The 17th Century Instagram

In the 1600s in Holland, for the first time, painters didn't set out to inspire, threaten, moralise or remind us of our place in God's universe, but just to show us what life was like then. We got four-hundred-year-old photo albums.

It was the Golden Age of the 'United Provinces' of the young Dutch Republic, recently liberated from rule by Catholic Spain and with a booming economy driven by overseas trade, supplanting Antwerp in Belgium, which had remained under Spanish control. And it was a country similar to our own, to the extent that by the end of the century, we shared a ruler! Their William of Orange became England's William III.

This is how it looked at the outset: 

Netherlands 1609.

In England at the time, wealthier people invested in land. In Southern Europe, paying to tart up churches was the ticket to a comfortable afterlife, although, like crypto, it relied on suspended disbelief for its value. In both cases, aristocratic patrons did! In most cases, artists relied on the patronage of aristocrats. 

In contrast, the painters of the Golden Age largely relied on the market where the newly wealthy and urbanised Dutch were short of agricultural elbow-room and, being austere protestants, deplored religious bling, as you can see from the first of the two pictures below. They saw themselves as pragmatic, hardworking, commercial people, although not always averse to showing off with their dress and domestic décor. 

Grote Kirk Haarlem

Amsterdam

The beneficiaries of their spending included the artists and craftsmen, including refugees from Antwerp. There was a huge demand for paintings, in particular, images of their lives in their new country. They churned out over a million paintings, many of which were quite affordable at the time. A lot has survived. Simon Schama (see below) provides some evidence of pricing, and the more modest creations (some of those he lists depicted bars and brothels!) seem to have been quite affordable for the middling classes.

Some of the names you will know, and even then would have commanded good prices. Rembrandt and Vermeer focused on portraiture. Frans Hals, Jan Steen and Van Ruisdael were masters of scenes. 

 A century later, Joshua Reynolds, then President of the Royal Academy of Arts, paid a visit. He admired the technical quality but opined that 'their merit (of the paintings) relied on representation alone', his point being that they didn't ask many questions of us. He is right. I am suspicious of those who purport to have insight into the (frequently vacuous) 'message' in artworks. That prejudice laid bare, I do accept that there is some moralising and symbolism going on, just that there isn't an overdose of it.  

Rather, my aim here in this post is to highlight how, for the first time, they give those of us interested in history a rich visual insight into the lives lived by ordinary folk hundreds of years ago. Like photography in the last century, they moved on from formally posed and framed shots to more lively and informal images, often of quotidian activity. While many of the scenes were not strictly representational, their description and realism were in stark contrast to the puffed-up individuals and dramatic, mythical and religious scenes preferred by the elites of the Renaissance. 

Renaissance Moralising

This website is primarily configured for phones, and the post is aimed at people interested in the story and the history more than the art itself, so the embedded pics are small. You can usually expand them, but not by much, so I have tried to augment them by adding links to larger online depictions. You can always look for more online, although screen versions seem to vary a lot in tone, so, for those who are determined to pursue authenticity, I have also tried to select examples which can be found in England. (FWIIW, I reckon the Android Art-Droid app is quite good).

Beyond these shores, you can find bigger and better collections in the Louvre (probably looted!) and especially in the more digestibly sized Mauritshuis in The Hague. And if you really must waste time digging out hidden meanings, symbols, and icons, try the 600 pages of Simon Schama's "The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age". 

Let’s take a look at a few. These mostly date from the middle of the century. Just to make the point that they weren't trying to put lipstick on the pig, here is a boy delousing a dog, followed by a woman peeling turnips in what appears to be an adjunct to a well-stocked tavern.

Gerard de Borch  Rijksmuseum Link

David Teniers of Antwerp / Royal Collection Link

For the poorer classes, more money would have meant eating better. The point is made in the two paintings shown below by Jan Steen. In the latter, they appear to be eating oysters, which is ironic given their price today. You can find these in the Cheltenham Art Gallery, illustrating the abundance of Golden Age art that you can find in many smaller, provincial galleries and the grand houses which are open to the public. Link:

The Fat Kitchen

The Thin Kitchen

Below is the even grubbier interior depicted by Adrien Van Ostade in 'The Alchemist'. It is in the National Gallery. The eponymous artisan is buried in his work, while his wife (?) in the background appears to be wiping the baby's bum. Link . 

Here is Gerard der Borch's depiction of a labourer's hovel.  Link.   He is grinding knives, while his wife is picking lice from the girl's hair. Unlike some depictions of the poor, this is not condemnatory in any way. Rather, they are simply getting on with their lives. 

The Stonegrinder's Family

Frans Hals was a refugee from Antwerp who spent most of his life in Haarlem, near Amsterdam,  and often painted people at the other end of the social rainbow, sometimes in a natural setting. The pose seems more lifelike and natural than might have been expected a century earlier. I think that the background was painted beforehand, but presumably it was the family's choice, and you can see that they have dressed for the occasion! This is also in the National Gallery along with several of his portraits, though they are rarely all on display. Link:

Frans Hals 'Family in a Landscape'. c. 1650

Turning from the people to the land they lived in, and in contrast to England, where trees and low hills dominate rural idylls, the Dutch world was flat and watery. This is reflected in landscapes that are also skyscapes punctuated, if at all, by the few tall buildings, usually churches or windmills.   

Philip Konink: Landscape

The two paintings below are by Jacob Van Ruisdael. The first shows watermills and a sluice at Singraven near the German border. It is still there, and while some painters exaggerated the mainly flat topography for effect, in this case, in recent photographs, hillocks can be seen around the modernised mill buildings.

The second pic is a seaside postcard from the past, showing the shoreline at Egmond aan Zee. I can attest from direct experience on a cycling trip that while the land on the lee side of the dunes is now heavily developed, if you look along the seafront, the view hasn't changed much and, by the look of it, the mood of the weather hasn't either. To that extent, their world is as recognisable as ours, and there are no cherubs or centaurs in sight. 

Both pictures can be seen at the National Gallery. Link

Singraven 1650

Egmond aan Zee  1670?

 

The practical Dutch recognised that reclaiming land from the sea was a better bet than extending their country by invading neighbours. In the mid-1600s that effort was underway. The dunes offered some protection against the North Sea's revenge. They extend for most of the 100 miles of coastline between Hook on the Rhine and Den Helder in the north and are now a salient feature of the Dutch landscape. You find lots of paintings of fishermen, but here the figures on the beach seem to be simply enjoying a stroll, just as we might today.  

The pic of Deventer below is by a different Ruisdael (or Ruysdael). If you expand it a bit, you can see how the churches and windmills dominated the flat landscape in the 1600s. It is also in the National Gallery. 

Salomon van Ruysdael  1657

To conclude on Ruisdael and the sea & sky stuff, here is his image of Dam Square in the heart of Amsterdam in the 1660s. It was very much a working port; those canals were there for a reason, and the dominant building is the Waag or Weigh House. 

To walk into a town and nosily peer through the windows, you can do no better than accompany Johannes Vermeer. Here is his view of his home town of Delft, which is still an old and pretty place. The pic here can be expanded, and I believe his house is in it. So let's visit! 

Delft : Vermeer 1660

It looks like a handsome town, which is surprising because a few years earlier, an explosion at a gunpowder store had levelled a lot of it. In the same way as people use social media to record disasters now, the painters got to work.  The picture below is Egbert van der Poel's depiction of the outcome. (No matter what the circumstances, they show us a lot of sky!) It is also in the National Gallery. Link

Egbert Van Der Poel
A View of Delft after the Explosion of 1654

This is Vlamingstraat 40. Vermeer lived a block away. If you find the address on Google Maps, you will see that the alleyway has survived even if the building has not! 

Vermeer : Little Street

Here is Vermeer himself, at work in his "Allegory of Painting". If there is a hidden message here, it is not very well hidden! The fabric wall map of the Netherlands on his wall includes the southern provinces lost to Spain and which are now Belgium. 

Vermeer

& His Maid

You are probably familiar with Vermeer's 'Girl With A Pearl Earring', which is in the Mauritshuis. Here she is, and this might well have been painted in this room. I have included it here, not because it is famous, but to reinforce the point that the settings, the people and their expressions are totally believable. Some think that was his daughter. Others have more fanciful ideas, but whichever, she is drawing you into a world centuries out of time in a way that, IMHO, the equally brilliant portraits by Holbein do not. 

Vermeer : c. 1665

Not long after 

Pieter de Hooch trod a similar path and also lived in Delft for a while. Here is his alley scene painted around 1658, and a scene of a couple of men enjoying a drink and female company. The former is in the National Gallery. Again, his subjects do not appear to be posing. You can believe you are there with them. Link: 

I particularly like this depiction of two kids playing golf, which can be seen at Polesden Lacey in Surrey. 

Pieter de Hooch c.1658

Here are lads playing skittles outside a country Inn. They do all look very clean and well presented by the artists who were not averse to the other side of life. I imagine that many of the Dutch equivalents of our rural taverns were not too wholesome. It is also in the National Gallery.  Link:

Skittle Players

Adriaen Van Der Velde offers us a view of a winter recreation - ice golf! 

Adriaen Van Der Velde 
 Golfers on the Ice Near Haarlem

In the following three pictures, Adriaen Brower shows us that they were oblivious to the dangers of smoking, Jan Steen reminds us that the ladies have always been the victims of unwanted attention, while Rembrandt suggests that he is no stranger to the sight of an inebriated ruckus. 

They could throw a fun party as well. The paintings below are Jan Steen's Peasant's Wedding from 1672, and the second is 'Celebration on Prince's Day'. The Prince was William of Orange.  

I hope all of this has made my point, that the Dutch painters of the 1600s have left us a relatable picture of life at the time, with its comforts, pleasures, pains and sins. This must surely be the earliest concerted attempts to depict life as it is lived in realistic detail. Feel free to argue! 

In the meantime, here is the many himself, looking straight at you. Wrinkled (they admitted the wrinkles!) unprettified, unpretentious, and looking like he might be wondering as much about you and your time as you might about him and his.  

Rembrandt