Course Review: Dutch Painting of the Golden Age
I recently took the free, asynchronous online course Dutch Painting of the Golden Age hosted by OpenLearn of The Open University. This organization offers hundreds of free courses on a range of subjects, including “History & The Arts”. All courses come with a free statement of participation. This course took about four hours to complete and is considered Level 2: Intermediate in difficulty.
I had previously learned about this era of painting when a master’s student in Museum Education at Tufts University, where I learned that the term “Golden Age” is in a state of replacement, now sometimes termed the 17th century, as it roughly covers that time. Among the most famous artists of the time was Johannes Vermeer (I reviewed Rijksmuseum’s Closer to Johannes Vermeer virtual exhibit back in 2023), while others including Pieter de Hooch and Jacob van Ruisdael were known for portraying everyday people in scenes of working class life, all lit with a golden afternoon hue. Realism was key for these paintings, not only for its realistic human characters and landscapes, but refusing to gloss over over mundane aspects of life, from servants pouring milk to village landscapes. However, studying the paintings for long enough should make the viewer realize that painters often hid symbols in their artwork. The course offers examples, including Merry Company by Isaac Elias representing temptation via the five sense and The Life of Man by Jan Steen alluding to the fragility of human life. Moralizing themes were in line with Dutch religious beliefs, as many followed Calvinist or Reformed Christianity.
The course also discusses "The role of conventions", or standardized ways of depicting such life, including seascapes and landscapes. Popular objects included windmills and boats, often within the same painting. This showed Dutch pride in trade and their proto-industrial economy, a contrast to the other popular subject of working class people. I was especially pleased by the comparison between Summer Landscape by Adriaen van de Venne and Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede by Jacob van Ruisdael. While created by two different artists over fifty years apart, the windmill stands in the same location with similar cloudy lighting on a triangular segment of land.
This course was an excellent overview of Dutch Golden Age paintings as the title would suggest. A high density of images gives the learner plenty to study. Unfortunately, these images tend to be low resolution, and the course does not include a link to the higher resolution versions often made available online through museum digitized collections. The course does mention Dutch colonial expansion and exploitation, citing its colonies in Brazil and the "paucity of images" showing negative parts of the history, including military conflicts and aggressive trade. However, the paragraph near the end of the course did not seem like enough of explanation on why this history is hidden. Overall, I enjoyed learning more about Dutch painting of the Golden Age in a straightforward, highly accessible format. I hope to explore more courses through OpenLearn in the near future.