Today, the artistic director of the Museu Carmen Thyssen Andorra, Guillermo Cervera, dedicates his speech to a completely new artistic style, the Dutch painting of the 17th century, also known as the “golden century”, a consequence and testimony of a period of creative apogee. Through the works of the famous Jan Josephsz Van Goyen, which is part of the exhibition “INFLUENCERS in Art. From Van Goyen to Pop Art“, as well as other important figures of this style, we invite you to immerse yourself in Holland such as Vermeer and Rembrandt have known, four centuries ago.
Characterised by great political, social and economic stability, Holland experienced a period of prosperity in the 17th century, in which artistic creation was encouraged to develop, boosting the already existing art market. As a predominantly Calvinist country, the great painting of history or religion, which was at the forefront in the rest of Europe, was not as popular in Holland, leaving room for the development of other pictorial genres such as portraiture, still life and landscape.
Highly appreciated by the Dutch public, landscape is major genre no longer playing a secondary role in representations but becoming the centre of the scenes. Characterized by a low horizon line and the importance of the sky, Dutch masters such as Van Goyen or Jacob Van Ruisdael, represented a realistic, luminous nature, based on elaborate sketches facing nature, with the aim of making visible the humid atmosphere of these typically Nordic views, which are nowadays called “tonal” art.
Another type of popular Dutch Baroque landscape is the seascape. The maritime or watery environments are popular in paintings not only because they are representative of a country that was strong both commercially and militarily, but also because they illustrate a technical challenge for painters such as Jan Van Capelle and Jan Van de Velde. Between the landscape and the seascapes, these works still allow us to admire the Dutch know-how and mastery, which offers to the viewer the representation of a real and visible world full of spiritual meanings.
