Appearance and Reality in Dutch Art

As Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo’s collection brilliantly attests, Dutch painting of the 17th century is remarkable for its naturalism and compelling truth to life-what scholars in the 19th century admired as its “probity.” No other artists before the Dutch left such a comprehensive record in paint of their land, people, and possessions. In the early 21st century, viewers still marvel at Dutch artists’ inventory of fact, but it is no longer seen as a literal speculum naturae (mirror of nature). Instead, it is recognized as a composite of observation and imagination, pictorial convention and visual acuity. Peter Sutton, M.A. 1975, Ph.D. 1978, Executive Director of the Bruce Museum, in Greenwich, Connecticut, and expert on Northern Baroque painting and Dutch and Flemish art, discusses the evidence for these assumptions in paintings from the Golden Age.