Dutch Masters From the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Exhibition themes:
The artist's world

The wealth of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings which have come down to us were not made for the higher nobility or for the church – the usual patrons for luxury art works in former times – but rather for sale on the free market; and in seventeenth-century Holland, for the first time, the middle classes bought art on a large scale. The majority of seventeenth-century Dutch painters did not receive regular commissions from public bodies or private citizens. They concentrated instead on a particular genre of painting in order to gain a foothold in the free market, and this made it possible for artists to attain a high level of skill within their chosen field.

Painters were organized into guilds, which were in effect professional organizations in the broad sense of the word. Artists, artisans and house painters all belonged to the same guild, for example. Guild members were more or less assured of a safety net in hard times and some degree of protection against competition from colleagues in other urban centres. Although strict guild regulations normally prevented artists from accepting official commissions from clients outside their own city, exemptions were usually made for exceptional talents, such as the formidable portrait painter Frans Hals (represented in this exhibition). Certain artists, like Rembrandt, even received commissions from foreign collectors.