Oklahoma City Museum of Art opens special exhibit “The Dutch Italianates”
Jan Both, “Road by the Edge of a Lake,” 1637-1642, from the special exhibition “The Dutch Italianates: 17th-century Masterpieces from Dulwich Picture Gallery, London,” on view at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. (Photo courtesy the Dulwich Picture Gallery)
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Going Dutch
“Italianates” exhibit features masterful 17th-century oil paintings
Along with masterful 17th-century European landscape paintings, the newest special exhibit at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art offers a fascinating lesson in how shifting styles have a lasting effect on art history.
“The Dutch Italianates: 17th-century Masterpieces from the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London,” which opened Thursday, features 39 oil paintings by Dutch artists such as Adam Pynacker, Nicolaes Berchem and Aelbert Cuyp, whose work captured the golden-lit, ruins-strewn landscapes of Italy.
While no longer household names, they were highly-regarded contemporaries of their still-revered countrymen Rembrandt Van Rijn and Johannes Vermeer.
“What’s so interesting about art is it’s ever-evolving,” said Jennifer Klos, associate curator for the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. “Collecting is just as much about the history of taste as it is about a preference for art and artists.”
Inspired by Italy
The 17th century in the Netherlands is called the Dutch Golden Age, when the Dutch East India Company was the largest commercial enterprise in the world and the economy, arts and sciences were all flourishing. The trade boom created a wealthy merchant class and strong Dutch art market.
The Dutch Italianates, as they were later dubbed by art historians, specialized in landscapes inspired by Italy, the epicenter of the Renaissance and home of so many master painters, sculptors and architects, Klos said.
Throughout the century, Dutch artists took the arduous trek to Italy, either over the Alps or by sea. They congregated at the Spanish Steps in Rome and filled sketchbooks with scenes of the Italian countryside, or campagna. Most waited until they had returned to Holland to create their paintings; others never actually traveled to Italy but took inspiration from other the work of artists who had.
They filled their canvases with Italy’s warm light, ancient ruins and rugged mountains, quite a change of scene from the Netherlands’ cloudy skies and flat lands. The Dutch Italianates found a niche with their landscapes, since the newly rich merchants wanted them for their homes.
“These paintings were somewhat exotic to the Holland market,” Klos said. “The Dutch were traveling the world and controlling the trade … so this idea of exoticism in a way is a form of nationalism, because they’re proud to buy these landscapes depicting other worldly places.”
But the paintings also retained a certain element of their homeland, with the artists portraying peasants, hunters and shepherds, usually dressed in Dutch clothing. In Jan Lapp’s “Italian Landscapes with Figures and Cattle,” livestock and their tenders rest near classical statues, while in Jan Weenix’s “Landscape with Shepherd Boy,” a child cares for puppies in the midst of ruined columns.
“Instead of depicting these idealized figures, you really are seeing a little bit of an everyday scene,” Klos said. “The landscapes tend to look a little bit more Italian, but if you look closely at the figures and sometimes the animals, they will actually appear much more Dutch,” she said.
Falling out of favor
When Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois, a painter and art dealer, and Noel Desenfans, his business partner, received a commission in 1790 from the king of Poland to put together a great art collection, the Dutch Italianate painters were famous names.
In 1795, Poland was partitioned between Russia and Prussia, and the king was exiled. When Dulwich Picture Gallery, the first public art gallery in England, was founded in 1811 through Bourgeois’ bequest, the collection included the Dutch Italianate works.
While the images remain, their popularity proved less enduring.
“Nicolaes Berchem was one of the great gods of art, and nowadays people haven’t heard of him. That always fascinates me. I think it’s one of the most interesting things, the history of taste, because things go in and out of fashion. They are seen as million-pound paintings one minute, and nobody wants them the next,” Ian Dejardin, director of Dulwich Picture Gallery, said in an interview with Klos.
Framed in history
Oklahoma City is the final stop for the first touring exhibit of the London gallery’s Dutch Italianates collection. Not only are the paintings stylish for their time, they are still surrounded by the ornately carved and gilded wooden frames the gallery founders had made back in the late 18th century.
“They would have commissioned a frame maker in London to make the frames for the pictures in the current taste and fashion of the time,” said Tom Proctor, the gallery’s frame conservator, in a phone interview. “They’re a perfect example of framing in England of that period.”
ON EXHIBIT
“The Dutch Italianates: 17th-century Masterpieces from Dulwich Picture Gallery, London”
When: Through Jan. 3.
Where: Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive.
Information: 236-3100 or www.okcmoa.com.
-BAM
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I have three tips for beginning art collectors as well as for experienced art collectors. Good reminders for anyone interested in art or already collecting art. 1) Buy art because you like it and because it moves you, and because it will enhance your life. 2) Visit as many art galleries as you can, gallery staff can be helpful guides in your art education. 3) Get on gallery mailing lists so you’ll be invited to openings and special events for art collectors. Jennifer.