Putnam Foundation Collection > Dutch & Flemish

Pieter Bruegel the Elder
ca. 1525-1569, Flemish
Parable of the Sower, 1557
Oil on panel, 29 x 40-1/2 in.

This painting of the parable of the sower from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke is among the earliest signed paintings by Bruegel, one of the geniuses of Northern European painting.

A lone peasant in the left foreground scatters seeds on an upland pasture. The seeds he has already sown have multiplied in the fields below him to the right and in the middle distance. Across the river, a small crowd gathers to hear Jesus preaching.

Bruegel left Antwerp in 1553 to study in Italy, and on his return made drawings of the Alps, which influenced the detail and aerial perspective of the landscape in this painting.

Petrus Christus
Flemish, d.1475/76
Death of the Virgin, ca. 1460-65
oil on oak, transferred to mahogany
67-3/8 x 54-1/2 in.

Petrus Christus is credited with introducing one-point perspective to Northern European painting. He employs the technique in this painting, his largest known work, which originally included two wings, later destroyed during World War II.

Christus's interpretation of the Death of the Virgin, attended by apostles from around the world, is unusual because it shows in one painting the three episodes of the story.

The Virgin lies on her deathbed holding a lighted candle, a symbol of her faith. Above, her soul ascends to God the Father. On the far right, an angel drops the Virgin's girdle to St. Thomas as proof of the Assumption.

Pieter Claesz
1596/97-1661
Still life, 1627
Oil on Oak Panel
14-1/4 x 22-5/8 in.

Pieter Claesz's painting combines two types of still life: "breakfast pieces," or representations of a light meal, and "smokers' requisites," or paraphernalia used by smokers. The simple domestic objects are all shown in perspective and in a limited range of colors.

Still life was not an independent branch of painting before the seventeenth century, though paintings of religious subjects included still-life objects. Claesz., who painted still lifes almost exclusively, spent his career devising different arrangements of straight elements and curved objects, as in this work.

He became the leading still-life painter in Haarlem, the most important Dutch city at the time.

Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641)
Mary Villiers, Lady Herbert of Shurland
ca. 1636
Oil on canvas, 42 x 33 in.

This recently discovered masterpiece was painted at the request of King Charles I, in whose collection the portrait once hung. Daughter of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, Lady Mary Viillers (1622-1685) is one of the most intriguing individuals connected with the English court.

She was raised in the royal household after her father was assassinated. The husband she mourns was Charles, Lord Herbert of Shurland, who died of small pox in January 1636. This excellently preserved work reveals not only how wonderfully fluid van Dyck’s style could be but also how sensitive he was to the psychological nuances of the female sitter.

The intimacy of van Dyck’s portrayal is remarkable even within his own body of work and due, perhaps, to the special rapport he had with his young sitter, whom he had known since at least 1633, and whose portrait he painted on several occasions.

Frans Hals
1581/85-1666
Portrait of a Man, 1634
Oil on oak panel
28-7/8 x 22-1/8 in.

The subject of Frans Hals's portrait is unknown, though the Latin inscription on the painting gives his age as forty-eight. He wears a black doublet, or close-fitting jacket, with a pleated white ruff, and a dark mantle draped over his left shoulder.

The characteristics of this portrait from Hals's middle period are similar to the general characteristics of Dutch art of the time. Hals tended to use unified and simplified compositions and to paint subjects in black regent costume rather than in richly embroidered clothes. The overall somber feeling of the painting is relieved by the subject's penetrating eyes and ruddy complexion.

Hals's first known portrait dates from 1611; by the 1620s, he was the leading portrait painter in Haarlem.

Nicolaes Maes
1634-1693
Portrait of a Lady
1677
Oil on canvas
26-5/8 x 22-1/4 in.

By 1660, Nicolaes Maes, Rembrandt's best-known pupil, developed a fluid style of painting that readily lent itself to portraiture.

This portrait may be of Mary Stuart, daughter of James, duke of York, and Anne Hyde. In 1677, the year this work was painted, fifteen-year-old Mary Stuart married William of Orange, Stadholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. She later became Mary II when he became William III. They ruled England and were popularly known as William and Mary.

Gabriel Mestu
1629-1667
A Girl Receiving a Letter
ca. 1658
Oil on panel
10-1/8 x 9-5/8 in.

Writing letters became fashionable in Europe in the seventeenth century after the establishment of a postal system. Gabriel Metsu's painting is part of a Dutch tradition of images dealing with the popular subject of the love letter.

The young woman, seated in an arcade, receives a letter from a young messenger. Beyond the arcade is a classically styled Palladian villa that conveys elegance and wealth. This panel may be a companion to a similar panel by the artist, in another collection, showing a man writing a letter. Not only do the two panels complement one another in size and subject, but the young man and the young woman may be the artist and his wife.

Early in his career, Metsu painted religious and mythological subjects. Today he is celebrated for his scenes of everyday middle-class life, which, as in this work, are rendered in exquisite detail.

Rembrandt van Rijn
1606-1669
St. Bartholomew
ca. 1657
Oil on canvas
48-3/8 x 39-1/4 in.

Known primarily for his portraits and landscapes, Rembrandt remained interested throughout his life in history and biblical painting. The subject of this large, dramatic painting from the artist's mature period is St. Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles. The apostle, flayed alive for his beliefs, holds in his right hand a butcher's knife, a symbol of his martyrdom. The saint's slightly unsettled pose and animated expression suggest that he is contemplating an ethical problem.

Rembrandt conveys a mood of introspection in his late works--in contrast to his earlier, more theatrical pictures--and renders light, textures, and the sense of form in space with complex schemes of loose brushwork and glazes.

Visit the Rembrandt in Southern California information site prepared by The Getty Museum.

Peter Paul Rubens
1577-1640
Portrait of a Young Man in Armor
ca. 1620
Oil on canvas
25-1/2 x 20 in.

By the 1620s, Rubens was recognized as the foremost painter of decorative projects outside Italy, such as altarpieces and ceiling paintings for churches. He also produced portraits and mythological and biblical pictures for private patrons.

This bust-length picture of a young man in his twenties was probably painted from life. Traditionally identified as a "young captain," the unknown sitter wears armor of the time, with a red sash or scarf thrown over one shoulder. The painting is a "study head" that was kept in Rubens's studio and used for reference by the artist or his workshop assistants in the painting of other works.

Although this exact model cannot be identified in any of Rubens's finished paintings, he resembles subjects that appear in the artist's work of the late 1610s and early 1620s.

Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael
1628/29-1682
A View of Haarlem and Bleaching Fields
ca. 1665-70
Oil on canvas
23-1/2 x 30-5/8 in.

Haarlem linen had a great reputation in the seventeenth century, and the linen industry was enormously important to the city's economy. Clothing and uncut cloth were bleached in the fields around the city in a process that took several months.

Ruisdael, one of the most important seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painters, completed about fifteen views of Haarlem showing the linen-bleaching fields. In this richly textured canvas, as in other landscapes of the subject, the artist arranges the buildings and rows of linen to lead the eye diagonally through alternating areas of shadow and light. At the horizon is St. Bavo's, a famous church flanked to the east and west by bell towers. Ruisdael was buried in the church upon his death in 1682.

Emanuel de Witte
1615-1691/92
Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam
1657
Oil on canvas
34-1/2 x 40-1/2 in.

Emanuel de Witte was the great church painter of the second half of the seventeenth century. He began specializing in church interiors after 1650, when an interest developed in such interiors as viable subjects in themselves rather than for their specific religious imagery. In this painting,

De Witte shows the nave and choir of the Nieuwe Kerk, or New Church, with the great organ visible in the distance. Grave diggers are working at the left foreground, having displaced some bones interred earlier. De Witte often included grave diggers in his church paintings, perhaps as a comment on the transience of earthly life. The pillar on the left bears a monument and the coat of arms of the Coymans family. Two Coymans brothers died in 1657, the date of this painting, which may have been commissioned as a memorial to the two men.