Synopses & Reviews
The appealing genre paintings of great seventeenth-century Dutch artistsand#151;Vermeer, Steen, de Hooch, Dou, and othersand#151;have long enjoyed tremendous popularity. this comprehensive book explores the evolution of genre painting throughout the Dutch Golden Age, beginning in the early 1600's and continuing through the opening years of the next century. Wayne Franits, a well-known scholar of Dutch genre painting, offers a wealth of information about these works as well as about seventeenth-century Dutch culture, its predilections, and its prejudices.
The author approaches genre paintings from a variety of perspectives, examining their reception among contemporary audiences and setting the works in political, cultural, and economic context. The works emerge as distinctly conventional images, Franits shows, as genre artists continually replicated specific styles, motifs, and a surprisingly restricted number of themes over the course of several generations. With hundreds of illustrations and a full representation of major artists and cities where genre painting flourished, this book will delight students, scholars, and general readers alike.
Synopsis
A lavishly illustrated study of the charming genre paintings of Vermeer and his contemporaries
The appealing genre paintings of great seventeenth-century Dutch artists--Vermeer, Steen, de Hooch, Dou, and others--have long enjoyed tremendous popularity. this comprehensive book explores the evolution of genre painting throughout the Dutch Golden Age, beginning in the early 1600's and continuing through the opening years of the next century. Wayne Franits, a well-known scholar of Dutch genre painting, offers a wealth of information about these works as well as about seventeenth-century Dutch culture, its predilections, and its prejudices.
The author approaches genre paintings from a variety of perspectives, examining their reception among contemporary audiences and setting the works in political, cultural, and economic context. The works emerge as distinctly conventional images, Franits shows, as genre artists continually replicated specific styles, motifs, and a surprisingly restricted number of themes over the course of several generations. With hundreds of illustrations and a full representation of major artists and cities where genre painting flourished, this book will delight students, scholars, and general readers alike.
Synopsis
Dutch genre paintings of the period between 1680 and 1750 have historically been cast as uninspired repetitions of art from the mid-seventeenth-century Dutch Golden Age. In
Confronting the Golden Age, Junko Aono reconsiders these oft-dismissed paintings, repositioning them as dynamic works that played an instrumental role in the canonization of the art of the Golden Age.
Drawing on archival documents, sales catalogs, and other texts, Aono closely analyzes a range of genre paintingsand#151;many of them handsomely reproduced in this volume. In the process, she deepens our understanding of these works and reveals how they illuminate the relationships among painters, collectors, and the dominant artistic currents of the time.
About the Author
Wayne Franits is professor of fine arts at Syracuse University. He is the author of several books and many articles and reviews on Dutch art of the Golden Age.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
Confronting the Heritage of the Golden