The Seventeenth Century really was a Golden Age for the Dutch. After a war of independence against Spain that lasted nearly a century, in 1648 the northern provinces officially became free and formed the Dutch Republic. During this tumultuous period the breakaway provinces flourished economically, culturally, architecturally and artistically. As early as 1611, people recognized that they were entering a special time, as an economic boom, fueled by international maritime commerce, launched a lively market for art.
Dutchmen of this era were extraordinarily proud of the histories and appearance of their cities. The plethora of canals, bridges and causeways that crisscrossed major communities, plus omnipotent churches, windmills and fortifications, added to their charm and posed intriguing challenges to architects, city planners and artists.
The burst of artistic creativity spawned by this civic pride is documented in a beautiful exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, “Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age,” on view through May 3. It utilizes 48 paintings and 23 atlases, maps and illustrated books to document the enduring appeal and aesthetic achievements of Seventeenth Century Dutch cityscape artists. Co-curated by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr, the gallery’s curator of northern baroque painting, and Ariane van Suchtelen, curator of the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague, the show includes images of The Hague, Haarlem, Delft, Dordrecht, Hoorn, Middleburg, Utrecht, Nijmegen, Rhenen and Amsterdam.
People who have visited the Netherlands will understand curator Wheelock’s comment that they will have a “comforting feeling” walking into the exhibition, because they will sense they have seen these places before. Indeed, those who have been in Holland probably have; a visit to a half dozen of the featured cities last December confirmed that a remarkable number of the views recorded here in paint are still recognizable on the ground in the Twenty-First Century.
Holland’s international outlook and maritime history stimulated a cartographic tradition, which inspired meticulously accurate domestic maps that profiled distinctive urban skylines featuring church steeples and soaring town halls, while bird’s-eye views and city plans delineated buildings, streets, squares and canals.
Allegorical images helped artists make political points via “lion maps,” such as a colored engraving of 1648 that superimposes a map on the back of a lion (traditional heraldic symbol of the country) flanked by profile views of a dozen cities in the new Dutch Republic.
Population growth, particularly in Amsterdam, where a quarter of Holland’s urban dwellers lived, can be traced through a series of eye-popping aerial maps, notably Jan Micker’s “A Bird’s-Eye View of Amsterdam,” circa 1652, a large oil painting that not only records major structures, individual residences, town squares, canals and the outer harbor, but ships and barges carrying goods that contributed to the city’s thriving mercantile life.
In spite of its apparent realism, the painting actually depicts Amsterdam as it appeared in a map 100 years earlier. Micker added to its sense of immediacy by having sunlight shine through clouds on Dam Square and two large churches in the heart of the city.
Intrigued by the precision of Micker’s art and adroit use of sunlight and shadows, curator Wheelock says enthusiastically, “I love this painting †can’t look at it enough!”
The maps and atlases are handsomely complemented by a series of painted city profiles, most made from natural and built waterways or harbors. Building on the precedent of engraved and printed views, painters approached the task either with highly detailed styles, characterized by Henrick Vroom’s colorful harbor view of Hoorn, circa 1622, or less precise, more atmospheric depictions, epitomized by Abraham de Verwer’s oil of Hoorn around 1645.
In one notable oil, Adriaen van de Venne’s “Middleburg with the Departure of a Dignitary,” 1615, the city profile serves as the backdrop for a very colorful, lively, remarkably precise scene of boatloads of people and people on land saluting an unidentified bigwig on horseback preparing to take his leave. The detail is such that the artist himself is recognizable as the third horseman from the left in the water.
Aelbert Cuyp’s ambitious “The Maas at Dordrecht,” early 1650s, records a real event when 30,000 soldiers and a large flotilla of ships gathered as a show of force before the start of negotiations that led to independence two years later. The sails of the fleet, receding into the distance, nearly obscure the silhouette of the city. The focus is on a small boat delivering local dignitaries to the wide ship on the right, perhaps as part of an official farewell ceremony.
Some artists, such as Jan van Goyen, focused on major landmarks rather than expansive urban profiles. In “The Valkhof at Nijmegen,” 1641, van Goyen largely ignored the surrounding city, zeroing in on the imposing, historic Valkhof fortress. A depiction of the same site, based on van Goyen’s image, by Solomon von Ruysdael, 1652, strikes a more colorful, triumphal tone.
Similarly concentrated on a significant landmark are Gerrit Berckheyde’s depictions of St Bavo, a massive church that to this day defines Haarlem’s central market square. Especially notable is his extraordinarily detailed, sun-splashed “The Grote or St Bavokerk in Haarlem,” 1666, an immaculate scene in which the structure swallows up the space, allowing Berckheyde to render its architectural details and stone textures with remarkable precision. Customers at the marketplace around the church and families strolling along the cobblestone street offer what Wheelock calls “a view of a prosperous, mercantile society, at peace with itself and with the religious foundations upon which it stood.”
Golden Age town halls were popular both as subjects and sites for display of large works. Dominating a large gallery is Jan van Goyen’s 5½-by-15-foot extravaganza, “View of The Hague from the Southeast,” circa 1650‵1, a detailed rendering of the city’s profile and in the foreground an equally meticulous depiction of the surrounding countryside.
Commissioned by the city’s burgomasters for the old town hall, it is now owned by the Haags Historisch Museum in The Hague. At 15 feet long, it is the second largest town hall painting in Holland, according to Wheelock.
Removing this massive piece from the Haags Museum for the current exhibition was big news in The Hague, but transporting it by plane went smoothly. As did dealing with issues such as the picture’s weight, strength of the gallery wall, height of the painting due to classical moldings and color, lighting and glare on such a large work.
In Amsterdam, Holland’s fast-growing economic hub, the town hall itself was a favorite subject for painters. In “The Old Town Hall of Amsterdam,” 1657, based on a much earlier drawing, Pieter Saenredam painstakingly documented architectural details, the weather-beaten exterior and the usual hangers-on around the civic structure. In 1652, the town hall was destroyed by a fire, a spectacular event recorded by Jan Beerstraten.
The massive new town hall, completed in 1665, was considered the eighth wonder of the world. Jan van der Heyden’s sharply angled view of the façade in 1667 emphasized its enormity and overwhelming effect close up, underscoring the impact by spotlighting its façade in sunlight while rendering neighboring buildings in shadow. Originally a device was attached to the frame of the picture to help viewers find the perfect vantage point from which to appreciate the painting’s careful perspective.
Expansion projects in Amsterdam in the second half of the Seventeenth Century, including widely admired concentric canals lined with stately mansions and warehouses, kept artists busy for decades. While their renderings seem realistic, many blended architectural realism with artistic license.
Van der Heyden, a prolific master of canal views, often straightened roofs, widened streets and eliminated litter to retain a pristine ambience. He even inserted a formidable Romanesque church from another city in several paintings for what Wheelock calls “visual contrast” and “compositional structure.”
Van der Heyden played it straight in one of the loveliest urban evocations, “The Oudezijds Voorburgwal and the Oude Kerke in Amsterdam,” circa 1670. Bathed in warm sunshine are the oldest canal in the city, workers unloading barrels at the beer quay, a row of tree-shaded houses and, rising above everything, the tower of the old church †all rendered in meticulous, fascinating detail, such as the mortar between bricks.
More of a stickler for accuracy was Berckheyde, whose many canal views included the serenely beautiful “The Golden Bend in the Herengracht in Amsterdam Seen from the Vijzelstraat,” circa 1672. Depicted in sun and shadow is a stretch along the Gentlemen’s Canal with construction equipment still on site, which was designed to become the city’s most prestigious residential section.
In Delft, then and now, a tourist draw for its historic buildings, monuments and intimate atmosphere, artists concentrated on domestic scenes rather than urban panoramas. Pieter de Hooch specialized in family scenes in semiprivate interior courtyards, while Jan Steen linked cityscape, portraiture and sociology in “Adolf and Catharina Croeser on the Oude Delft,” 1655, showing a prosperous merchant and his daughter on his front stoop preparing to respond to a request for help from an old woman and young child.
Charity is also in play in Jacob Ochtervelt’s endearing “Street Musicians in the Doorway of a House,” 1665, in which the elegant, reserved mistress of the residence prepares to hand some coins to her young daughter, who, guided by maidservant, prepares to hand the money to humbly dressed, cheerful street musicians who have just performed.
Of particular interest is Carel Fabritius’s small, enigmatic “View in Delft,” 1652, in which a pensive man, possibly the artist himself, gazes across a road and canal to the church where the Princes of Orange were buried. The unusually wide-angled perspective of this image sharply reduces the scale of the church and suggests, says Wheelock, that the artist employed a concave lens to create a work for a perspective box. These issues aside, he adds, “No Dutch cityscape is quite like this work&[It] remains a compelling and evocative image, remarkable for its lightness of touch, delicacy of color and projection of space.”
The final painting in the exhibition is equally intriguing, a riff on perspective and imaginary sites that sums up many aspects of this grand exhibition. As the title of Daniel Vosmaer’s canvas, “Delft from an Imaginary Loggia,” 1663, suggests, the site did not actually exist, although its columned arches and tiled floor match those in the Delft Town Hall, and the profile of the city is accurate.
Head on, the tiled floor here looks tilted to the right. As in several other works on display, however, if you stand close and to the left of this painting the floor flattens out †one of Vosmaer’s illusionistic tricks. As Henriette de Bruyn Kop, Wheelock’s colleague at the National Gallery, observes, “Like so many of his fellow painters of cityscapes, Vosmaer blurred the distinction between reality and imagination.”
Visitors to this memorable exhibition travel back in time to picturesque cities of Seventeenth Century Holland, carried on the wings of superbly painted, imaginatively composed and historically insightful canvases of timeless appeal. The Dutch love these evocations of a bygone day, so much of which remains virtually unchanged today †and so should we.
The 256-page catalog with essays by Wheelock, van Suchtelen and other scholars, is published by Mauritshuis, the National Gallery, and Waanders Publishers, Zwolle. It sells for $60 hardcover and $40 softcover.
The National Gallery of Art is on the National Mall between Third and Ninth Streets at Constitution Avenue NW. For information, 202-737-4215 or www.nga.gov .
