Hedonism: Dutch art reflects the society’s joy in everyday life

1. Hedonism:Dutch art reflects the society’s joy in everyday life Aesthetic Theory

2. Dutch Seventeenth Century • Turning point 1602 • With the rise of the Dutch republic, new forms of art became popular. The emergent wealthy merchant class chose to spend their money on portraits, landscapes, scenes of Dutch life, and still-life pictures. • Independence from the Spanish empire, 1602 • Owning art became commonplace; type of art produced effected. • Calvinism opposed lavish décor of churches with costly trappings. • Bourgeois patrons living in modest town houses dominated the market. They preferred reflections of everyday life to adorn their houses, verses grandiose paintings.

3. WILLEM CLAESZ. HEDA Haarlem 1593/’94 - 1680/’82 Haarlem Vanitas Signed WCheda.1628. (bottom right) Panel, 45.5 x 69.5 cm Bredius Museum, The Hague Willem Claesz Heda, an exponent of the monochrome banquet, was one of the leading seventeenth-century still-life painters. This picture shows smoking articles combined with a skull and an upturned römer. Smoking was regarded as the pre-eminent idle pastime. This seventeenth-century verse is singularly appropriate to this picture: Het glas is leegh, De tijd is om, De keers is uyt, De mens is stom (The glass is empty, time has run out, The candle is snuffed, Man is dumb.) The term still life originated in Holland (stilleven) and some artist specialized in arrangements of fruit, fish shells, breakfast tables and banquet scenes.

4. Dutch Landscape painting denied all forms of pretension, keeping as close as possible to nature itself. • Dutch painters dispensed with idealized shepards and architectural follies, spectacular panoramas and glowing sunsets. • They concentrated on the simplest of scenes: a tranquil river, a field with cattle, an avenue of poplars. • They lavished the same care and attention on nature in a smaller scale.

5. Potter’s bull is a household word. What makes this painting so special is the fact that Potter took an everyday subject – a bull in a meadow – and painted it in an unusually large format, paying attention even to the smallest details, from the flies buzzing above the bull’s back to the frog in the foreground. In the 17th century, glorifying cattle to this extent was something that happened only in Holland. • Potter placed the bull prominently in the centre of the painting. On the left he added a farmer, a cow and some sheep; on the right he depicted a low-lying meadow with grazing cattle. A lark hovers high in the sky. Just visible on the horizon, below the dark, cloudy sky, is the church spire of Rijswijk. This places the scene just outside The Hague. • This painting, which Potter made when he was only 21, is much larger than his usual work. Though it was probably a commission, it is unclear who the patron was and where the painting was meant to hang. PAULUS POTTER Four Bulls Oil on wood 22 1/2” x 26 1/2” Turin (Italy), Sabauda Gallery Dutch Seventeenth Century

6. Interior of the Curch of Saint Bavo in Haarlem PIETER SAENREDAM

7. View of Delft from the Rotterdam Canal JAN VERMEER

8. Portraiture was also important and the Dutch prized candor and vitality above dignity and grandeur. • The first Dutch artist to give his portraits a freshness, intimacy, and spontaneity was Frans Hals. His sitters appear relaxed, friendly, and approachable. They are often captured smiling or laughing, and he shows them turning around our looking up, as if he had just interrupted them. Recently Married Couple, Holland, 1600s. This painting of a recently married couple is by Frans Hals, a Flemish painter. It was painted in 1622 and is currently located in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The wealthy couple is believed to be Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen.

9. Kitchen Servant, Holland, 1600s. This picture was painted around 1658 by Vermeer. It is commonly known as "The Milkmaid" and is located in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Although there is insufficient detail in this webphoto to show the small cupids in the picture, their presence in the painting itself suggests that this young woman may have thoughts of romance and love dancing in her head as she carries out her kitchen tasks.

10. JAN VERMEER Head of a Young Woman Oil on canvas, 18 1/4” x 15 3/4” The Hague (The Netherlands), Mauritshuis Dutch Seventeenth Century