Between the Middle Ages and the twentieth century there have been three periods in which European painting has changed dramatically: in the Renaissance, the Dutch Golden Age, and the nineteenth century. Of those, the Renaissance is usually viewed as the most important. In this series, I make the case for paintings of the Dutch Golden Age being more revolutionary than those of the Renaissance, and bringing greatest change.

The Low Countries, covering what’s currently the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and parts of north-eastern France, had been a patchwork of small duchies and other states under the overall rule of the Holy Roman Emperor. In 1568-1579, seven of the more northerly provinces revolted to form their own Dutch Republic with the Union of Utrecht.

These are shown in red, orange and yellow in this map. Centres of art in the Dutch Republic included The Hague, its de facto capital, Utrecht, Leiden, Delft, Harlem, and Amsterdam. To the south were the lands composing the Spanish Netherlands, notably Flanders and Brabant, including the cities of Antwerp and Brussels. Thus, Peter Paul Rubens who worked from his workshop in Antwerp until his death in 1640 was Flemish, while Rembrandt who was brought up in Leiden and worked in Amsterdam until his death in 1669 was one of the leading artists of the Dutch Republic.

Although the Dutch Republic existed between 1579-1795, the period known as its Golden Age is generally agreed as ending in around 1672, with the French invasion, and its start in art is usually delayed to around 1600. During that period of seventy years the provinces flourished, with extensive colonies overseas and rich trade with them and throughout Europe. The population of 1 to 1.5 million grew prosperous, with rising disposable income.

Society was liberal, with a high degree of religious tolerance and high immigration. Religious and ethnic minorities who were being oppressed in other parts of Europe were welcomed in the Republic, and the city of Amsterdam became a centre for migrants. This encouraged an increasingly learned society, with innovative science and academic institutions, rising literacy, and flourishing arts.

Paintings became popular possessions across much of Dutch society, and were sold in the first art fairs and by dealers, rather than being commissioned through a system of patronage. Few wall paintings were made in this period, and paintings of the Dutch Golden Age are almost exclusively ‘easel’ paintings, most of them relatively small so they didn’t require a large mansion for their exhibition.

Training of painters remained based on apprenticeships in workshops, and there was no academy system to stifle creativity. Once trained, masters joined their local Guild of Saint Luke and were able to establish their own workshop. Prices remained low so paintings were affordable by almost everyone. Production was extraordinary, with estimates of more than a million paintings being produced in a twenty-year period, and possibly as many as five million in the whole period of seventy years.

This resulted in the rapid development of new genres and themes in addition to those established by the Renaissance, and this is probably the most enduring effect of the Dutch Golden Age on European painting.

Portraits extended beyond those of single patrons or their close families.

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. Another novel sub-genre was the group portrait of a section of the local militia, best-known now from Rembrandt’s huge Night Watch from 1642.

Painting other humans was extended to cover their livestock and other animals.

Paulus Potter, who became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke in Delft in 1646 founded the new genre of animal painting with his nearly life-size portrait of The Bull the following year. Beyond the animals here is the church of Rijswijk, between Delft and The Hague.

The tentative landscapes that had started to appear in the Renaissance flourished into what was probably the most popular genre of all.

Dutch landscape artists quickly realised that, even if they had relatively little earth and water to depict, the heavens above could be equally interesting. Horizons fell rapidly down their paintings, as seen in Jan van Goyen’s View of Dordrecht with the Grote Kirk Across the Maas from 1644.

Some painters, including Jacob van Ruisdael, turned their canvases to make portraits of towering clouds, as in his View of Haarlem with Bleaching Fields from about 1665. The distant town of Haarlem with its monumentally large church of Saint Bavo – works of man – is dwarfed by these high cumulus clouds, the works of God. This motif proved so popular that Van Ruisdael painted many variants of the same view, making it now one of the most widespread landscapes across the galleries of Europe.

Although Adriaen van de Velde from Amsterdam went on to paint farm animals, his early beach scenes, including The Beach at Scheveningen (1658), broke new ground that a century earlier would have seemed inconceivable in a painting. Others turned their attention to the rapidly growing cities.

Gerrit Berckheyde’s view of Groote Market in Haarlem, Amsterdam from 1673 shows one the largest of the city’s marketplaces at the end of the Golden Age.

Paintings of the Flemish Renaissance had often explored the optical properties of surfaces. These continued in the development of another new genre, that of still life.

Clara Peeters trained in Antwerp, then painted an outstanding series of still lifes in the Dutch Republic. Among those is her still life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels from about 1615, a celebration of the very earthly sensuous pleasures of food.

Ambrosius Bosschaert painted this Flower Still Life in oil on copper in 1614. At first its eclectic mixture of different flowers and flying insects might appear haphazard. However, the flowers include carnation, rose, tulip, forget-me-nots, lilies of the valley, cyclamen, violet and hyacinth, which could never (at that time) have been in bloom at the same time. The butterflies, bee and dragonfly are as ephemeral as the flowers around them, suggesting that this has an underlying vanitas theme.

The son a of Flemish immigrant, David Bailly, who lived and painted in Leiden, painted this Self-Portrait with Vanitas Symbols in 1651, with its multiple portraits referring to the past. The figure shows him as a much younger man, holding the maulstick he used in painting. His actual self-portrait at the time is in the painting he is holding with his left hand. Next to that is a painting of his wife, who had already died, and a ghostly image of her is projected onto the wall behind the wine glass.

Gathered in front of the artist are ephemera and other signs of vanitas: the snuffed-out candle, a glass of wine, flowers, and soap bubbles, together with a string of pearls and a skull. If that message is not clear enough, he provides the quotation on a piece of paper: vanitas vanitum et omnia vanitas, together with his signature and date.

Of all the genres that flourished in the Golden Age, it was painting everyday life, now generally referred to as genre painting, that was most novel and popular.

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. The extensive trade links of the Dutch Republic made the drink available to the middle classes, as celebrated in Gerard 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 are surrounded by a contemporary Dutch interior, with the inevitable bed lurking in the dark at the right.

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.

I hope you’ll join me in the coming weeks as I explore how painting flourished and changed in the Dutch Golden Age.