The Golden Age of Dutch Art by
This sumptuous survey illuminates the extraordinary richness and versatility of the art produced in Holland in the seventeenth century -- the Dutch Golden Age. It is published on the occasion of an ambitious exhibition organized to celebrate the bicentenary of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, and the decorative arts: more than 200 works of art have been carefully selected from the extensive holdings of the Rijksmuseum and from museums and private collections around the world. The paintings and drawings -- portraits, landscapes, still lifes, genre painting, history painting -- include masterpieces by the renowned painters Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael, Steen, and Vermeer. The applied arts are represented by exquisite examples of Delftware, silver by the brothers van Vianen, tapestries by Francois Spiering, and more.
The accompanying text describes in detail the development and accomplishments of Dutch art in the seventeenth century. With its wealth of illustrations and extensive reference section, The Golden Age of Dutch Art provides the most comprehensive overview possible of this seminal period in Western art.
Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting by 
From rembrandt to vermeer: 17th century dutch artists P by
The Grove Dictionary of Art, the award-winning 34-volume set that was launched to critical acclaim in 1996, represents the knowledge of more than 6,800 of the world's leading scholars. It is now the preeminent reference resource for the visual arts. The new GroveART series makes this comprehensive and authoritative art scholarship accessible and affordable to all audiences for the first time. Complete with a multipage color plate section as well as extensive black and white images throughout, each volume in the series will focus on one particularly popular area or period of art history. Broad enough to appeal to the general reader, but thorough enough for the art historian, each book will reflect the depth and excellence of coverage that brought such acclaim to The Grove Dictionary of Art.
One of the most creative and accessible periods of art the world has ever known, the Golden Age is brought to life in an unprecedented series of biographies of the artists active in the Netherlands during the 17th-century. Painters in the Dutch Republic specialized in portraits, domestic genre scenes, still-lives, and landscapes -- metaphors of the tiny new country's immense pride and wealth. This book features biographies on more than 220 artists, from Frans Hals to Vermeer to Rembrandt.
Still Lifes of the Golden Age by 
Rembrandt by
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) has long been considered one of the greatest artists in European history. His paintings have launched imitations and homages, including best-selling novels, a recent TV series, and even a handful of popular films. Now, for the first time, this lovely text by Émile Michel is paired with carefully curated selections from Rembrandt’s portfolio to illuminate the history and work of this celebrated master of light.
Harmensz Van Rijn Rembrandt by
Rembrandt is completely mysterious in his spirit, his character, his life, his work and his method of painting. What we can divine of his essential nature comes through his painting and the trivial or tragic incidents of his unfortunate life; his penchant for ostentatious living forced him to declare bankruptcy. His misfortunes are not entirely explicable, and his oeuvre reflects disturbing notions and contradictory impulses emerging from the depths of his being, like the light and shade of his pictures. In spite of this, nothing perhaps in the history of art gives a more profound impression of unity than his paintings, composed though they are of such different elements, full of complex significations. One feels as if his intellect, that genial, great, free mind, bold and ignorant of all servitude and which led him to the loftiest meditations and the most sublime reveries, derived from the same source as his emotions. From this comes the tragic element he imprinted on everything he painted, irrespective of subject; there was inequality in his work as well as the sublime, which may be seen as the inevitable consequence of such a tumultuous existence. It seems as though this singular, strange, attractive and almost enigmatic personality was slow in developing, or at least in attaining its complete expansion. Rembrandt showed talent and an original vision of the world early, as evidenced in his youthful etchings and his first self-portraits of about 1630. In painting, however, he did not immediately find the method he needed to express the still incomprehensible things he had to say, that audacious, broad and personal method which we admire in the masterpieces of his maturity and old age. In spite of its subtlety, it was adjudged brutal in his day and certainly contributed to alienate his public. From the time of his beginnings and of his successes, however, lighting played a major part in his conception of painting and he made it the principal instrument of his investigations into the arcana of interior life. It already revealed to him the poetry of human physiognomy when he painted The Philosopher in Meditation or the Holy Family, so deliciously absorbed in its modest intimacy, or, for example, in The Angel Raphael leaving Tobias. Soon he asked for something more. The Night Watch marks at once the apotheosis of his reputation. He had a universal curiosity and he lived, meditated, dreamed and painted thrown back on himself. He thought of the great Venetians, borrowing their subjects and making of them an art out of the inner life of profound emotion. Mythological and religious subjects were treated as he treated his portraits. For all that he took from reality and even from the works of others, he transmuted it instantly into his own substance.
Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils by
Rembrandt was the most famous painter of the Dutch Golden Age, and the opportunity to work in his studio attracted young artists for nearly four decades, until the artist's death in 1669. This catalogue explores the workings of Rembrandt's studio in the form of drawings made by the master himself and fifteen of his pupils. Rembrandt and his students would often depict the same subject matter as an exercise and make drawings of the same nude models.
Organized chronologically, Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference is a groundbreaking study that presents more than forty works by Rembrandt and related works by his pupils. It explores the scholarship of recent decades that has brought new and more systematic criteria to bear on determining the authenticity of Rembrandt drawings, and defines the styles of his pupils and followers with ever-greater precision.
This is an essential book for anyone interested in the Dutch Golden Age or the lives and careers of Rembrandt and the artists in his immediate circle.
Rembrandt by
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69) transcends any period or social milieu: he is one of the world's great masters and though his works reflect the confidence of newly independent Holland, his vision extends far beyond these narrow confines. A deeply perceptive artist (his many self-portraits show his continued interest in the study of human nature), he sought to go beyond superficialities, to endow his biblical paintings, historical narratives, genre scenes and portraits with psychological depths hitherto unknown in Dutch painting. Impatient with conventionally stiffly posed group portraits, he produced such masterpieces as The Night Watch, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp and theStaal Meesters, while his studies of Saskia, his wife, and his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels reveal his deeply sensuous, compassionate nature.
Michael Kitson has revised his highly successful book in the light of the most recent scholarship on Rembrandt, making this the ideal survey of the career of a much-loved genius.
Jan Steen by
Jan Steen, player in his own paintings / H. Perry Chapman -- The artist's life / Marten Jan Bok -- Jan Steen, so near and yet so far / Eddy de Jongh -- Steen's comic fictions / Mariët Westermann -- Steen's artistic evolution in the context of Dutch painting / Lyckle de Vries -- The artist's working method / Martin Bijl -- Jan Steen / from Arnold Houbraken's De groote schouburgh-- (1721) ; translated by Michael Hoyle.
Jacob Van Ruisdael and the Perception of Landscape by
Jacob van Ruisdael is one of the greatest of the Dutch landscape artists of the 17th century.
Vermeer by
Set against the dramatic backdrop of the "golden age" of Dutch culture, the story of one of the world's most beloved -- and most elusive -- painters.
In the seventeenth century, industry and commerce thrived in the Dutch city of Delft, as did art and culture. In 1653, the twenty-one-year-old son of an innkeeper, the artist Jan Vermeer, registered as a master painter with the city's Guild. Vermeer married well, had many children, and enjoyed a respectable local reputation as a painter until his death in 1675. But it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that his genius was widely appreciated. Today, Vermeer's thirty-five paintings are regarded as masterpieces.
In Vermeer, Anthony Bailey presents a compelling portrait of Vermeer's life and character, long lost in history. Bailey re-creates the atmosphere of the times, introduces Vermeer's contemporaries, and portrays his domestic life in vibrant detail. Drawing on period documents and his own intense curiosity, Bailey sheds light on the science and artistry behind the glorious, almost mystical, paintings. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Vermeer will stand as the classic work on Vermeer for years to come.
Vermeer by 
