Collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

World power

According to many, the Golden Age started with the foundation of the United East Indies Company (V.O.C.) in 1602. The V.O.C. had the monopoly on trade with Asia and became the largest trading organisation in the world. Their ships ruled the oceans of the world. Trade in spices in particular generated enormous profits. The year 1609 is also viewed as the starting-point of the Golden Age. In that year, a truce was signed with Spain in the Eighty Years War. Until this time, the Netherlands had been part of the powerful Spanish empire; now it achieved greater independence. After 1648 it even became an independent republic, with freedom of religion and economic and political independence. Under the influence of these event, the Netherlands, then known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, could develop into the new centre of the world. With international trade and overseas success, the prosperity at home grew. A large and rich class of merchants arose, which in turn stimulated the development of the sciences, literature and art.

Popular subjects

In the Republic, an important new market developed for artists. They no longer worked primarily for the church, royalty and rich nobility. The middle class, grown rich thanks to trade, became the most important buyer of art. This had an enormous influence on the way artists worked and their specialisms. A large percentage of the canvases were no longer made on assignment, as had been usual until then. The artist now chose the subject himself and presented the works to the rich middle class directly or via art dealers. Paintings were now to be found in the homes of citizens, and became part of extensive private art collections. Artists specialised in popular subjects: such as still lifes, landscapes, historical subjects, portraits or genre works.

Historical works

Among the various genres in art, some enjoyed greater respect than others. According to 17th century ideas, the historical work was at the apex in the hierarchy of subjects from which a painter could choose. Canvases classified as historical works were those with several figures from historical, Biblical or mythological stories. The collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen contains various examples of these. One example is ‘Juno accepts the eye of Argus from Mercury’ by Hendrick Goltzius, dating from 1615. Such historical works could only be produced by the great masters. The painter had, after all, to be able to immerse himself in the story he was depicting, he had to convey emotions and have sufficient knowledge of anatomy in order to paint moving human bodies. As the same time, he also needed various different skills: the painting of a still life, landscape, perspective illustration and more. For an historical work, the artist had to be master of all the various facets of painting. It was not without reason that the historical work was the most admired of all the various genres in the 17th century.

Still lifes

The production of still lifes reached its high-point in the Netherlands in the 17th century. Dutch painters were particularly famous for the way they depicted materials: depicting the characteristics of the material of an object, for example, a transparent glass, a reflecting pewter plate or a soft, velvet cloak. One of these masters was the Haarlem painter Willem Claesz. Heda. He paid particular attention to the reflections of the various materials: silver in glass, glass in silver, silver in pewter and pewter in silver. Paintings such as those by him, with more or less simple objects and muted colours, are known as ‘monochrome suppers’. Such still lifes are characteristic for the first part of the 17th century. Later in the century, the sumptious still life earned increasing favour; they were was dominated by valuable objects, a rich use of colour and a full composition. The paintings by Abraham van Beyeren, Willem Kalf and Jan Davidsz. de Heem are good examples of such sumptuous still lifes.

Dutch skies

Dutch skies are famous throughout the world, largely thanks to the landscapes painted in the Golden Age. One of the most famous landscape artists is Jan van Goyen. He gave the Dutch skies, which in his paintings were often grey and misty, all the room possible by keeping the horizon low. He emphasised the enormous panoramas through the far-off horizon, which can hardly be distinguished from the land. Another famous landscape artist in the collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is Jacob van Ruisdael. His uncle Salomon van Ruysdael was also a well-known landscape artist. Among the landscape artists, some specialised further and concentrated on seascapes, such as Simon de Vlieger and Jan van de Cappelle. They were masters in capturing threatening skies and reflecting water.

Genre works

A subject that became very popular in the Golden Age is the genre work. The artists painted all kinds of everyday scenes. The lively and sometimes chaotic scenes painted by Jan Steen became famous. In this work, a laughing man is depicted at the centre of the table, and it is assumed that this is Jan Steen himself. Everything appears to please him. An old woman prepares a meal of oysters for him and a young woman offers him a glass of wine. In the background, two men are playing trictrac, a popular board game of the period. On a board near the chimeny is written: ‘easy come, easy go’. The goddess of luck, Lady Fortune, is depited above the board. She is in a particularly precarious position, balancing on a dice and a globe of the world. Behind her we see a sea, with one ship sailing with the wind, while another is perishing in the raging waves. The games of chance, the dice, oysters and the precarious Lady Fortune: with this happy scene, Jan Steen warns us of the temptations and seductions of life and the fury of fate. Steen and other 17th-century genre painters often produced works with such a moralistic meaning. Based on these paintings and prints, art historians have, in the past, tried to ascribe a deeper meaning to virtually every genre scene. Recently, people have changed their view; many of the genre scenes seem nothing more than a depiction of everyday life without any deeper meaning.

Portraits

The middle class in the 17th century, grown rich through international trade, liked having portraits made of themselves. One client was Abraham del Court, an Amsterdam sheet merchant. He married Maria de Keerssegieter in 1651. Del Court asked Bartholomeus van der Helst to immortalise this union. Van der Helst was much in demand as portrait artist. He was master in the accurate depiction of faces, but also in the depiction of fabrics and objects. The monumental double portrait shows del Court in a black silk suit next to his wife who is dressed in the latest French fashion.

Rembrandt van Rijn

One of the greatest masters of the Golden Age is Rembrandt van Rijn. The collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has three canvases by Rembrandt, which give a good impression of his versatility. The portrait of Aletta Adriaenssdr, dating from 1639, is characteristic for Rembrandt’s work as portrait artist. He painted her as she would like to have been seen, stately and rich, and was excellently able to depict characteristic traits. In addition to portraits, Rembrandt also worked as a history painter, a genre that was held in particularly high regard. An example of this is ‘The unity of the country’, dating from around 1641. The portrait of his son Titus from 1655 is an example of Rembrandt’s late painting style. In that time, he painted with thick layers of paint and broad brush strokes. The accent is more on the inner frame of mind than on an accurate depiction of facial details. The original collection of F.J.O. Boijmans included 124 etches by Rembrandt. They were destroyed, together with all other graphic work, when the museum burnt down in 1864. A new collection of prints and drawings by Rembrandt has been built up over the years.

Worldly Interiors

When it came to decorating their homes, well-to-do 17th-century Dutch citizens were fascinated by the new, exotic materials and products that the extensive transatlantic trade of the Dutch East India Company brought within reach. Herman Doomer’s famous tulip cabinet represents the beginning of the ‘museum’ phenomenon. This exceptional display cabinet, made from tropical woods like ebony and cedar with ivory and mother-of-pearl inlays, became the repository of a diverse collection of rare natural and man-made objects. Tulips - the predominant motif - were first imported from Turkey in the 17th century and were status symbols at the time. The growing prosperity of the Republic meant that wealthy citizens could afford ever more expensive household effects, where artistic quality came first and in some cases functionality disappeared.