Room 25 expands on the theme of Room 28; displaying prime examples of what were newly independent artistic genres, including landscape, still life, portraiture and scenes of 17th-century Dutch domestic life.
Room 25
A New Art For A New Nation (2)
Paintings in this room
In the seventeenth century the Little Ice Age settled over Northern Europe. Rivers and canals in Holland froze over and people took to the ice for work, leisure – and accidents. Hendrik Avercamp, just starting out as an artist, took to it too. His life’s work became the depiction of winter scenes...
We are in a dingy tavern with a small gathering of drinkers and smokers squatting on low wooden stools and chairs. The focus of their attention – and ours – is the tussle going on between a man and a young woman on the left-hand side of the painting.The depiction is unusually lewd. The man, his t...
Ter Brugghen focusses on a lute player lost in his art, drawing us close to the man by using strong, dramatic lighting to highlight the folds under his eyes, the long shadows of his fingers and his shiny red nose – so red that ter Brugghen may have been exaggerating for comic effect. Perhaps he w...
Two men, one old, one young, hands raised and fingers pointing, seem to be arguing. We are being presented with a key moment in a story, but since the picture has no surviving title we have to make an educated guess as to what it is.The most likely candidate is the account in the Old Testament of...
We seem to have crept to within touching distance of this small group of musicians who turn towards us with surprise. The highly focused light source creates sharp highlights, intense shadows and a sense both of drama and intimacy. Dramatic lighting effects like this are now common, but in the 16...
Holding a quill in his right hand, the man in this portrait has turned his head towards us, creating the feeling that we have just interrupted his work. He gives us a questioning look, as if he is waiting for an explanation for the interruption. The sitter is Jean de la Chambre (1605/6–1668), a d...
A life-size figure stands before us, holding a skull in one hand and gesticulating with the other. Although he faces us frontally he looks to his left, and it is the gesture of his right hand that focuses us: his fingers seem to project out from the canvas into our space.This is one of Hals’s mos...
This still-life painting – one of the most popular genres in seventeenth-century Holland – celebrates the challenges of depicting the play of light on different surfaces and textures. Look at the subtle highlights on the weave of the Turkish carpet, the sheen and lustre on silver and glass, the...
'He who plays with cats gets scratched’ – in other words, he who looks for trouble will get it. This is an old Dutch motto that appears to be a possible source for Judith Leyster’s cheerful picture, and it’s been suggested that the painting was intended as both delightful entertainment and a warn...
Here Jan Jansz. Treck has risen to the challenge of evoking the lustre of and distorted reflections in silver, pewter, glass, porcelain and eggshells as well as the complex shadows in a crumpled linen cloth. It was a highly valued skill in Dutch still-life painting and this rather beautiful examp...
Jan Jansz. Treck’s complex but sombre picture is a vanitas, a type of still life that holds a moral message. A still life often presents costly objects in an elegant composition to be admired and discussed by the viewer, like the musical instruments, lacquer box, Rhenish jug and scarf made with g...