Dutch Masters From the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Exhibition themes: Introduction

In the sixteenth century, the Northern Netherlands was part of the Spanish Empire. The vast majority of people of that area were Protestant, their faith bringing them in open conflict with their Catholic Spanish rulers. In 1581, seven rebellious provinces in the Netherlands – Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Holland, Overijssel, Utrecht and Zeeland – declared that they no longer recognized Philip II as their ruler and staged an open revolt. Prince William I of Orange (1533–1584) had been appointed administrator of the provinces of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht; however, early on in the war he became the undisputed leader of the Northern rebellion. William was assassinated in 1584 and efforts to find a head of state to succeed him failed. In 1588 the provinces decided that they had no need for a successor and founded an independent republic, known as the Seven United Provinces.

During much of the seventeenth century, the provinces governed independently, only occasionally selecting a stadholder (head of state) to act for all in matters of foreign policy and military matters. Economic and social power was largely in the hands of the growing middle and merchant classes in each of the provinces.

Dutch painters depicted daily life in the Republic in such strong and vivid terms that even today our image of the country, its customs and the social life of its inhabitants bears the indelible hallmark of their particular way of seeing. In the plain but neat Dutch interiors, we follow servant girls going about their daily duties, a mother attending to her child, an artisan totally absorbed in his craft. Elsewhere we see wealthy Dutch merchants posing in front of their country estates, far from the overcrowded cities. Their cultivated way of life was in stark contrast to other familiar scenes from this era, those of excessive drinking and feasting folk in peasant taverns. Not only the governor of the VOC (the Dutch East India Company) and important politicians and members of the nobility, but also the market woman selling her wares, the tailor, and the housewife were all portrayed as individuals by the painters of the Golden Age.