Jan Josephszoon van Goyen was a Dutch landscape painter. The scope of his landscape subjects was very broad as he painted forest landscapes, marine paintings, river landscapes, beach scenes, winter landscapes, cityscapes, architectural views and landscapes with peasants. The list of painters he influenced is much longer. He was an extremely prolific artist who left approximately twelve hundred paintings and more than one thousand drawings.
Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel or copper for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of the world. The advantages of oil for painting images include "greater flexibility, richer and denser color, the use of layers, and a wider range from light to dark". But the process is slower, especially when one layer of paint needs to be allowed to dry before another is applied.
Canvas is an extremely durable plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, shelters, as a support for oil painting and for other items for which sturdiness is required, as well as in such fashion objects as handbags, electronic device cases, and shoes. It is popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame.
Jan Havickszoon Steen was a Dutch Golden Age painter, one of the leading genre painters of the 17th century. His works are known for their psychological insight, sense of humour and abundance of colour.
Nicolaes Maes was a Dutch painter known for his genre scenes, portraits, religious compositions and the occasional still life. A pupil of Rembrandt in Amsterdam, he returned to work in his native city of Dordrecht for 20 years. In the latter part of his career he returned to Amsterdam where he became the leading portrait painter of his time. Maes contributed to the development of genre painting in the Netherlands and was the most prominent portrait painter working in Amsterdam in the final three decades of the 17th century.
Melchior d'Hondecoeter, Dutch animalier painter, was born in Utrecht and died in Amsterdam. After the start of his career, he painted virtually exclusively bird subjects, usually exotic or game, in park-like landscapes. Hondecoeter's paintings featured geese, fieldfares, partridges, pigeons, ducks, northern cardinal, magpies and peacocks, but also African grey crowned cranes, Asian sarus cranes, Indonesian yellow-crested cockatoos, an Indonesian purple-naped lory and grey-headed lovebirds from Madagascar.
The Little Street is a painting by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, executed c. 1657–1658. It is exhibited at the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, and signed, below the window in the lower left-hand corner, "I V MEER".
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a painting in oil on canvas measuring 73.5 by 112 centimetres now in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. It was long thought to be by the leading painter of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. However, following technical examinations in 1996 of the painting hanging in the Brussels museum, that attribution is regarded as very doubtful, and the painting, perhaps painted in the 1560s, is now usually seen as a good early copy by an unknown artist of Bruegel's lost original, perhaps from about 1558. According to the museum: "It is doubtful the execution is by Bruegel the Elder, but the composition can be said with certainty to be his", although recent technical research has re-opened the question.
Adriaen van Utrecht was a Flemish painter known mainly for his sumptuous banquet still lifes, game and fruit still lifes, fruit garlands, market and kitchen scenes and depictions of live poultry in farmyards. His paintings, especially the hunting and game pieces, show the influence of Frans Snyders. The two artists are considered the main inventors of the genre of the pronkstillevens, i.e. still lifes that emphasized abundance by depicting a diversity of objects, fruits, flowers and dead game, often together with living people and animals. Van Utrecht also painted a number of flower still lifes. He was a regular collaborator with leading Antwerp painters who had been pupils or assistants of Peter Paul Rubens, such as Jacob Jordaens, David Teniers the Younger, Erasmus Quellinus II, Gerard Seghers, Theodoor Rombouts, Abraham van Diepenbeeck and Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert.
Genre painting, a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached either individually or collectively, thus distinguishing it from history paintings and portraits. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known person—a member of his family, say—as a model. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have been intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class.
The Feast of Saint Nicholas is an oil-on-canvas painting executed c. 1665–1668 by Dutch master Jan Steen, which is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It measures 82 x 70.5 cm. The picture, painted in the chaotic Jan Steen style, depicts a family at home on December 5, the night celebrated in the Netherlands as the Feast of Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas.
The Hunters in the Snow, also known as The Return of the Hunters, is a 1565 oil-on-wood painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Northern Renaissance work is one of a series of works, five of which still survive, that depict different times of the year. The painting is in the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. This scene is set in the depths of winter during December/January.
Jan Miense Molenaer, was a Dutch Golden Age genre painter whose style was a precursor to Jan Steen's work during Dutch Golden Age painting. He shared a studio with his wife, Judith Leyster, also a genre painter, as well as a portraitist and painter of still-life. Both Molenaer and Leyster may have been pupils of Frans Hals.
Self Portrait is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch artist Rembrandt. Painted in 1652, it is one of more than 40 painted self-portraits by Rembrandt, and was the first he had painted since 1645. In composition it is different from his previous self-portraits, depicting the painter in a direct frontal pose, hands on his hips, and with an air of self-confidence. It was painted the year that his financial difficulties began, and breaks with the sumptuous finery he had worn in previous self-portraits. Art historian Christopher White has called it "one of the most magisterial and sombre of these (late) pictures". It is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
The Dancing Couple is an oil-on-canvas painting that was created by Jan Steen in 1663. It depicts a boisterous party with a dancing couple in the center. This painting is part of the Widener Collection, which currently resides in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The setting of the painting is a kermis, which is a local village fair that several Dutch artworks referenced. Kermises were extremely popular in the Bruegel tradition. The Dancing Couple was one of the few paintings which started a new era in Dutch art. Paintings like these depicts a setting which was inspired by the rural working class of the Dutch people. This was a significant change for Dutch art as these settings highlighted a thriving period in their history. A new perspective was shown which changed the way traditional Dutch art was looked at as they focused more on the realistic rural working lifestyle and values of the Dutch people.
The Lovesick Maiden is a c. 1660 oil-on-canvas genre painting by Jan Steen. It shows a young woman suffering from love-sickness surrounded by her doctor and a maid-servant. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Oyster Eater or Girl Offering Oysters is a small oil-on-panel painting by Jan Steen dating to c.1658–1660. Since 1936, it has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in the Hague. It is a genre painting that demonstrates Steen's intricate style and use of domestic settings. It also shows Steen's use of symbolism with oysters to create a theme of earthly lust.
"As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young", in Dutch, Soo voer gesongen, soo na gepepen, is an oil-on-canvas painting executed c. 1668–1670 by Dutch artist Jan Steen. It is in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The painting is a celebratory holiday scene that depicts three generations of a Dutch family and serves as an allegory about parental examples, vice, and influence. This subject was painted thirteen times by Jan Steen and has also been known as The Cat Family, or Jan Steen's Family. Of the many renditions, the Mauritshuis version is considered to be the exemplar of the series. Its dimensions are 133.7 cm × 162.5 cm.
The Effects of Intemperance is an oil-on-panel painting executed c.1663–1665 by the Dutch artist Jan Steen. It was bought by the National Gallery, London in 1977 and is still in its collection.
A Woman at her Toilet is an oil-on-panel painting by Jan Steen. It was painted in 1663 and is now a part of the Royal Collection, having been acquired by King George IV in 1821. The painting is housed in Buckingham Palace.
