One of the great joys of our recent trip to Europe was seeing the 16th & 17th C. Dutch art that has thrilled my soul since adolescence. Standing a few, trifling feet away from the very paintings that I had once pored over on the pages of books was, to say the least, a memorable experience, akin to finally visiting long-time friends in person instead of on Skype.
In Amsterdam, The Hague & Brussels, Tom & I enjoyed face time with the Bruegels (Pieter the Elder) & the Brueghels (Pieter the Younger & the two Jans), the van Ostades & the van Ruisdaels, the Rembrandts & the Frans Hals’ of my youth, so to speak. It seemed to me as if the walls of the Rijksmuseum, the Mauritshuis & the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium were having one huge Dutch Baroque party & everyone was invited – frolicking peasants, Captain Cocq’s militia, the girl with a pearl earring, even Paulus Potter’s cows! As for food & decorations, the banquet tables couldn’t have been more sumptuous or the bouquets of flowers more exquisite.
After all, these are the paintings that revel in their own technical brilliance. Here’s an example: Frequently the lemon in a still life is depicted with one end sliced off & half of the rind unfurling in a spiral over the edge of the table. This cunning visual device not only demonstrates the artist’s ability to render the exposed pulp convincingly enough to pucker your mouth, it also shows command of the textures of both sides of the peel – the white, pithy inside & the yellow, waxy outside. Rest assured that with the Dutch Masters, pewter will always look cold & hard, & oysters will be properly slimy. Fish scales will glisten, succulent grapes will nearly burst their skins & paper-thin wineglasses will be impossibly transparent.
These are also the paintings of cozy interiors & the frigid outdoors, of low horizons under dramatic skies & of high horizons over village fêtes. They are complex, innovative, charming but never trite, secular but not without implied homilies &, above all, easy to love. In fact, it’s safe to say, these are among the best-loved & most-admired paintings in the world.
Undoubtedly this is so because they are effortlessly accessible to the viewer. Three & a half centuries of history may separate us from Rembrandt, but when we look into the painted eyes of one of his self-portraits, we feel the connection of shared humanity. These paintings may be windows onto a world we never knew firsthand, but who doesn’t sense the frozen stillness of the air in Bruegel’s Winter Landscape with Skaters & a Bird Trap? And afterwards, aren’t we delighted to take shelter & refreshment in one of Pieter de Hooch’s tidy rooms?
Just as a novel uses words to create an experience for the reader, the Dutch Masters used pigment & a 2-dimensional surface to achieve much the same thing for the viewer. In fact, I was probably responding to that storytelling quality when I fell in love with these paintings so many years ago. On some level, maybe the Hendrick Avercamps represented to me the visual equivalent of Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates or perhaps I spotted something slightly Dickensian about Adriaen Brouwer’s cast of pub patrons.
Well, at any rate, what I certainly discovered in September was that the Golden Age of Dutch Painting has lost none of its appeal for me & I anticipate with pleasure any future opportunity to spend more face time with these marvelous old friends.