Ships from the Dutch Golden Age at the National Gallery of Art

Willem Van De Velde the Younger, 1633-1707, The Dutch Fleet Assembling Before the Four Days' Battle of 11-14 June 1666, 1670, on loan from Moveo Art Collection. This depicts the Dutch ships, the Liefde (Love) on the left and the Gouden Leeuwen (Golden Lions) on the right, as they sailed on the North Sea to wage war on the British during the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665-1667). Although the Liefde sank during the engagement, the Dutch won the battle, the longest and largest ship fight between the two nations.

 

Above is one of the 17th century ship models in the exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. This model is on loan from the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. The artist is unknown. Iceboards attached to the sides helped stabilize the ship, especially in shallower waters, indicating this yacht was intended to stay closer to shore rather than venturing out to higher seas, according to the label copy/Photo by Patricia Leslie
 
Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age at the National Gallery of Art came down last Sunday,  but here, you may read about it and see some of the 50 odd pieces in the exhibition which included ship models, paintings, prints, and drawings portrayed by artists from the 17th century and the Dutch Golden Age.

Then the Dutch stood at their height of realm and rule, the most prosperous nation in Europe, emboldened by their mighty seas and waterways which were used for commerce, battles, and pleasure,  and drawn by their artists.

Breaking from religious themes and styles, Dutch painters drew subjects from everyday scenes, people, landscapes, animals, flowers, still lifes, historical events, ships, and water. Rembrandt van Rijn was represented by six of his etchings and drawings.

Adam Van Breen, 1585-1640, Skating on the Frozen Amstel River, 1611, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Waterways were not only used for commerce but for pleasure, too. See the dancers on the ice shaking a leg after, perhaps, imbibing in some Amstel Light beer. At the bottom near the center to the right of the dignitary in red, is a lad carrying a stick over his shoulder to play kolf, a combination of golf and hockey. His red and black shirt identifies him as an orphan.

Hendrick Avercamp, 1585-1634, A Scene on the Ice, c. 1625. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Here you can see couples in love, couples, maybe out of love, a playful dog, a horse-drawn sleigh, and children playing the precursor of hockey, kolf.

Rembrandt van Rijn, 1606-1669, View over the Amstel from the Rampart, c. 1646-1650, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Rembrandt van Rijn, 1606-1669, The Bathers, 1651, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Abraham Blooteling, 1640-1690, Admiral Egbert Meesz Kortenaer, c. 1665. One of the most interesting in the show. The admiral lost his lower right arm and left eye in the First Anglo-Dutch war in 1652 in the Battle of Dungeness. He continued to serve his nation until his death in 1665 at the Battle of Lowestoft when the Dutch were defeated near the coast of Suffolk, England. Look at the confidence in his eyes and his strong grasp of the telescope or baton (what is it?) in his left hand, a force demanding reckoning! He is buried at Rotterdam at the memorial (pictured below) which is engraved with a poem by Gerard Brandt.

By Josh at nl.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org

The Hero of the Maas, bereft of eye 
 and his right hand
Yet of the Wheel the Eye, Fist of 
the Fatherland 
KORTENAER the Great, the terror 
of foe's fleets
the forcer of the Sound by this grave 
his country greets

Jan van Goyen, 1596-1656, Ice Scene near a Wooden Observation Tower, 1646, National Gallery of Art, Washington. See the horse-drawn sleigh on the ice on the left and men pushing carts. The tower provided a mark in the horizon to help sailors navigate waterways. During bad weather and at dusk, the tower was a lighthouse.  The time period is what is known as the "Little Ice Age."

Hendrick Cornelis Vroom, 1566-1640, A Fleet at Sea, c. 1614, private collection. The label copy said Vroom was the first Dutch painter to specialize in seascapes. He was a frequent sailor who survived a shipwreck and applied his experiences and observations to the canvas.

Cornelius Verbeeck, 1591-1637. A Naval Encounter between Dutch and Spanish Warships, c. 1618-1620, National Gallery of Art, Washington. For ten years these two works led separate lives  until technical analysis revealed they belonged together, according to label copy. A Spanish ship on the left fires cannons on the Dutch on the right. The Dutch ships were usually smaller and more easily navigated, especially by their skilled and experienced crew, testimony which can be seen below the Dutch vessel where a destroyed Spanish vessel is battered by waves.

Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age at the National Gallery of Art, Washington/Photo by Patricia Leslie

The curator for the exhibition was Alexandra Libby, the assistant curator of northern Baroque paintings at the National Gallery.

What and when: The National Gallery of Art is open 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sunday.

Where: The National Gallery of Art, between Third and Ninth streets at Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. On the Mall.

Admission charge: It's always free at the National Gallery of Art.

Metro stations for the National Gallery of Art:
Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives or L'Enfant Plaza

For more information: 202-737-4215
 
patricialesli@gmail.com

The Dutch have extended their stay at the National Gallery of Art

Govert Flinck, Dutch (1615 – 1660), The Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen, 1642, oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, loaned from the City of Amsterdam

Bartholomeus van der Helst, Dutch (1613 – 1670), The Governors of the Kloveniersdoelen, 1655
oil on canvas, Amsterdam Museum


Update:  The Dutch will stay through August 31, 2017!  Thank you, Dutch!

Earlier I had written:  It is with great sadness that I report that the handsome men pictured above have left the West Building at the National Gallery of Art where they have been in residence for the last five years.  (Now, you can still see them and swoon!)

As they moved from gallery to gallery, place to place, sometimes on opposite walls, sometimes together during their reign, I followed them, a groupie of 17th century Dutch Golden Age men!

They, like magnets to see their confidence, their bravura, their looks of invitation (the youngers), or, at least, that's the way I liked to interpret their expressions, all the while noting their similarities and differences and finding something new each time I dropped in for a visit.  

They welcomed me!  

They liked me! What fun it all was.  And yet, quoting Chaucer here, all good things must come to an end [of a relationship].

What can I tell you about these beguiling men? 

They were among Amsterdam's elite, all but one of them members at various times of the city council, who were also "governors" of the headquarters of the Kloveniers, one of city's three militia companies. Three were burgomasters (mayors).  Several were related by "strategic marriages."  

In the painting on the bottom is a woman on the right believed to be Geertruyd Nachtglas, who was the administrator of the Kloveniersdoelen, the militia's building, which is the setting for both pieces.  Ms. Nachtglas was appointed to her position after the death of her father (in the first painting, holding the drinking horn) and who, I believe, held the position prior to his daughter.

The works were painted 13 years apart by two classical Dutch artists: Govert Flinck, (1615 – 1660), and Bartholomeus van der Helst, (1613 – 1670). 

Both Flinck and van der Helst were "two of the most renowned portraitists of their time," says the handsome color brochure. Flinck trained under Rembrandt in the early 1630s and like his teacher, "specialized in both history paintings and fashionable portraiture."

To stand and study these works was always of immense pleasure during each visit, and subsequent trips to their residencies always revealed new "finds."

Look at their grandeur!  The majesty.  I tell you clothes make the man.  I still prefer a dressed-up man (tie) to the casual appearances most sport nowadays like he is on a perpetual trip to a soccer match.

But where was I?  

In the first, the painting on top, Flinck captures the more serious tones, expressions, and clothing of his gentlemen, including ghostly complexions of the dead. Blood flows more rapidly in the youngers below, illustrated by their ruddy flesh tones.

In the top, the men looking at the viewer seem sad, wistful, expressions absent from the second.  They seem distracted and weary.  Life is a long journey!  They exude the baggage they carry in their stern faces.  "Now, it's your turn."

The younger men seem to be having a better time, and look!  On the right are women. Clothing styles have changed.

Note the importance of the hands in both works, and how the artists emphasized them with light. See their gestures and the central figures in each, how each turns around to address the viewer, the man in the second who seems to say: "What are you doing here?  You want to join us?  You have news?" 

What does the pointing to the viewer's right mean?

These are but two of 135 known Dutch militia portraits created by artists in the Netherlands' Golden Age during the 16th and 17th centuries. The National Gallery's Henrietta de Bruyn Kops, who wrote the brochure, said at the exhibition's opening, that the men were "movers and shakers" of the Dutch Republic, "really big men."

Her Excellency Renee Jones-Bos, then the ambassador of the Netherlands to the U.S., who also spoke at the opening, called the "friendship between the two countries, enormous," which, no doubt, helped bring about their loan to the U.S.  (Dear Netherlands, we are exceedingly grateful!)

Which leads me to wonder that, with warmer relations between the leaders of Russia and the U.S., perhaps we can pursue loans from the Hermitage and vice-versa.  Maybe? 

What does this all mean?  Whatever you want it to mean, including the words of English poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674) writing in 1648 about the same time as the paintings "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"  which has its basis in Ausonius or Virgil, and Horace (my high school English teacher would be so proud):

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he's a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And, while ye may, go marry:

For having lost but once your prime,

You may forever tarry.

You see what art can do!

Gather Ye rosebuds While Ye May, by John William Waterhouse, (1909)/Wikipedia.



patricialesli@gmail.com

Last weekend for Rembrandt and friends at the National Gallery of Art

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Rape of Ganymede, 1635, oil on canvas, Gemaldegalerie, Dresden

 Rembrandt van Rijn, The Rape of Ganymede, 1635, pen and brown ink, brown wash on paper, Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Washington art aficionados who have not seen the exhibition, Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt, or who want to go again, have through Monday to view Dutch Golden Age drawings and paintings by 54 artists at the National Gallery of Art before the presentation moves to the Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection in Paris.

The display of 91 drawings and 27 paintings tells the "stories behind the paintings," said curator Arthur Wheelock at the show's opening. Like an author's or writer's first draft, these are the basis of the artists' last drafts. Said Mr. Wheeler: "The artistic process unfolds." Rather than painting "on site," many put colors and ink to paper in studios after they observed and sketched spectacular scenery, people, and interiors.

Seeing the "befores" and "afters" firsthand provides insight on the ways the artists worked, their methods and practices, what they kept, what they discarded.

Jan van Goyen made sketches of his trips out to the country which later became his landscapes; Pieter Jansz Saenredam used a compass, rulers, and a straightedge to make exquisitely detailed sketches of church interiors. Pieter Molijn completed Landscape with Open Gate, 1630-1635, in the studio after a visit to the Dutch shore where he drew the scene.

The drawing and painting above of Rembrandt's The Rape of Ganymede, both 1635, are a rare instance of an almost complete drawing used by the artist for his finished work.  The catalog notes the final version contained the mother figure only but outlines of both parents at the bottom in the drawing shows the father aiming a weapon at the eagle. In the oil, the child urinates, in shock.  Most artists drew Ganymede as a youth, and not as a baby. Mr. Wheeler said Rembrandt based it on the artist's observation of "a screaming kid being picked up by his parents."

Arthur Wheelock, curator of northern baroque paintings, National Gallery of Art, one of the curators of the show and an author of the catalog, talks about the National Gallery's newly acquired A Woman Feeding a Parrot, with a Page (below), 1666 by Caspar Netscher, the purchase made possible by the Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, the first at the National Gallery by Netscher, the first time on view in the U.S., the first time it's hung with its "ricordo" (below)/Photo, Patricia Leslie

A Woman Feeding a Parrot, with a Page (above and below) by Caspar Netscher became part of Hermann Goering's collection after the Germans confiscated it in 1942 during World War II from the Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Belgium where the owners had stored it for safekeeping.  When the war ended, the painting was purchased by a private collector and eventually was returned only two years ago to the heirs of the original owners. Then it sold at Christie's for $5.093 million to a London art dealer who sold it to the National Gallery this year.

Caspar Netscher, A Woman Feeding a Parrot, with a Page, 1666, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Caspar Netscher, Young Woman With a Parrot, 1666, the British Museum, London. The label says that rather than a study, this is likely a sketch or "ricordo" Netscher drew to hang in his studio as a reminder of the finished product after it sold. Through collaboration and rather than the usual timing of nine months to achieve such a loan, in a flash of a week, the British Museum rushed the drawing to Washington for the exhibition, marking the first time the two works have hung together.

Michiel van Musscher, An Artist in His Studio with His Drawings, mid-1660s, oil on panel, Liechtenstein, The Princely Collections, Vaduz-Vienna.

Leendert van der Cooghen, Study of a Nude Man, Seated Three-Quarters Length on a Cushion, n.d., black chalk on paper, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris.

A member of a wealthy family, Leendert van der Cooghen did not need art to survive financially.  Consequently, only three of his paintings, but several drawings and etchings, survive.  He probably painted from life, from models in studios.

Aelbert Cuyp, Landscape with Herdsmen, c. 1650-1652, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Corcoran Collection

Aelbert Cuyp's landscape (above) was a scene from the Rhine River Valley populated with animals and humans he drew from other sources.

His Excellency Henne Schuwer, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, welcomes members of the press to Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt. Joining him in the foreground to welcome guests is Girl with Water Lilies by Herbert Adams, bronze, 1928, gift of the HRH Foundation in memory of Helen Ruth Henderson/Photo, Patricia Leslie

A color catalog of more than 300 pages with essays, history, biographies, bibliographies, and more is available. The National Gallery of Art and the Fondation Custodia, Frits Lugt Collection, Paris organized the exhibition.

What: Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt

When: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sunday. The exhibition closes January 2, 2017.  The National Gallery of Art is closed on New Year's Day. 

Where: West Building, the National Gallery of Art, between Third and Ninth streets at Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. On the Mall.

Admission charge: Always free

Metro stations for the National Gallery of Art:
Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives, or L'Enfant Plaza

For more information: 202-737-4215

patricialesli@gmail.com