Events

Just as email now dominates written communication, in the 17th century the writing of personal letters became widespread and fashionable. Although letters had long been used for commercial, military or state affairs, the notion that they could convey private feelings and emotions suddenly captured the popular imagination and transformed personal communication. For the upwardly mobile citizens of the Dutch Republic’s wealthy urban centers, the vogue for letter-writing reflected a new level of sophisticated social interaction. In this docent-led talk we’ll discover how artists of this time - Gabriel Metsu and Johannes Vermeer among others - responded to the popularity of the ‘love letter’ as an epistolary theme in their genre paintings.  

This docent-led talk is taking place in conjunction with the Timken's special exhibition Exchanging Words: Women and Letters in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting (September 21–December 31, 2022).