Dutch or Flemish painting? The difference explained

The difference between Dutch and Flemish art is a matter of where and when. Flemish art comes from the southern Netherlands, roughly present-day Belgium, centred first on Bruges and then on Antwerp: van Eyck in the 15th century, Bruegel and then Rubens and van Dyck. Dutch art comes from the Protestant republic in the north after the 1580s: Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals. Flemish Baroque painting is large, Catholic and dramatic; Dutch painting is more often small, middle-class and everyday.

Facts

Why the words get confused

The Netherlands means the low countries, and for a long time it was an area of many cities under the same rulers, first the Dukes of Burgundy and then the Habsburgs. Artists in Bruges, Brussels and Haarlem spoke roughly the same language and learned from one another. In English the word Flemish has often been used for all older art from there, and the word Dutch for everything from the present-day Netherlands. Neither habit is entirely wrong, but they obscure an important difference.

The deciding factor is the revolt against Spain in the second half of the 16th century. The northern provinces joined together in the Union of Utrecht in 1579 and became a Protestant republic. When Spanish troops took Antwerp in 1585, the southern provinces remained under Spain and the Catholic Church. Thousands of merchants and artists fled north. Since then a distinction has been drawn between Dutch art in the north and Flemish in the south.

The Flemish Primitives

Before the division the centre of gravity lay in the south. In the 15th century painters in Bruges and Brussels turned oil painting into an art of microscopic precision. Jan van Eyck painted The Arnolfini Portrait in Bruges in 1434, and Rogier van der Weyden was city painter in Brussels. They are called the Flemish Primitives, a term meaning the first, not the simple. See the period in the Belgian thread, The Flemish Primitives, and the guide to The Arnolfini Portrait.

In the 16th century Antwerp became Europe's richest trading city, and there and in Brussels Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted peasants, seasons and biblical scenes in wide landscapes. The Hunters in the Snow of 1565 is one of the first great winter landscapes. Bruegel is counted as Flemish, but his landscapes and peasant scenes became models for the Dutch painters of the next century. Read about Antwerp and Bruegel.

Flemish Baroque: Rubens and Antwerp

In the Catholic southern Netherlands the churches needed new altarpieces after the iconoclasm of 1566, and the Counter-Reformation wanted pictures that moved and convinced. Peter Paul Rubens came home to Antwerp in 1608 after eight years in Italy and became the most sought-after painter of the Baroque. The Descent from the Cross in Antwerp Cathedral is built on a single powerful diagonal, in which Christ's dead body slides down a white sheet.

Rubens had a large workshop with assistants and worked for churches, royal houses and the nobility across Europe. His pupil Anthony van Dyck became court painter to Charles I in London and shaped the English portrait for a long time. Flemish Baroque is thus large, colourful, Catholic and international. See Flemish Baroque.

The Dutch Golden Age: the market and everyday life

In the Protestant republic the Church disappeared as a patron; Reformed churches had no images. Instead burghers bought paintings for their homes, often on an open market, and artists specialised: portraits, landscapes, still lifes, seascapes, interiors, genre pictures of everyday life. The pictures are often small, intimate and precise. Jacob van Ruisdael painted skies and windmills, Jan Steen lively, disorderly households, and Rachel Ruysch flower still lifes.

The great names are Rembrandt in Amsterdam, with The Night Watch of 1642, Johannes Vermeer in Delft, with Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Frans Hals and Judith Leyster in Haarlem. Hals, incidentally, was born in Antwerp and came north with his family, an example of how the flight from the south built the Golden Age. See the guide The Dutch Golden Age and the period The Golden Age.

Compare Rubens and Rembrandt

Put The Descent from the Cross next to The Night Watch in Compare. Both are Baroque, with strong contrasts of light and dark and large formats. But Rubens's picture is an altarpiece with a sacred subject, bodies in motion and saturated colours. Rembrandt's is a group portrait of a civic guard, commissioned by the men themselves, and the drama lies in a company setting out.

That difference recurs. Flemish Baroque paints for church and court and tells great stories. Dutch painting paints for the burghers and shows their world, their homes, towns and landscapes. The way Rembrandt and Vermeer work with light is compared in the guide Rembrandt and Vermeer.

How to place an unknown painting

Look at the subject first. A large altarpiece with saints, martyrs or mythology in motion is probably Flemish. A small room with a woman reading a letter, a flat landscape with a low horizon and a large sky, or a still life with a half-peeled lemon is probably Dutch. Still lifes exist in both, but the Dutch ones are more often quiet and charged with vanity; read the guide to still life and vanitas.

Then look at the date. Before 1585 almost everything is Flemish in the broad sense. After 1585 the city decides: Antwerp and Brussels mean Flemish, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Delft, Leiden and Utrecht mean Dutch. The app has the two countries as separate threads, so you can follow them side by side. Also read What is the Baroque?

How to tell them apart

Exercise

Which of these painters is counted as Flemish Baroque?