Dutch Realist School of Genre Painting
At Utrecht, Haarlem, Leiden, Amsterdam, Delft, Dordrecht.
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Dutch Realist Genre Painting (c.1600-1700)

Contents

• Origins and History
• New Type of Art For New Patron
• Development of Dutch Realist Art
• Schools of Dutch Realism
• Utrecht
• Haarlem
• Leiden
• Delft
• List of Dutch Realist Painters

Origins and History of Dutch Realism

The extraordinary flourishing of 17th century Dutch painting occurred as a result of several factors. To begin with, there was the 1520 schism in the Church between Catholic Rome and the Protestant religious movement of Northern Europe. This led to the emergence of a new style of Protestant Reformation art - known as "Dutch Realism" - and an abrupt decline in ecclesiastical patronage of large scale religious painting in Protestant countries like Holland.

The Roman Catholic authorities responded with their Baroque Counter Reformation, designed to restore primacy to monumental religious art (and in the process to regain their lost prestige), but political events were in the saddle. The Catholic Spanish Empire began to lose its grip in the Netherlands, whose determination for independence was buttressed by growing trade and prosperity.

The Lacemaker (1669-70)
Louvre, Paris. By Jan Vermeer.

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New Type of Art For New Type of Bourgeois Patron

The upshot, in Holland at any rate, was a new group of customers for a new type of art. The customers were the newly emerging members of the Dutch Protestant middle classes - property owners, factory owners, merchants, master craftsmen and other respectable burghers of affluent cities like Amsterdam, Leiden, Haarlem and Delft.

What they wanted (and got) was small-scale portable artwork of an overtly secular and bourgeois nature which reflected their growing status and reputation.

This included portrait art - featuring both individuals and groups - along with genre-painting, (everyday scenes) still life painting and landscapes depicting their country houses and livestock.

God-fearing they may have been, but if they were paying, they wanted their money's worth. This demand for a new type of easel-art was more than satisfied by painters well used to the painterly tradition of Jan Van Eyck, with its emphasis on high lustre oil painting, precise naturalism and painstaking draughtsmanship.

All this gathered pace from the beginning of the 17th century onwards, in the guise of a new style of art we now know as Dutch Realism, although the style actually flourished for only a few decades between roughly 1648, when Holland became an independent Republic, and 1672 which saw the French invasion of the country and the ensuing collapse of the Dutch economy.

Even so, through the work of artists like Rembrandt and Jan Vermeer, the movement still managed to produce some of the most unforgettable images in the history of art.

The New Patron For Dutch Realist Painters

Who exactly was this new Dutch art patron? Typically, he was a city dweller and a man of affairs. Military service and the complications of growing overseas commerce had sharpened his wits and given him a rare self confidence. He was a patriot but not interested in anything that did not minister to his dignity and comfort. Above all, he was justly proud of his house and home. He displays a curious blend of thrift and lavishness. No costume is too smart or costly for his body, no food or wine too dear for his stomach. He is socially minded and an inveterate joiner of trade and merchant guilds, chambers of rhetoric and charities. He marries prudently and takes a keen pride in the neatness with which his city house is kept. To decorate it he is ready to lavish money on ceramics and pictures, as well the finest cloth for his wife and children. Such a man asks of the painter just one service; portraiture of himself and in a broad sense of his belongings and family. This means first: he wants to be painted himself in all his manly bravery; he is also willing to pay for his portrait in the groups and corporations to which he belongs. Next he wants his women to be portrayed and also his children. He likes the tranquility of his home and welcomes pictures of the rooms in which his women occupy themselves. He cares a great deal for his city and his street and will pay for good painting on these themes. He loves feasting and merriment and will commission portrayals of his own family celebrating by themselves or with friends at an appropriate tavern. He is proud of his kitchen and tableware and so is an excellent client for the still-life painter. In landscape, his taste is limited. He prefers to see pictures of his own country house with or without his cattle. In addition he enjoys studies of the quiet or angry sea and of the fates of boats and ships.

The Development of Dutch Realist Art (Portraiture & Genre Works)

The new Dutch taste in art - principally portraits and genre-painting - changed both the character of patronage and that of genre painting itself. The picture must be the sort to attract the average prosperous person, not too big to fit into a modest house, and must offer possibilities of profitable resale. In short, the economic conditions confronting the painter in Amsterdam in Rembrandt's time were very much those which the painter still faces in New York, London, or Paris. What tended to make a picture salable (in the eyes of Dutch patrons) was fidelity to natural appearances as grasped by the average eye, and overtly fine and careful workmanship. A Rembrandt who only exceptionally met either condition of popularity, inevitably died in poverty.

Fidelity to appearances being required, the problem was to create a style within the limitation. Here there really were no precedents. The big tavern and bordello pictures of Aertsen and Hemessen had been composed along the lines of an Italian and exotic style. The popular narratives and spectacles of Pieter Bruegel the Elder had developed loose laws of their own, which were inapplicable to the intimate and familiar subjects now in vogue. A Dutch style had to be built from the ground up. This was characteristically achieved within the limitations of what the Dutch genre painter habitually saw.

Painting mostly interiors, he saw the human figure, single or in groups, with its curvilinear construction oddly and happily contrasting with the rectangular forms in which a Dutch room abounded. The obvious course for an artist of taste was simply to play up this contrast, making such selections, eliminations and rearrangements as might serve the purposes of the composition. Practically this meant skillful playing with the given architectural contours - quadrilaterals of every conceivable form, as the fundamental rectangles were distorted in perspective - an equal variety of cubical or rhomboidal forms in furniture, window-casings, doorways, and the room itself. While the arrangement of such geometrical forms was primarily in pattern, the same elements were considered as factors in composition in depth. We have room opening upon room, glimpses of indoors from out-of-doors, and vice versa. All this stylistic play had to be conducted with a lighting and colouring which, though generally subtly conventional, must seem absolutely natural.

Within these strict limitations, for about forty years, between 1630 and 1670, the little Dutch masters produced thousands of small paintings whose apparently simple, but really very complicated perfection is the despair of modern artists. One may see the formula already settling the composition of the best corporation groups of Frans Hals and Rembrandt, worked out admirably in simple arrangements by a Gabriel Metsu and Gerard Terborch, and developed with the most elaborate felicity by Jan Vermeer of Delft. Of course, such expression of taste in composition is usually and normally unconscious. But we may be sure when a Pieter de Hooch develops his cubical or rhomboidal elements in depth, or a Vermeer builds up so successfully sophisticated a fretwork as we find in the Music Lesson, and the Love Letter, both artists knew perfectly well what they were about.

See also the architectural paintings of church interiors by Pieter Saenredam (1597-1665) and Emanuel de Witte (1615-92), which take on the appearance of genre paintings, especially in the case of de Witte.

The actual handling of Dutch pictures needs only a word. Except for the use of brown preparations instead of white, and the appearance of the new "dark manner" - the artistic method remains that of the great Gothic pioneers of oil painting. For example, the technical difference between the painting of Hubert van Eyck and that of Realists like Gabriel Metsu, Jan Vermeer or Gerhard Terborch is really very slight. The surface is brought to the finest translucent polish. Upon this are sparingly set a few loaded touches of pigment, which have great value as suggesting texture, and as coruscating points in illumination. From the Van Eycks down, Dutch pictures were mechanically honed to a finish with an agate or similar burnisher, and the few loaded passages then added to relieve the monotony of the shine and give liveliness of effect. In this connection it is interesting to note how quickly the bolder, rougher and optically more effective handling of Frans Hals and his followers was abandoned. In part it merely yielded to the new "dark manner," in greater part to the general conviction of the Dutch patron that a picture which was less lustrous than his own well-kept boots was a rather slovenly affair. Thus the Dutch painter prepared his alluring wares and, on the whole, he flourished. (See also: Greatest Genre Paintings.)

One final point to note, is that - regardless of its name - Dutch Realism incorporated numerous strands of complex symbolism in its paintings, adding narrative and morality to its precise naturalism. It was therefore by no means a purely sentimental or decorative form of art.

Schools of Dutch Realism

Art historians sometimes classify Dutch Realism into a number of differing "schools", including the Utrecht School (established c.1610) and the Delft School (c.1650), as well as others like the Haarlem, Leiden or Amsterdam schools. Even so, one should note that the majority of Dutch artists were neither geographically static, nor stylistically committed to a particular treatment.

The Dutch Realist School of Utrecht

Since the school of Utrecht was early in the field, rather influential and somewhat exotic, we may get it out of the way briefly. Utrecht was and is exceptional in Holland in being Catholic territory. Both in religion and in art she was in close touch with Italy. Utrecht's continuity with the classical tradition of the Renaissance was maintained by a not very significant painter, Cornelis van Poelenberg (1586-1667). He worked with the Italianate Abraham van Blomaert, later passed three years at Rome where he assiduously studied Elsheimer, Raphael and the antique. The result of these studies was tiny landscapes enlivened by groups of nude nymphs or goddesses. These harmlessly idyllic pictures won immediate popularity in many lands. He worked as far as England. His pictures abound in museums, from Madrid to St Petersburg. At bottom their smoothly finished Arcadian designs are of only slight importance. Symptomatically they are instructive as showing the homesickness for antique beauty that persisted in the Roman Catholic outposts of empire.

Gerrit van Honthorst (1590-1656) is a far more substantial figure. He was born in 1590, was studying with the Italianate painter, Blomaert, in 1610, soon thereafter went to Italy, where he stayed for ten years. Caravaggio had just died, but Honthorst carefully studied his pictures, and those of his numerous imitators. Honthorst, adopting the heavy shadows of the tenebrists and their simple constructions, carried the "dark manner" forward in experiments of his own. From his successful handling of night scenes with sensational artificial light he received the nickname, "Gerard of the Nights," Gerardo delle Notti. His Nativity, at Florence, is sufficiently characteristic. His pictures sold readily in Italy and he returned to Utrecht a celebrity. There he continued to paint, on the large scale of the Italian picture, genre subjects and excellent portraits. His pictures had the attraction of novelty and were widely influential. Without the example of Honthorst one can hardly imagine young Rembrandt adopting the "dark manner," and this choice of Rembrandt fixed the character of the greater part of Dutch genre painting.

Honthorst was one of the earlier cosmopolitan painters, he worked far afield, serving no less than five sovereigns - those of Tuscany, Poland, Denmark, Holland and England - and everywhere won praise and money. He died at Utrecht in 1656. His evolutionary importance is great. He had set a fashion which Rembrandt and his best emulators promoted to a style. For details of his life, see: Gerrit van Honthorst: Biography.

But unquestionably, the leading painter of the Utrecht school of Dutch realism was Hendrik Terbrugghen (1588-1629). For details of his life and works, see: Hendrik Terbrugghen: Biography.

The Dutch Realist School of Haarlem

The earliest and best Dutch painters of scenes from lowly and bourgeois life, were in one way or another associated with the school of Haarlem. Artists like Adriaen Brouwer, Adriaen Ostade and Jan Steen are the outstanding names in this class.

Adriaen Brouwer (1605-38), one of the greatest natural talents of 17th century Dutch Realism painting, specialized in scenes of low-life drunkenness. Rubens and Rembrandt were active collectors of his works. For details of his shortlived career, see Adriaen Brouwer: Biography.

Adriaen Van Ostade (1610-85) specialized in genre scenes of peasants at home or in taverns. His key works include: Rustic Concert (1638), A Peasant Courting an Elderly Woman (1653) and An Alchemist (1661). For details, see Adriaen van Ostade: Biography.

Jan Steen (1626-79), the landlord of a tavern, painted boistrous crowded scenes in homes and inns, often containing overt messages about the vices of idleness, inebriation and promiscuity. Examples of his fine art include: A Young Woman Playing the Harpsichord (1659), Skittle Players Outside an Inn (c.1660) and The Christening Feast (1664). Between them they cover, save for its patrician phase, the whole range of Dutch genre painting. For details of his paintings and style of realism, see: Jan Steen: Biography.

Gerard Terborch (1617-81) - another artist influenced by the Haarlem style, was one of the most acclaimed genre and figurative painters of the Dutch school of Realism, painting with a keen eye and great affection for his subjects. His works include: The Message (1658), and A Lady at Her Toilet (1668). For details, see Gerard Terborch: Biography.

David Teniers the Younger (1610-90), one of the most reliable Old Masters of 17th century Holland, was also an early follower of the Haarlem school. For more about his life and works, see David Teniers the Younger: Biography.

The Dutch Realist School of Leiden

The School of Leiden grew inauspiciously out of the strenuous and ugly practice of young Rembrandt as continued by his pupil, Gerard Dou (1613-1675). Such minute modelling with sensational light effects was proper enough to a young talent finding itself, and Rembrandt soon abandoned the method. But Rembrandt's move to Amsterdam about 1630 left his seventeen-year-old pupil with a permanent technical investment which he never changed in any way.

Possibly because Leiden was a university city and a centre of book publishing, her painters seldom dealt with the peasant or the life of the pothouse or tavern. Here they followed the example of the pioneer, Gerard Dou, whose interest was in the solid middle classes. Perhaps his best, or rather his least bad, pictures are the numerous tiny character studies of single figures, busts or half-lengths. In this manner he painted Rembrandt's mother and father, his own portrait, pictures of hermits, philosophers, etc.

Dou prospered, in 1648 was prominent in founding a painters' guild at Leiden, had many pupils, some of whom, like Gabriel Metsu and Frans Mieris, attained prominence. His larger genre pictures were and are popular. Indeed, there is something rather comforting for a tourist herded through a great gallery to stumble across an art style that dots all the i's, crosses all the t's, and requires no great effort to appreciate. Some of the larger pictures, such as the Young Mother, and the Dropsical Woman, have a minor attractiveness because of Dou's evident love of his material and his pride in his workmanship. There is no contemplation behind his pictures, and that is perhaps why they are liked.

Dou transmitted his small and sleek manner to his pupils, but the best of them outgrew it. If one had to pick just one Dutch genre painter, one might do well to choose Gabriel Metsu (1629-67). While his taste and imagination are not of the first rank, he is rarely below a high level of professionalism; his perceptive good humour is unflagging; his curiosity and interest extend to every aspect of domestic life, from the market place and kitchen to the drawing room and music room. Through his pictures one can share the life of a prosperous Dutch household, a tranquilizing vision for many reasons. The reasonableness and pleasantness of domestic life is Metsu's theme, and he illustrates it with the greatest variety and geniality. For details of his life and works, see: Gabriel Metsu: Biography.

The sleek style of Gerard Dou persists, but with a better colour sense, in the work of another of his pupils, Frans van Mieris (1631-81). Mieris is interested only in rich people, their easy way of living, their more or less shoddy aristocracy, their social pleasures, their dissipations. Upon the representation of stuffs, silks, satins, fur borders he spends himself, producing a literalism that is happily exceptional in Dutch artists of his talent. He really concerns himself with surfaces, and prosperous Holland was busily building up a French surface in costume, manners and morals. This surface Frans van Mieris painted excellently - painted it as well as it deserved to be painted. But it is an art of low vitality and of no raciness at all. His numerous richly clad, portly women playing the lute or receiving attention, can be found in public museums everywhere, for Frans van Mieris was popular and prolific.

He was born at Leiden in 1631, admitted to the guild in 1658, and died full of honours in 1681. We perhaps see him at his best in the picture of his own Studio. There is much that is admirable in the painting, but the composition is relaxed. The interest has passed from making a clear and emphatic composition in the Dutch style to producing a general sense of opulence and aristocracy. After all, Frans van Mieris was a fine type of fashionable painter. As much can be said for such contemporaries as Jakob van Ochtervelt, Eglon van der Neer and the Heidelberger, Caspar Netscher.

The full depth of the decadence is not reached till the next generation and the last decades of the century, when we find in Frans van Mieris' son, Willem, and in Adriaen van der Werff nothing left but a disagreeably oily and slippery technique applied indiscriminately to the clothed and unclothed female who, with a fine impartiality, in either condition is made equally insignificant. Such accomplished pupils of Rembrandt as Ferdinand Bol and Nicolas Maes show the same deterioration in their later portraiture. It loses strength and character, affects a borrowed Van Dyck-ish elegance.

The Dutch Realist School of Delft

Delft, perhaps most exquisitely neat and attractive of all Dutch cities, developed a great master in Jan Vermeer, and in Pieter de Hooch a considerable talent, but never built up a consistent school. Since most of her painters followed the "dark manner" of Rembrandt, they may be appropriately considered at this place. In Michiel Jansz Mierevelt (1567-1641), Delft had an excellent portraitist who worked rather in the old Cosmopolitan Style. In Holland and England he painted many celebrities with fidelity and a quiet distinction. Through him we see today such heroes of the liberation as William the Silent and John of Barnevelt. But Mierevelt, who was much away from Delft, had little to teach an aspiring young painter who was growing up in the 1640s. Such painters as Carel Fabritius and Leonard Bramer instinctively turned to the new marvel of Rembrandt at the moment of the Night Watch.

Both Fabritius and Bramer may have had some part in the training of Vermeer, though we have no sure evidence that such is the case. Carel Fabritius (1624-1654) painted a few very sensitive portraits in the style of Rembrandt towards 1645. Notable among them is the bust of an eager and also somewhat melancholy young man, which may well be a self-portrait. He also produced an exquisite painting of a Finch on its House, signed and dated 1654. Out of so slight a motive, Carel Fabritius made an unforgettable masterpiece, simply by recording the play of light on the wall, the textures and tints of the plumage of the tiny bird, its gay and confident bearing.

Any long contact between Carel Fabritius and Vermeer is improbable, for Fabritius was killed in a powder explosion in 1654, when Vermeer was only twenty-two years old. The more or less accepted list of Fabritius' paintings rests less on signatures or documents than on stylistic attributions, and is far from certain. We gain a sense of an exquisite gift, without being sure of its concrete expressions.

Leonard Bramer (1596-1667) is at least a substantial figure. He was trained in Italy, came under the influence of Elsheimer's idylism, was repeatedly headman of the painters' guild of Delft up to 1665, at a time when Vermeer was probably pursuing his studies. Bramer was a man of considerable culture, and if we need suppose an intermediary to explain Vermeer's transient Italianism, Bramer well serves the purpose. As for Bramer's pictures, they show, with the exception of a few early Caravaggian pieces, no Italian influence, but are derived from the fantastic and theatrical vein of Rembrandt in the early 1640s. They employ his coruscating light and borrow something of his magic. There is nothing of this ambiguous appeal in Vermeer at any time.

Bramer was born at Delft in 1596. From his eighteenth year he studied for several years in France and Italy. At Rome, Caravaggio's tenebrism was a novelty, and Bramer yielded temporarily to its spell. He returned to Delft in 1625 and four years later joined the guild. Thus he was a finished painter before Rembrandt had developed his personal style. However, Bramer carefully studied Rembrandt's paintings of the late 1630s and 1640s and from them drew his developed style. This he did with more ability and originality than most of Rembrandt's direct pupils. There is glamour and romance, perhaps too insistently, in such Rembrandtesque Bramers as Salaman and the Queen of Sheba; Simeon in the Temple; the Presentatian in the Temple; the Descent from the Cross. From the evolutionary point of view, Bramer shares with Carel Fabritius the credit of introducing Rembrandt's style in Delft.

Unrecognized in his lifetime, the Delft artist Jan Vermeer (1632-75) is considered the leader of the Delft School and the greatest of all Dutch genre-painters. Although only 35 of his pictures are known, they include masterpieces like: Soldier and a Laughing Girl (c.1658, Frick Collection), The Milkmaid (c.1658, Rijksmuseum), The Little Street (c.1657, Rijksmuseum), Young Woman with a Water Jug/Pitcher (c.1662, Metropolitan Museum NY), Woman Holding a Balance (1662-3, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC), Woman with a Pearl Necklace (c.1662, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemaldegalerie, Berlin), The Music Lesson (Lady and Gentleman at the Virginals) (c.1665, British Royal Art Collection), The Concert (c.1665, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston PA - Stolen), Girl with a Pearl Earring (c.1665, Mauritshuis), The Art of Painting (c.1666, Kunsthistorisches Museum), The Lacemaker (c.1669, Louvre) and Girl with a Red Hat (c.1666, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC). Despite his prodigious talents, Vermeer died in debt at the age of 42. He remained in obscurity until his 'rediscovery' in the 19th century. Jan Vermeer: Biography.

The Delft genre-artist Pieter de Hooch (1629-83) began with scenes of peasants and soldiers, progressed to sunlit courtyards and interiors of the middle class and ended by depicting homes of the haut-bourgeoisie. For details, see: Pieter de Hooch: Biography.

Other Dutch Genre-Painters

Nicolaes Maes (1634-93) from Dordrecht, was known for his early depictions of 'below-stairs' servant life, as well as sleeping women and kitchen utensils. Famous Dutch animalier artists (painters of animals) include the great still life painter Frans Snyders (1579-1657), as well as Paulus Potter (1625-54) from Amsterdam who was noted for his pictures of cows, horses and sheep, as well as his vanitas still lifes. An example of his work is The Young Bull (1647).

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-69)

Paradoxically, Rembrandt - the most famous of all Dutch painters - was not a typical exponent of Dutch Realism, for the simple reason that his creativity could not be contained within the conventions of Dutch taste, a situation best exemplified by his extraordinary group portrait The Night Watch. Instead he was both a grand manner artist with a passion for portraying dramatic moments from Biblical history, and an acute portraitist whose stunningly honest portraits and self-portraits capture the complete range of human emotion. For the full story, see: Rembrandt: Biography.

List of Dutch Realist Painters

Here is a chronological list of major artists associated with Dutch Realism of the 17th century, classified according to their principal type of painting.

Genre Painting & Portraits

Frans Hals (1581-1666)
First Dutch Realist portraitist, based in Haarlem.
Hendrik Terbrugghen (1588-1629)
Leading painter of the Utrecht school.
Gerrit van Honthorst (1590-1656)
Utrecht Italianate portrait & genre painter, strongly influenced by Caravaggio.
Leonaert Bramer (1596-1667)
Rembrandt-inspired Delft artist.
Adriaen Brouwer (1605-38)
Haarlem artist noted for his tavern genre-pictures.
Rembrandt (1606-69)
Unique style of portraiture, self portraits, figurative paintings.
Adriaen van Ostade (1610-85)
Peasant scene artist, based in Haarlem.
David Teniers the Younger (1610-90)
Peasant, guardroom scenes. Practised in Antwerp, Rome, Brussels.
Gerrit Dou (1613-75)
Rembrandt's first pupil, based in Leiden.
Govaert Flinck (1615-60)
Pupil of Rembrandt, based in Amsterdam.
Ferdinand Bol (1616-80)
Pupil of Rembrandt, based in Amsterdam.
Gerard Terborch (1617-81)
Amsterdam, Haarlem
Carel Fabritius (1622-54)
Best pupil of Rembrandt, based in Amsterdam & Delft.
Jan Steen (1626-79)
Famous for moralising tavern scenes.
Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-78)
Genre painter noted for trompe l'oeil interiors with deep linear perspective.
Pieter de Hooch (1629-83)
One of the great genre painters, based in Delft.
Gabriel Metsu (1629-67)
Famous for intimate small-scale genre scenes, based in Amsterdam
Jan Vermeer (1632-75)
Greatest of all Dutch Realist genre-painters. Leader of Delft school.
Nicolaes Maes (1634-93)
Noted for his early genre paintings, based in Dordrecht.

Still Life

Frans Snyders (1579-1657)
Flemish still life painter, based in Antwerp.
Willem Claesz Heda (1594-1680)
Specialist in still life vanitas painting, from the Haarlem school.
Pieter Claesz (1597-1660)
Leading painter of breakfast still lifes (ontbijtjes).
Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606-84)
Famous still life painter, member of Utrecht school of Dutch Realism.
Harmen van Steenwyck (1612-56)
Leading exponent of vanitas painting (still life with moral message).
Willem Kalf (1619-93)
Amsterdam still life painter, famous for his pronkstilleven/vanitas paintings.
Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750)
Amsterdam flower painter, arguably the greatest of the Late Baroque era.

Landscapes

Hendrik Avercamp (1585-1634)
Noted for his winter scenes, based in Amsterdam.
Cornelis van Poelenberg (1586-1667)
Utrecht painter, noted for his Arcadian landscapes.
Esaias van de Velde (1591-1630)
One of founders of Dutch Realist landscapes, based in Haarlem.
Jan van Goyen (1596-1656)
Prolific landscape artist, based in Leiden.
Salomon van Ruysdael (1600-70)
Noted for his typical Dutch views and riverscapes, based in Haarlem.
Philips Koninck (1619-88)
Noted for large-size panoramic views, based in Rotterdam & Amsterdam.
Aelbert Cuyp (1620-91)
One of the greatest Dutch landscape painters, based in Dordrecht.
Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-82)
Main Dutch landscape artist of the later 17th century, based in Amsterdam.
Meindert Hobbema (1638-1709)
Last of the great Dutch Realist landscapists.

Dutch Realist Artists Specialising in Other Genres

Pieter Jansz Saenredam (1597-1665)
Architectural painter, based in Haarlem.
Paulus Potter (1625-54)
Foremost painter of cows, other animals, based in Amsterdam.
Willem van de Velde (1633-1707)
Marine painter, based in Leiden.

For more painters of the Dutch Golden Age, see: Dutch Realist Artists.

• For more about the different types of painting (portraits, landscapes, still-lifes etc) see: Painting Genres.
• For more about the evolution of painting and sculpture, see: History of Art Timeline.
• For more about the Golden Age of Dutch Realist painting, see: Homepage.

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