Appearance and Reality in Dutch Art

you well up here something is specialist in Dutch and Flemish art he graduated from Harvard then did his PhD work here at Yale a student of Eggbert have become a hammam who's now 91 years old and the patriarch of our field also the teacher and the or the coach of at least half a dozen leading curators and scholars of Dutch art including Ronnie Bayer of the MFA Boston who's going to come here and you'll hear next week Peter Sutton has been one of that small band of American curators who's played an absolutely essential role in teaching the wider public about the art of the Netherlands Peter's preferred method is ambitious exhibitions as for example the age of Rubens Masters of Dutch landscape and Dutch genre painting in the age of Vermeer have been many specialized shows as well that have expanded what we know and think about particular artists among others the painters Pieter de haut me feel spirits and young Vonda Hayden he's also cataloged some very fine private collections including those of Lord Harold Samuels and Baron villain from datum and most recently the hoechlin boowhowoo collection well after Yale Peter was a paintings curator at the Philadelphia Museum and at the MFA in Boston was the director of the wodsworth hatha Nahum and had a stint at Christie's a senior director of old masters for the past dozen or so years he's run the Bruce Museum in Greenwich Bruce's Peters a huge reputation and his lone gettin prowess have made the Bruce an unlikely player you might have thought on the world stage a real force in international exhibitions on top of that Peters had a new wing designed for his museum and is now remaining while working on the remaining details he was Peter in fact who suggested a certain that a set circuit and well-to-do Boston cup all of his acquaintances about 20 odd years ago that they ought to maybe buy some Dutch paintings I'm talking about Rosemarie and Ag fun Auto low of course and they did about 75 of them so far they've been grateful to Peter ever since and so has the museum going public I'm delighted to introduce Peter Sutton his topic topic today as you can see his appearance and reality in Dutch art Peter Sutton ah yes we go back we go back John John John was my predecessor a predecessor as as curator in Boston III then I then somehow didn't quite get to the Getty but I did have a lot of lateral moves I'm going to talk today about about Dutch naturalism and I'm going to use as many of the otter Lowe's pictures as I can as jazz John just suggested I started out with the otter lows low 30 years ago I think not 20 but it was wonderful he was then collecting sleighs and automobiles and I said you know you could buy pictures I mean and and before you know it he came up to me I was I was giving a lecture at the Boston Museum and he came up to me and he said he said should I buy this picture I said well it's a very nice Peter class but you should buy this and Ovid's to him and and he underbid it for $750,000 then but my god like we have to talk so so he's he has gone on too much even better things than that including this this Rembrandt today I'm going to talk about what people react to immediately about Dutch art that it is highly detailed that it has a naturalism a truth to life a kind of verisimilitude and a visual probity it's been called and but I hope using some of the Von auteur Lowe's paintings that we'll explore that the truth of this of this observation and I hope to be able to show you the or face of naturalism how it is contrived and convected and I hope at the very end you will come to understand that naturalism is simply another style like mannerism or classicism perhaps the the clearest expression of this notion that Dutch art is literal reportage was expressed by Yujin from fro mental fro mento was it was a very nice painter or analyst and wrote a very good book actually very well-written book la Mettrie d'autre fois in 1875 and this is what he said about Dutch Dutch painting he summed it up Dutch painting it is quickly perceived was and could only be the portrait of Holland its exterior image faithful exact complete and without embellishment portraits of men in places citizens habits isn't that nice citizens habits squares streets country places the sea in the sky such was to be reduced to its primitive elements the program of the Dutch school outwardly nothing could be more simple than this discovery of an art of earthly aim but until the Dutch painted it nothing had been imagined equally vast and novel so let's test that assumption the Dutch art is simply a portrait of people this is elsa oilin burke who was who was a who was the cousin of henrik oilin Burke who was central to to two Rembrandt's Rembrandt's life when he first moved from light into Amsterdam he was also she was also a cousin to Saskia his Rembrandt's first wife it is a wonderful probing portrait of an elderly woman and is one of the highlights of the Vanara local they also have other wonderful portraits here the kempen are family to kemp and our family done by young Baptist Phoenix who is a Dutch Italian egg painter quite different style but also a wonderfully sensitive portrait of a woman and her children other paintings in the collection that highlight this marvelous ability to get a human likeness the debry of this woman in profile or the or the the Herod a self-portrait there he is arrayed with all of the all of his the attributes of an erudite painter painted in a niche but a very good likeness of the artist we assume uh and they also of course did marvelous paintings of genre scenes scenes of everyday life the quotidian the everyday be it a family of family a simple family by my Adriaen van tostada or a Metsu of an old woman having a simple meal in her kitchen or dau with a woman praying before before a meal in once again in kind of crumpled down a little little dwelling and then of course the Dutch also created high life scenes they did the upper classes too it is remarkable and I'm planning on doing a show called the Mary company because the 17th century was the most miserable century you can't imagine that Europe lost lost overall population it had constant war pestilence economic collapse it was a dreadful century and what did the Dutch do they created the Mary company which was kind of like a compensation for all of this everybody got a round at the table and had a good time it reminds me we have a group of hedge fund people that gather gathering in Greenwich and in 2000 in September of 2008 one of the people asked the panels what do we do for goodness sake the world's world come to an end and one of the panelists finally said I have three recommendations for you go out to dinner with your friends go to the gym and don't open your statements that's a merry company they also had a wonderful talent for depicting the world around them be it in a simple still life of roses like this bus cart that is one of the very first flower still lifes in existence and is also in the of an auteur lo collection or this fantastic Haida the Haida that has been hanging here at Yale and which is a tour de force of the observation of simple of simple objects be it a rumor of wine nestled into Vinny's glass or a peeled lemon smoking supplies and perhaps the tour de force of the other of the entire composition is this pizza that is turned on its side I I defy you to draw that correctly in perspective even in a simple stimple still life like this old bait you as they call it they also were very reverential about the landscape around them it probably had something to do with the fact that they just recently won their own independence so that they were very proud of the land that they had and they've produced a marvelous slew of landscape astray 'test of them being being Jacob Royston who did this this wonderfully chilly view of a lumber yard in the van otterloop collection or the estado they're kind of mud luscious white horse dragging a sledge up from his frozen river in the middle in early in the early thaw it none of it embellished all of its seemingly seemingly a kind of admiration for for the simplest of pleasures and and they they understood that there the landscape lists were better than better than other other people's landscape as' Huygens who was thus the Secretary to the stockholder a very distinguished patron of the Arts in his own right a friend of of both Rembrandt and leave ins in Leiden he wrote the harvest of landscape painters as I as I refer to those who paint woods fields mountains and villages is so great and famous in our Netherlands that anyone who would who would attempt to name them all would fill a small book it can even be said as far as naturalism is concerned that in the works of these clever men nothing is lacking but the warmth of the Sun and the movement of the breeze and there is much to be said for that and this would seem to bear out what from it what what from it Tao was saying about this being a literal portrait of the Dutch the Dutch scene and the Dutch countryside and some of the pictures in the van otter lo collection like this very early on Bowl on the bottom which shows Amsterdam on this on this on the skyline this is the on stool River they're wonderful Trek Scout here these are these are tow barges I once had a very very different John and I Albert Blanc Hurd who is who was a slightly older than I am and he always forgets that he's older than I am and he's just and he says he says says to me Peter Peter we are just pressed out and we are just those horses that dragged these barges forward that's the Trek Scout right there that's that's Albert and me or this other view from the south of Amsterdam also of the Amstell by by Jacob Royston shows you how that they could they could depict the the scene in a very accurate way or this great Bach house and that's in the von Otto lo collection which shows it from the I it's on the north side and this is the harbor of Amsterdam in the distance and all these these boats are moving under a very stiff gale it all it all seems quite plausible and even anonymous still lifes like this wonderful to flee ger which shows shows shows that this this wonderful sailing vessel under under a stiff breeze it's good to remember that as much as 10% of the male population of the Netherlands was at sea at any given time this is really was a true maritime nation and to this day the the globe reflects the the breadth of their reach from Spitsbergen to Cape Horn to New Zealand to you name it Brooklyn it's it's all it's all based on the Dutch explorers but how were these things really made they were not made in the boat they were not made on plein air they were made actually back in the studio and this is an important important consideration when you're considering how these things were conceived and imagined and and constructed young stain shows us in one of the Von Otter low pictures a painter who's taken a moment out from his painting he's still holding his his his palette and brushes in his left hand and he's correcting a drawing that a young a young apprentice has been making it's a drawing after a print and he's making some Corrections directly on the drawing and you realize that that that paintings were really made from prints and from memory they were not made on the spot and this is a very important consideration because there's a lot of imagination that go enters into this when you when you retreat to the studio so that we saw the bus card before of the roses in in a rumor here's another bus card that's in the merits house also in a niche but all of these flowers are from different seasons we have we have roses we have tulips we have we have irises we have we have John Cowles we have all kinds of things from different times the year so obviously they were made from drawings and they were all combined into this implausible or impossible bouquet they did not have they did not have kind of Jets that brought things from Chile and in the 17th century so this is is an impossible bouquet but one that is somehow ideal and all about the rotation cycle of life so that it is it is it is something that happens repeatedly in Dutch flower still lives and the van otterloop pictures show you that very clearly here it is a von der asked it to has irises and roses and and tulips all from different periods of the year or here great young David's to hane spectacularly beautiful picture with again with roses and with carnations and with with morning glories and with sheaves of wheat and currants and and and raspberries all which bloom at different times of the year and this continues into the 18th century because this this Rachel right here that's a woman about 10 children also manage to be the court painter to the electric palette make I tell you there are people that have been have and multitaskers for a long time that's Rachel Royce that's seventeen four or nine or something like that so this continues into the 18th century I want to dive in a little deeper into this picture because this is by Solomon Roy stall it hangs I think these days in the in the Rijksmuseum it is a river landscape he did many River landscapes Solomon Roy Stoll was the uncle of Jacob Royston also from Harlem and he specialized in these these River landscapes that show a diagonal recession the entire foreground filled with water he very often had had had ferry boats used as a kind of rape who swore to enhance the pants the the the recession and he has these tall trees that lean out over over the receding river and very conveniently has he's lined up three vessel sailing vessels that draw the eye into the distance this happens again and again and again although I might point out that this particular threat ferry boat is the perhaps the most companionably overbooked variable I've ever seen can you imagine this lady in the middle is actually riding sidesaddle and wearing a mask and she's riding with a bunch of with a bunch of cows in in a narrow ferryboat but this is a very brave group that's crossing that River but this is a 1649 of one of the best years of Solomon Roy's Dells career now here's another picture by him that is I think this is in this isn't this isn't Los Angeles I think it was it was an ed Carter picture and we noticed that all many of the same features are found here we have the ferry boat we have the the distant vessels we have the trees that lean out we have a road we have a church we also have this happens repeatedly and in Solomon's you have a stork in the in the chimney of this very good very good good omen this is Oregon the chimney all of these things and again the full the full foreground filled with water here's one that just sold to the National Gallery in Washington was one of the pictures from the cloud sticker show that we had the restituted pictures from the Nazi looted art again a picture from the same year 1649 here's the ferry boat again was overcrowded overcrowded passengers here again are that are the the vessels enhancing this diagonal recession and castles and churches on on the hillside there also are let me go back to the original one because I want to give credit to John in all this this is a picture I actually had in a show that I did in 1987 and I was I was leading the princess Marguerite through the show I always wanted Queen Beatrice because she was much nicer and but Princess Magritte was they always sent her to go through go through the shows with me and I was saying you know the contemporary observers say that say that that Solomon would begin his pictures by sweeping a great brush across the slopes the horizon so you get these wonderful windswept effects and then he would he would have these clouds that would sweep in and then and plume up in into the into the upper atmosphere but I said meteorologist according a very good article by John proved that these this is not the way wait wave clouds actually act so that these are not real clouds these are made-up clouds so she looked at me very very crossly and said they do in Holland and I said yes your majesty and we and we moved on to the next picture but here I show you some more of these it's not that these things become formulaic there are just each one is just as naturalistic as the other one the astonishing invention of this man is that it never becomes routine he has all the same bits and parts but he cobbles them together differently every time so that we have pictures here from the maurits house from from the front halls Museum and this one also was in was in the cloud sticker collection it shows actually nyan Rhoda castle in the distance but that's not a writ the river that goes by nyan Rhoda this is all made up it's an actual place but not but not in the right place so then you have Jacob Royston here's a wonderful view of Harlem but that's in the autoload collection these are these are some of the most famous pictures that that rice doll ever ever did they're so famous that they're called Harlem Pia everybody has given them a kind of diminutive as a sign not only a respect bit of affection they often have more than two-thirds of the of the the the seem devoted to the sky the sky has they have these wonderful clouds and light and then the dappling of the of the landscape below often echoes and responds and and has a kind of as a kind of conversation with the sky above I give credit also to another yaly a Jim Burke years ago who was the curator of prints here when I was when I was in short pants he he did a whole study of all the Harlem Pia's and showed that there's almost a 360 degree study of Harlem that's always st. Marvel's there we'll see st. Bob was again in a moment and he showed how how all these these images show it from different angles and are quite convincing and quite quite careful and as it were portrait in three dimensions of of the city of Harlem here's some more there's st. maja Vosges here the bleaching fields that are on one side of there's there's bhavo again again with these wonderful soaring storming skies but here's a picture that's in the the autoload collection which is a big Royce though with a blasted tree lots of blasted trees in Royse tall but arborists have actually told us and Seymour slive discovered a lot of these things he did the big wonderful wonderful to sainted Seymour who has just passed away arborist could tell you what kind of tree these are this is not true in most Dutch landscapes they actually can identify an oak from it from a from a maple from a from a you and and and yet this is a very peculiar kind of kind of confection this mystic we have we have a rushing stream we have a rutted roadway that climbs up the hill on the banks of thro we have a mountain no mountains in Holland by the way and we have a church under a soaring sky and blasted trees as I mentioned well this church turns up elsewhere here's oops losing my losing my laser the church on the upper left is is the in the Google banking collection and Lisbon and the one on the right is in the Cleveland Museum it is the same church it is obviously based on a drawing and he just plunked this Church in wherever he where he feels it belongs so that is pretty much the same church as that but this is certainly not the same landscape as that this is one of these waterfalls besides our LEM Pia's the he Royce da was famous for his waterfalls and everybody thought he was actually named for the waterfalls because browsed all means noisy Valley but he know he wasn't named for noisy Valley but it was an easy way to remember who did the waterfalls Royce Dom took advantage as many many artists did after after the Treaty of Munster was signed in 1648 he used the opportunity for freer travel to Germany specifically to Westphalia to go to Bentham bought Benton this is Benton castle up here and he traveled there probably around 1650 I like it too that he's traveling there the two travelers here because we think we speculate and I think there's probably reason to believe it's right that he traveled with Nicholas Beckham who was another artist who actually had had Peter Peter class was his father and came from this this part of the world so he may have been going back to see to see relatives but they probably traveled together to Bob Benton and he painted that a whole series of images of Benton castle the greatest of them all oops no getting ahead of myself here the greatest of them all is this one that is from the byte collection is now in the National Gallery in Ireland it shows it shows that the castle Benton castle on the top of this very very pole called not quite a mountain but it's certainly a very substantial hill all these wonderful wonderful foliage down below spectacular scale on this picture I think this is arguably royce Dells greatest picture there also though are ones in the samuel collection and in the mountain in the maurits house recently purchased by the Merritt sounds only about 15 years ago and bear comb also did them here's there's bear combs view there's a Ben Haim but for some reason since he's an Italianate painter he puts all these Italian peasants kind of marching around with with her herdsmen and these ladies who were barefoot it doesn't make a sense in Westphalia but but he was he was a specialist in Italian pictures so he went with with with the staff Lodge that brought him and so this this would seem that this was a way of showing this monumental this monumental structure this this remarkable remarkable castle on a hill and yet if you go to Ben Haim he made him he made a mountain out of a molehill this is Ben Haim you can go to bed huh now and it's on a very low rise and and it's not quite as as as as as omnipotent as it appears and either either Roy stalls or American stings but they came back and they wanted to brag about their travel photos and that was it this is then a picture that may have turned up in other other lectures it often does this is perhaps roy styles most famous picture it's the the jewish so-called jewish cemetery which is in detroit and there are two versions actually of this picture one is in detroit this is the detroit version and this is the this is the dresden version i'll go back to give you a little bigger image it is an image with a rushing stream with blasted trees once again a broken tree here crossing the stream and tools tombs that are actually based on a Jewish cemetery outside of Amsterdam which still exists it has Egmont castle here and it has a rainbow seems very likely that this as Goethe speculated and everyone since him has speculated probably an allegorical Oracle picture about landscape painting and you see these these tombs really do exist Royston went out and made made drawings of them which were in turn were turned into prints these are the tombs themselves it's a photograph of the tombs he also made drawings of Egmont Castle which had been part of the recent hostilities with Spain the Spanish had occupied the castle and had been knocked down after their siege so he brought that the ruins of this castle together with with the tombs so it probably has it may have something to do with was transience with Vanitas was the hope of renewal through the through the the rainbow there are all kinds of theories about this but Egmont isn't anywhere near the Jewish cemetery so this is this is completely made-up this juxtaposition of these two so once again there's a lot of contrivance in the naturalism of Dutch pictures and here is a work by oops I think I got a head of something oops I lost one oh that's too bad well we can we can do this anyway this this is a work by Albert Kuip Albert kipe worked in dordrecht and and seems not to have ventured pretty far from dordrecht but he did these wonderful wonderful images that look like they're in the Apennines or somewhere in the Alps this marvelous marvelous pastoral image of a rider and several herdsmen with their cattle a little hunt hunter right here about to shoot these ducks and these look suspiciously like the foothills of the Alps and this a kind of a kind of Lake only he never went to Italy he got all of this from people who had you do the second hand is one of the miracles of Dutch painting that that Jung bought an aztlán went to Italy brought back this golden light in this marvelous atmosphere of the Mediterranean and miraculous miraculously Kuip was able to absorb it and make it completely plausible in his in his landscapes this is a fantastic one that used to be in the Butte collection um other ways in which in which Dutch artists as it were let you peek under the mask sometimes they would actually have kind of theatrical figures that would act like a dramatic dramatic actor walking out on the proscenium and actually addressing the addressing the audience here is a gent who's had a little too much wine fallen asleep and I think it's probably the the tavern hostess who was picking his pocket and and shushing you as you go up this is again in the otter lo collection by Nicholas Maas this became a kind of fascination with moths moths did it again and again again and always with the rushing and always a directly looking at at the viewer this kind of breaks down the the the the the the premise that the art that the the the painting is actually a view into an adjacent world if the if the if the actors can see you you certainly are not looking into into a realistic situation so usually they're there they're there their maids who are telling on other maids or who are having a little dalliance in the basement with their boyfriends this is the same case there or they are they are exposing the mistress the household having hissy fit as and often they stand on a on a spiral staircase which was which was one of the hardest things to paint and which was a kind of tour de force virtuoso detail in any picture you included in this case this is a picture from the samuel collection which also has has a trompe l'oeil curtain in front of so it's as if you're looking at a picture that she's looking at at you the multiple multiple contrivance --is of this and are to be pondered only by philosophers this is then the van auteur Louis saundra Dom this is of Saint Bavo we were looking at st. bhava on the on the in the heart lamp use at a moment ago this is st. Barbara it's nave it is a picture of 1660 it's actually based on this drawing of 1627 it's amazing saundra Dom would keep drawings around for 30 years and then and then I'd do them again this this particular drawing of 1627 was was used to follow the year following of his his use of it in it was engraved by Yann van de ville de and was included in Samuel um sings a description of Harlem and there's the print right there but look at it but and it was also used oops it was also used for this wonderful picture in the Johnson collection Philadelphia which again shows that shows the nave of of st. bows this is a picture a year later than the drawing but to wait 30 years to do this other one and have this soaring difference in the perspective this is he's deliberately manipulated the perspective to make make the the monument even more magnificent than it is he did this repeatedly here's a drawing of of 1635 that he then used in the largest picture that he ever did of Saint Bavo this is the one that's in the National Gallery in Scotland it's 1648 and it shows the crossing of the of the church and again he has exaggerated the height of the ceiling by moving the columns forward and by taking a lower point of view so that once again adding to the magnificence of of the church itself or here about the same time this is a painting in Worcester that is dated the same year as the van otterloop picture 1660 it - is based on an earlier drawing in vimar of of the choir and you see he's taken again he's taken taken the choir oops sorry sorry these two I what's wrong with me there we go I'm trying to use the laser there's the later you can see that this kind of squat and horizontal perspective has now become this soaring vertical perspective so a deliberate manipulation of spaces sometimes drawings must have hung around this is a painting by dhow that I showed you a moment ago when I was talking about your machines in everyday everyday life that were depicted by the Dutch and such such such faithful ways it has it has a little dog here next to a stone jug a glazed stone jug we don't have any drawings by dhow but he must have had a drawing of this because five years later in a dated picture of 1650 that one of the before one before was 1645 he did this little dog it's a fantastic little picture that we had we borrowed for for a show that we did on dogs in art was it was really fun we did it with with Huston and this was a highlight this was the poster poster child as dogs in art it's it is a magnificent little picture but and probably inspired by an etching that and a drawing that that Rembrandt made it was he's kind of doing it in competition but it is a wonderful little little little piece and and you can see how he recycles things an artist did this constantly or here I was looking for this earlier I guess it got misplaced this is a work by the earth early worked by Albert Kuip we just saw the Kuip the type of the the view of Italy that he'd never seen this is one of his earliest pictures this is Orpheus charming the animals and Orpheus of course plays and they are then all the animals are suddenly suddenly meek and very pliant he has wonderful animals he has a camel and he has ostrich and a and uh and an elephant off in the distance but in the foreground he has these two wonderful leopards and these leopards were inspired by a painting that his father had done that's now in Zurich and this leopard is that leopard right there so he was he was working with his father his father probably did not paint these leopards these this painting it I've examined it quite closely it's hangs now in the Boston Museum and and I think he was probably working working from drawings that his father had made because this this this bison over here and this and this goat are both from a series of actions that his father made of various animals that were they were engraved um back in the Middle Ages when I was at Yale i I did I did a dissertation on Peter Tuhoe who is who is a Delft painter and who was best known for his wonderful snug geometric interiors mostly about mostly concerning domestic subjects here are some mother making a box bed with a little child standing in the doorway he has wonderful he has wonderful views to adjacent spaces very persuasive perspective and lovely punkers or illumination like that comes from the back to the foreground and effects of atmosphere and and and light and and the the geometry of this almost reminds you of a kind of a Mondrian it's he was a very talented fellow and I've spent a lot of my life looking after his stuff and glad not to anymore but that though that seems like it's the same it's the same room this is painting in in Karlsruhe and this one is in Amsterdam these are two pictures again that seemed to be the same room it's it's a little room with with mothers and their children this is a mom going to the - to the storage pantry probably to get some beer for her son I was actually recommended in all the the health manuals the period did you particularly if they were teething you gave them beer and this a view to add adjacent space again with with a little platform for for getting closer to the light when you were sewing but this is probably the same room although the perspective is a little different but then it begins to get all kinds of kind of strange here is a picture from 1658 or there abouts of a woman nursing a child and her young daughter feeding the dog in imitation of her nurturance and here is a picture probably about seven years later that's in the Wallace Collection and shows a woman peeling apples this seems like it's the same room except they would have had done some remodeling there this this plaster with with the Cupid on top it seems to be the same but something's happened to the two these these coins on the on the the mantelpiece and the tiles have all been replaced there are no longer diamond-shaped tiles they're square tiles and it's a much more it's much more restrained and classical composition which is is a change in artistic style that happened just about that time and but there are pictures from the same year these two pictures are both both from 1658 to courtyard scenes it shows it shows a passageway with a plaque over it the plaque is from the seat corliss vault cluster which was and the plaque actually still exists in the Delft Museum and it probably was a real place but look at the differences in the space this Arbor has become a ed there's a new wall here there's a step all the bricks have changed and even the view out the door has changed this is a courtyard and this is a canal so there's a lot of free associative changing of these things notwithstanding the fact that they look so naturalistic each independently or here this is an own room in the Town Hall with with Fernan balls painting in it was a trompe l'oeil curtain and this gentleman is actually looking at a picture that's over up the back of our heads it's not a great not a very long room but it's he makes it seem even bigger than it is and it certainly has been manipulated you even can see I always love this little detail you see do you know had a mentee this is a panda mentee you see that dog that dog used to be right there you see the ghost of that dog that dog was in the wrong place so he moved him over and of course the hoax signature motif is the back lighted doorway so he has a backlight at doorway only that particular door has always opened onto a closed hallway so this is completely made-up but it's a real room people must have noticed this and this is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by Ike's by the vanderheiden's and Ike has one of the best vanderheiden's this is his vest ERK ERK which was in its day regarded as the most beautiful protestant church in all of europe it is where Rembrandt was buried it's where Nichols Beckham was buried where Titus Rembrandt's son was married briefly us saskia was buried there but she was turfed out because he wouldn't pay the rent but it is this is the wet Wester care this is the Wester hall which was which was a guard room a guard house and this we even we even know that there was a butcher shop right here and this is the kaisers cross right there so very accurately done a Vanderheiden was one of the most interesting artists of the period one of the most creative and diversified he not only not only did many beautiful cityscapes he's probably along with bear Qaida the the real real pioneer of cityscape painting which was the last of the various specialties of Dutch landscape Busta - - it's a kind of sub subspecies of landscape it's the last a specialty to emerge it really only emerges around 1660 he does two other versions of the Wester Carrick but he most of his life is spent inventing the the the street light and the and the and the the fire hose he he actually became the head of Amsterdam street lighting and he was that he was the thief firemen of all of all of Amsterdam and he manufactured these these these pumping pumping vessels and made it got a lot of money with them he even Illustrated firefighting firefighting manuals and he didn't have to have to paint anything paint make a living he painted purely for his own own pleasure I think so that when cost him Oh demanded she visited him he didn't have anything to sell him can you imagine I tell you any other Amsterdam painter would have had plenty to sell Cosimo de'medici I mean there were 350 registered painters in Amsterdam Amsterdam probably many more that were unregistered that's twice as many painters as there are butchers or bakers in Amsterdam they were working on a very small margin of profit so it these guys would have been would have they would have whipped something up for the clothes you know if he came to their studio but not not Thunder Hyden this looks like Amsterdam this all looks like an area around the Culver trot in those years but but it's probably not answered in first of all because there are monks here and you don't have monks in in in monasteries were were banned in the Protestant Republic and this is actually the Jesuit Church in Dusseldorf and how it's gotten de Amsterdam not quite sure but here it is in some other place this is the Jesuit Church in Dusseldorf but it's now in a different neighborhood again with with Divine's and now it's changed again it has new windows those are so that's clearly the top part of the Jesuit and it has sculpture that didn't have before again we have monks but the most remarkable thing about it it has this that's the cupola of the Town Hall of Amsterdam how did it get appended to to the Jesuit Church in disel Dorf Vanderheiden lived very close to the new von competent town hall which was the largest public public neoclassical building all of northern Europe and he painted at least twice this one a new feat see which which has as strict perspective and actually use this picture used to have a little viewing device on it it has small ring that you had to look through from an exactly the right distance through one eye and occur and that corrects all the distortions of the cupola he also did a corrected one that's now on the Louvre but then he did he used use the cupola all the time here's an imaginary imaginary scene with an with some kind of Italian a Palazzo and in the background there's there's the the cupola of the Town Hall again I mean it's one thing if you do a city that nobody knows like cologne I mean here's Cologne and here's this is this is a Santa Maria in capital line and this is st. pant Allium by domer and Vinc bones but oops no sorry but here he brings them together they're not anywhere near each other in cologne but he it's almost like one of those menus you get you know that have all the highlights of the town on them and they just they just bring them all together for the for the purpose of a kind of medley of architectural styles so this is cologne but done as it were conflated but how would how would it become off if you were doing it with in Holland with people who really knew these cities this is the city of veera and this is quite an accurate depiction of the church in veera here's the Vieira and it has this the stone wall out there then this is Veera and there is this crenelated wall and there's several dwellings next to it but here it flips it it goes backwards here's the crenelated wall and there's in there they're the dwellings only it's backwards again or here Veera has come to Amsterdam this is an Amsterdam canal and there's the temple there's there's the steeple of the Veera Church or here it's come to some imaginary place here's some kind of stone stone fortification here again is a baroque Palace and here's Veera up here so it is hard to understand what what people work wanted wanted from these pictures they obviously wanted a mirror of nature but the mirror justice as we all know mirrors distort things and they were I guess they were very indulgent it was the degree to which you could distort these things so he even did complete Capri Chi this is this is a painting with medieval architecture and with it was a Roman triumphal arch which which seems very unlikely and in Amsterdam or anywhere else but so these were these were were imaginary scenes but it's a great tradition among landscape painters and among Dutch pictures painters generally that they they made these things up this is perhaps one of the most persuasive ones for this this is the circularly sagres who's one of the most interesting interesting print makers and painters of the era that did fantastical landscapes but and did this this one oops oops don't want to do that yet did this one with an escarpment a huge cliff and all these little these little houses gabled houses at the bottom those gabled houses we know from an etching midian were outside of his window so that he actually just plopped hit the the the view from his window into this imaginary landscape with this rugged escarpment and and cliff it is it is a complete fiction and reminds me a little bit of those those wonderful strange pictures that that van Gogh did another Dutchman when he was in the asylum he would paint out his window all the different all the views of that the the enclosed courtyard that was his real confinement um I conclude then with this which is a great picture that John bought for the Getty and which once again reminds us that art the art that the Dutch created happened in the studio here's another another painter correcting a drawing but in this case he has this wonderful beautiful young young female apprentice and there were important important woman artists in the 17th century in Holland and and yet it is it is in this in this special alchemy that happens in the creativity of this of the the studio that these things are contrived convected and and still completely plausible naturalistic ly so thank you very much

Channel: Yale University Art Gallery

Views: 15,878

Rating: 4.8562875 out of 5

Keywords: Yale, University, Art, Gallery, Netherlands (Country)

Id: -niVKRKCV9E

Length: 49min 12sec (2952 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2015