2. ijksmuseum R Selected paintings from the Golden Age of Dutch Art - Amsterdam, Netherlands

3. Geertgen Tot Sint Jans – The Tree of Jesse

4. Bueckelaer - Life of plenty

5. Ketel - Civil duties of its citizen

6. Avercamp - Frozen landscape packed with details.

7. Avercamp - Close up view (left)

8. Avercamp - Close up view (right)

9. Dijck – A good life. Dutch popularised Still Life paintings.

10. Honthorst – The Merry Fiddler

11. Frans Hals – The master of portraits.

12. Frans Hals - Civil Guards (Militia), grown men playing soldiers.

13. Heda - Still Life, reward of success

14. Hans Boulenger – Tulips in a vase Hans Boulenger – Tulips in a Vase

15. Helst - Civil Guards. It could be a drinking session.

16. Paulus Potter – He liked painting cattles even more.

17. Jan Asselyn – A propaganda painting, showing the swan (Dutch), defending its nest against the dog (English).

18. Jan Vermeer – Comfortable house for the middle class.

19. Jan Vermeer – The perfection of daily living.

20. Jan Vermeer – A love letter from a distant place ?

21. Jan Steen – A painter of humorous scenes of the common people.

22. Jan Steen – Another warm hearted animated scene.

23. Willem Velde the Younger Willem van de Velde, (Younger) – The ship behind the wealth.

24. Jacob Ruisdael – Maybe the greatest Dutch landscape painter.

25. Jacob Ruisdael – A close-up look.

26. Jacob Ruisdael – Perhaps his best known landscape. Painting.

27. Rembrandt – Landscape painting in a flat country.

28. Rembrandt – Call to duty.

29. Rembrandt – Close-up of the Night Watch.

30. Rembradt – Not a very flattering self image.

31. Rembrandt – An usual colourful painting in his old age.

32. Pieter Hooch – The Pantry

33. Gabriel Metsu – The Sick Child

34. 17th Century Dutch Society Click to advance to next slide. The 17th century Dutch society enjoyed unprecedented wealth. Its prosperity was based on her marine trade. Her supremacy in trading were derived from two advantages. The first was the technology to construct a faster and lighter ship for its trade. The second was her ability to pool together the wealth of her citizen to provide a large source risk capital for commerce (capitalism). Even in our casual glance on the history of her paintings on the period shows how these wealth were permeated into the creation of the middle class. (On the next page you can see a rising popularity of small format paintings, which was an indication that the ‘common’ citizen were wealthy enough to buy paintings for their homes.) The ‘dad’s army’, in which ordinary citizen served, to carry out their civic duty is a reflection of their politics. Dutch was governed by a republic (with no monarch). Several well known large-scale paintings of these civic guards are in the collection at the Rijksmuseum, including one by Frans Hals and one by Rembrandt. One striking feature of these paintings is the lacking of religious subject matters. Why do you think it is the case?

36. Music - Theme from Dances with Wolves. The End