The Dutch Golden Age: Rembrandt, Vermeer and Seventeenth-Century Painting

The Dutch Golden Age is the seventeenth century, when the northern Netherlands became Europe’s richest trading nation and its art flourished. Citizens rather than the church and the court bought paintings, and artists specialised in portraits, landscapes, still lifes and scenes from everyday life.

Facts

A country that bought pictures

After a long war of independence against Spain the northern provinces became in practice independent and were formally granted peace in 1648. The country was Protestant and Calvinist, and the churches were not filled with altarpieces as in Catholic countries. Art had no king and no pope as patron. Instead the money came from merchants, shipowners and craftsmen who had profited from worldwide trade, for example through the East India Company, founded in 1602.

The result was one of the first real art markets in history. Pictures were bought in dealers’ shops and at fairs, and even fairly ordinary homes had several paintings on the walls. Because the market was large and prices low, painters specialised: one painted views of canals, another flowers, a third sea battles. It was an efficient way to become skilled and known, but it also meant that many artists lived in constant worry about money.

Rembrandt and the portrait

Rembrandt was Amsterdam’s great portrait painter. The Night Watch of 1642, a group portrait of a militia company, broke with the usual arrangement of stiff rows and gave movement and dramatic light instead; see the guide to the Baroque. Frans Hals in Haarlem painted laughing, lively people with a quick brush, and Judith Leyster, one of the few women who became a master in her guild, painted musicians and playful figures.

Portraits say something about society. Rich merchants wanted to show their standing, but Calvinism demanded sobriety, so black clothes and white collars are common. It became a kind of status picture without splendour.

Everyday life, light and still life

The greatest novelty of Dutch art was everyday life. Johannes Vermeer in Delft painted quiet rooms with women reading, weighing pearls or pouring milk, with light coming from a window on the left. His Girl with a Pearl Earring of about 1665 is a so-called tronie, a character head, not a portrait of a specific person. Only 34–37 works by him are known. Pieter de Hooch painted bright burgher houses and courtyards, and Jan Steen depicted chaotic households with humour and a moral.

Jacob van Ruisdael painted landscapes under high clouds, with windmills and dark forests, and Rachel Ruysch flowers with lavish precision. Still life was a genre of its own and often carried a message that life is short; read more in the guide to still life and vanitas and about themes such as landscape, interiors and everyday life.

Why it ended and why it matters

After 1672, called the Disaster Year, when the country was attacked by France and England and suffered internal unrest, the economy declined and taste turned towards a more French, elegant style. The great masters died, and the eighteenth century brought a different pattern. But the Golden Age left a legacy: the idea that every subject is worth painting.

Dutch art influenced all of Europe, also Sweden, where David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl had travelled in the Netherlands and brought lessons home. Look for small formats, detailed surfaces, clear light, earthy colours and everyday subjects. In Delft, moreover, blue-and-white ceramics developed; see the Delft dish in the design section. The Rijksmuseum building in Amsterdam still holds the country’s most famous collection, and the period is described more closely under the Dutch Golden Age and the Baroque.

How to recognise it

Exercise

Why did the art market become so large in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century?