The big event this year at the Queen’s Gallery in Edinburgh is an exhibition of Dutch Landscapes. Van Gogh fans will be disappointed, as these paintings are exclusively 17th Century – and rightly so, as it is in the work of this period that the art of landscape painting actually originated. Formerly a peripheral element to the action in what were usually either religious or mythical narratives, the landscape would step forward to take centre stage in Dutch art in the immediate aftermath of the Netherlands’ liberation from Spanish rule in 1648.
The new Dutch republic became a fertile land for a generation of aspiring artists, the most illustrious of whom are of course Vermeer, Rembrant and Franz Hals. Sadly, none of these painters is represented in this show, but alongside them in the pantheon of great Dutch painters of the era we might find Jacob Van Ruisdael, who is here.
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