The over 60 portraits, still lifes, landscapes, history paintings, maritime scenes, city profiles and genre scenes in the Van Otterloo collection depict life in the 17th Century Republic across a wide variety of themes and genres.
In Catholic Europe, the nobility and the Catholic Church were the principal patrons of the arts. But as the Dutch Republic became more prosperous, the art market expanded to new collectors. This market catered to various interests and levels of income and social status – the proverbial butcher, baker and candlestick maker. An English observer commented, “In the Republic even humble abodes brimmed with pictures.” (A Worldly Art, Mariet Westermann, p33)
It should be pointed out that none of the superb paintings in the Van Otterloo collection would have been bought by the more humble classes. The paintings in the collection were painted by artists patronized by the wealthy merchant class.
In the Netherlands, the grand history and religious subjects favored in much of Catholic Europe fell out of fashion; Dutch artists began to create portraits not only of individuals, but also of the cities, buildings, landscape and society of this prospering nation.
“I think it is this universality of artistic interest that appeals so much to modern audiences,” observes Dr. Lynn Federle Orr, the curator in charge of European art for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “In the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, we sense the achievements of a cohesive society, the benefits of honest labor, the warmth of a spare but comfortable home, the quiet beauty of a productive landscape. And occasionally we see ourselves (and our foibles) in the delightful antics depicted in Dutch genre scenes.”
Organized by themes, rather than strict chorological order, the show opens with a section titled Dawn of the Golden Age: After the decades of war with Spain ended, the Dutch looked upon their own distinctive landscape with patriotic fervor. Artists emphasized the quintessential elements of their topography: a low horizon line seen across flat fields and rolling dunes and qualified by changing weather conditions. The 17th century "Llttle Ice Age" inspired painters such as Avercamp who created a career devoted to winterscapes. He elevated the frosty subject to new heights in works such as his Winter Landscape Near a Village.
Cityscapes and Architectural Paintings: The prosperous and busy urban environment found advocates, none more accomplished than Jan van der Heyden. His View of the Westerkerk, Amsterdam is faithful to the real structure. The church was completed in 1651 and was the largest Protestant church in the world until the completion of St. Paul’s cathedral in London. It is still the largest Protestant church in Europe. Rembrandt is buried here and Anne Frank could hear the church bells from her family’s hiding place during WW II.
Protestant churches in the Netherlands, often former Catholic churches converted to Protestant use, were largely devoid of religious imagery. The statues of saints and crosses had been stripped away. So the interior space assumed a new meaning; the starkly elegant interiors illumined by beams of sunlight evoked religious devotion that did not need (as the Dutch saw it) the “fripperies of the papacy.”
The Van Otterloo collection includes three masterworks of the genre: Gerard Houckgeest, Pieter Saenredam and Emanuel de Witte.
Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection
July 9, 2011 - October 2, 2011
http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/
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