brought in a tray bearing an ornate pitcher of drink. In front, a small dog is curled up asleep on a stool.

Ter Borch’s backgrounds become lighter in his later work, as shown in The Music Lesson from about 1668. A teacher stands over a young woman, who is learning to play the lute. By this time, the basic lute had become extended to accommodate additional strings for a wider register. This is often referred to as a theorbo, although in modern terminology it’s probably more of an archlute, and seems to have been fashionable in the Dutch Republic at this time. Resting on the table is a cello, and asleep on a chair is a small dog. Note that the room still contains a bed in the background.

Just as mothers had to check their children for parasites in the hair, so pet owners had to remove fleas from their pets. Ter Borch’s late painting of A Boy with his Dog, also known as The Flea-Catcher (after 1666), shows this, in fairly barren surroundings.

As organised occupational groups, guilds have ancient origins, and in Roman times were known as collegia. Although they were an important part of Renaissance society, few if any appear to have commissioned group portraits, which were largely confined to families at that time. This changed in the Dutch Golden Age, and some of its best-known paintings depict occupational and other groups.

In 1617, Michiel van Mierevelt and his son Pieter, specialists in portraiture, painted The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Willem van der Meer, one of the earliest portraits of a social group from the Dutch Golden Age. Members of this group are all ignoring the cadaver in front of them, preferring to look at the painter, and are thought to be members of the Surgeons’ Guild of the city of Delft, who commissioned this work.

Rembrandt painted his Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp in 1632, as an early commission soon after his arrival in Amsterdam. It’s a group portrait of distinguished members of the Surgeons’ Guild in their working environment. Most remarkable is the fact that its principal, Dr Tulp, and most of his colleagues aren’t looking at the dissected forearm.

As cities developed in the Dutch Republic, guilds and associations flourished. This wasn’t a period of peace, and most towns and cities required adult males to be members of the local civic militia or schutterij for mutual defence. These were operated using the guild model, with local men appointed to military rank for their command. Their roles included helping defend the town or city in the event of attack or revolt, and manning a night watch, in which members took turns to patrol the streets.

One of the earlier of these group portraits is Frans Hals’ Banquet of the Officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard from 1627. Contemporary records have enabled their identification as (from the left) Willem Claesz. Vooght, Johan Damius, Willem Warmont, Johan Schatter, Gilles de Wildt, Nicolaes van Napels, Outgert Akersloot, Matthijs Haeswindius, Adriaen Matham, Lot Schout, Pieter Ramp, and Willem Ruychaver at the right.

The cost of these group portraits was relatively modest, as it was normally shared between those depicted. In most cases shares weren’t equal, but determined by the member’s rank in the organisation.

Hendrik Gerritsz Pot used the novel technique of putting indigo layers over underpainting, without the protection of glazes, in his Portrait of the St Adrian Civic Guard, Haarlem from 1630. As a result of fading of the indigo, what were originally bright blue sashes have become almost white, as shown in the detail below.

Frans Hals’ Officers and Sergeants of the St Adrian Civic Guard (1633) not only shows the same group of men, but has suffered exactly the same fate with their formerly blue sashes.

Hals’ Militia Company of District XI under the Command of Captain Reynier Reael (1633-37) shows a group known as the Meagre Company. He was commissioned to paint this in 1633, but three years later it remained unfinished, and the commission was transferred to Codde to complete the right side of the canvas and many of the hands and faces a year later.

Painted a decade later, Rembrandt’s vast group portrait of The Night Watch (1642) is perhaps the most famous of them all, although it’s more correctly titled Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. It features the commander and seventeen members of his civic guard company in Amsterdam, and took the artist three years to complete from his first commission to paint this for display in the great hall of the guards.

Captain Frans Banninck Cocq (in black with a red sash), followed by his lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch (in yellow with a white sash) are leading out this militia company, their colours borne by the ensign Jan Visscher Cornelissen. The small girl to the left of them is carrying a dead chicken as a symbol of arquebusiers, the type of weapon several are carrying (detail below).

Some of these militia group portraits commemorated events of greater significance than social occasions. On 15 May 1648, peace between Philip IV of Spain and the Lords States General of the Dutch Republic was finally ratified to end the Eighty Years’ War, and on 18 June this was marked by The Celebration of the Peace of Münster, 18 June 1648, in the Headquarters of the Crossbowmen’s Civic Guard (St George Guard), Amsterdam, painted here by Bartholomeus van der Helst with Jan Vos.

At the right with a silver horn is Captain Cornelis Jansz. Witsen, who is shaking the hand of Lieutenant Johan Oetgens van Waveren. In the centre, seated behind the drum with a flag draped over him, is Reserve Officer Candidate Jacob Banning, and around him are Sergeants Dirck Claesz. Thoveling and Thomas Hartog.

Neighbourhood and welfare organisations also flourished, and the latter distributed money, food, clothes and fuel to the poor. These were run by the middle classes, who formed themselves into regents for the purpose of their administration.

Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck’s Regentesses of the St. Elisabeth’s Hospital (1641) shows the group of august ladies who oversaw that charitable foundation in Haarlem. Time has shown that they too were victims of fugitive pigment, as their tablecloth was originally a rich green. Its unprotected indigo blue has faded from much of its surface, leaving most of it an odd yellow ochre hue.

The gentlemen shown in Frans Hals’ group portrait of the Regents of the Old Men’s Alms House, Haarlem from 1664 were responsible for running the alms house for poor elderly men in the city of Haarlem.

膝盖骨乐队 Kneecap，8.5/10

评分给高了一点，是因为我部分地代入了音乐教师 Dj Próvai 的角色，于是它似乎成为了对我而言最好的中年电影之一。

不再是那种俗套的中年电影：在生活压力或者虚无中产生情绪，寄情于（事业 or 自然 or 某种兴趣爱好 or 性爱）之中，最终（成功 or 不成功）的故事。

而是，在碌碌生活中，仍然坚信自己的某些想法是对的（譬如怎样普及爱尔兰语），尽管无力去做什么，却仍然保持着心底的理念，不让屁股决定自己的脑袋。然后，某一天，恰逢其会，遇到了更有天赋和激情的小朋友们，就可以随时行动起来，为他们提供支持，用自己的经验和技术，让那些 idea 更有机会实现。

同时，一方面，在社群中维持某种程度而又不喧宾夺主的 ego；另一方面，在自己原有的社会连接中，纠结而微妙地平衡着，和各种被动或主动地岁月静好的人们、为你好但理念非常不兼容的人们、以及用非无政府主义的态度搞事情的人们，或者试探、或者坦承、若即若离。

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以及，经常遇到小朋友们听不懂年代梗的尴尬。

：我这个录音棚比不上 Abbey Road 啦。
：Abbey 啥玩意？
：……

：大家看啊，Roland 808 鼓机！
：这是啥？看着像 80 年代的垃圾？
：……是我们要用来录音的设备。

（Update，才发现这两个梗都被放到官方预告片里了 lol

看《波斯语课》，犹太人阴错阳差，靠着教德国军官波斯语来活命，但他完全不会波斯语，于是硬编了一门语言出来，每天编出一些单词让德国人背，犹太人自己也拼命背，忽悠了两年都没穿帮。

这听起来不太可能，当然电影里也做了很多铺垫，譬如犹太人声称自己也不懂读写，只是单纯教口语。在那个信息不流畅的时代，人们对如何学习一门外语的认知，也和我们如今相差甚远。总之，这只是电影里的设定，借此体验剧情就好。

电影的情节，让我想起萨苏说过一个段子：抗战时期的冀中八路军，冒充日本兵去刺探情报，他们只是跟着亲中的日本人学了一阵子口语，就能练到，让日本人听不出是 “外国人在说日语” 的程度。

你们现代人学不好外语，就是少挣俩钱儿。我们学不好的，都牺牲了。

萨苏《尊严不是无代价的》

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想象如果换作是我，或者，如果是几个我脑中浮现出的，日常就有压力和情绪状况的朋友，面对这样的情境，这种一旦露馅就会死的巨大压力，能不能蒙混搞定？

大概有人真的会直接选择死亡吧？相比之下，虽然我也焦虑，但默认的思考方向，仍然是先去试试，再大不了一死。虽然自认是语言天赋很糟糕的人，但也存在着微小概率，拼命学外语，然后蒙混过关？——某种意义上，我觉得自己并不是因为面对压力而焕发了斗志，而是，没有经历过这种必须拿命学外语的样子，作为一种体验，有些好奇？

从文化决定论的角度，这些不同的状态，和环境、和文化，有很大的关系。但究竟有多大的关系？古代和如今的环境，对人的影响到底差异在哪里？我并不清楚。甚至，这样的人的比例，古今是否真的不同，现在是否变得更多，我也不清楚。也许他们之前只是没有显现。

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以及，我第一次意识到「有的人会在面对巨大生存压力时，直接选择去死」这件事，大概是《大逃杀》里，那几个直接跳崖的学生。

（Abstract）因为汉字圈的外国人在日本既有可能使用护照上的英文名，也可能使用汉字名，而读音又各不相同，于是就会出现各种五花八门的组合。