Class Distinctions: Is the sitter's dress made of silk or coarse wool? Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer

Class Distinctions: Is the Sitter's Dress Made of Silk or Coarse Wool? Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer

Interior with Women beside a Linen Cupboard, Pieter de Hooch, 1663, oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum; on loan from the City of Amsterdam

The broad swath of the middle classes can be divided into professionals and educated businessmen such as goldsmiths, ministers and notaries as well as the lower-ranking shopkeepers, craftsmen and tradesmen who ran their own small operations. Portraits like Rembrandt's Jan Rijcksen and His Wife, Griet Jans, known as "The Shipbuilder and His Wife" (1633, British Royal Collection) were commissioned by successful and wealthy professionals, while genre scenes like Quiringh van Brekelenkam's Interior of a Tailor’s Workshop (about 1655-60, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) were purchased on the open market, likely by those who came into regular contact with such tradesmen.

In the 17th century, women in the Dutch Republic had a relatively high degree of independence, both inside and outside the home. To be good wives, young women were trained in domestic work, as seen in Pieter de Hooch’s Interior with Women beside a Linen Cupboard (1663, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). In the painting, a mother instructs her daughter in the proper care of one of the household’s most valuable assets: the linens. In the same artist's Courtyard of a House in Delft (1658, The National Gallery, London), a servant and child hold hands as they go about their chores, which evidently included washing and sweeping, as implied by the pail and broom momentarily resting in the foreground.

Despite the fact that it was among the most common sights in contemporary society, depictions of poverty and hard physical labor are rare in 17th-century Dutch painting. An exception is The Knife Grinder's Family (about 1653, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin) by Gerard ter Borch, who painted an urban laborer sharpening a scythe on a turning grindstone, powered by a barely visible horse or mule in the depths of the shed. The specificity of the grinder, his process and equipment, and the many details of the setting suggest that the artist might have observed an actual workplace like this in his native Zwolle.

The only known Dutch group portrait to focus on the poor is Jan van Bijlert's Portraits of the Men from the St. Job Inn in Utrecht Collecting Alms (about 1630–35, Centraal Museum, Utrecht). Residents of what was essentially an old men's home are depicted with the institution's steward, courier and warden in a painting that likely hung in the governors' meeting room, where it would have served as a reminder of the importance of charity. The majority of 17th-century Dutch works featuring the poor tends to be satiric or ironic, or such images may have simply been made for their picturesque qualities, such as Pieter Duyfhuysen's Seated Boy Eating Porridge (mid-1650s, Maida and George Abrams Collection, Boston, MA). Musicians at the Door

Street Musicians at the Door, 1665, Jacob Ochtervelt, Dutch, Dutch, 1634–1682. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mrs. Eugene A. Perry in memory of her mother, Mrs. Claude Kilpatrick. St Louis Art Museum

The final room of the exhibition explores the places and situations that brought the various classes together. The distinction between public and private, between urban space and the domesticity of the home, was marked by the threshold of the house. Jacob Ochtervelt's Street Musicians at the Door (1665, Saint Louis Art Museum) on the cover of the exhibition's accompanying catalogue depicts a marble-floored voorhuis of an elegant townhouse where a maid, holding the hand of an excited young child, opens the door to a fiddler and hurdy-gurdy player (instruments associated with the lower classes).

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3

Culture and Arts, Art and Museums, History, Culture Watch, Senior Women Web, Articles, Sightings, What's New Add comments

Class Distinctions: Is the Sitter's Dress Made of Silk or Coarse Wool? Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer

More Articles