Pleasant Places: The Rustic Landscape from Bruegel to RuisdaelThe variations of pleasure and their expression in Dutch rustic landscapes of the seventeenth century are recurring themes in Walter S. Gibson's engaging new book. Gibson focuses on Haarlem between 1600 and 1635, in his interpretation of Dutch landscapes and emphasizes prints, the medium in which the rustic view was first made available to the general art-buying public. Gibson begins by looking at the origins of the rustic landscape in the sixteenth-century Flanders and its later reformation by Dutch artists, a legacy very much alive today. He next offers a critical review of "scriptural reading," a popular mode of interpreting the Dutch rustic landscape that incorporates Calvinist-influenced moral allegories. Gibson then explores traditional ideas concerning recreation and suggests that the pleasure of rural landscapes, not preaching, constituted their chief appeal for seventeenth-century urban viewers. Using Visscher's Plaisante Plaetsen ("Pleasant Places") as a point of departure, Gibson examines the ways that townspeople, both the day-trippers and owners of country houses, experienced the Dutch countryside. He also discusses the role of staffage and suggests how the representations of peasants might have conditioned the responses of contemporary viewers to rural images. Finally, Gibson considers how scenes of the dilapidated farm buildings, dead trees, and other evidence of material decay may reflect traditional ideas rustic life as imagined by a townsperson. Or how they may represent another way for the artist to engage his urban audience: far removed from the idealized landscapes of a Giorgione, the rustic landscape of a Ruisdael conveys a countryside that was beginning to disappear under the relentless pressures of urbanization.
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Contents
List of Illustrations | i |
Acknowledgments | xi |
Introduction | xiii |
Prologue Antwerp and the Small Landscapes of Hieronymus Cock | xvii |
Rustic Landscape in Holland | 12 |
Scriptural Reading Its Uses and Abuses | 14 |
Painting for Pleasure An Excursus | 30 |
Pleasant Places The Case of Haarlem | 47 |
Labor and Leisure in the Dutch Countrywide | 87 |
Rustic Ruins | 107 |
Conclusion Deceptive Visions | 117 |
Notes | 119 |
Select Bibliography | 149 |
Index | 169 |
Common terms and phrases
Abraham Bloemaert Adriaen Ampzing Amsterdam Antwerp Bakker Beck Bruegel the Elder Brussels Bruyn Calvinist Claes Jansz Visscher Cleveland Museum Constantijn Huygens Cornelis Bloemaert cottages country houses depicted drawings dunes Dutch countryside Dutch painting Dutch rustic landscape edition eeuw engraving and etching Esaias example farm FIGURE Flemish Gallery of Art Gibson Gillis Mostaert Haarlem Hague Hendrick Goltzius Hieronymus Cock Holland Hollstein Hondius Hoogstraeten images inscription Jacob Matham Jacob van Ruisdael Jan van Goyen Jongh Joos van Liere Lairesse land landscapists later Leeflang Leiden London Mander Museum of Art National Gallery Nederlandse Netherlandish Otium Otium series painters pastoral peasants Photo Pieter Bruegel Pieter de Molijn Plaisante Plaetsen plates Pleasant Places pleasure poem poets published Rembrandt Rijksmuseum Rijksmuseum-Stichting Roethlisberger and Bok ruins Saverij scape scenery schilderachtig scriptural reading second series seventeenth Seventeenth-Century Dutch sixteenth century Small Landscapes title print tradition University Press Utrecht Velde views Village vols Vondel