The Development of an Anonymous Art Market in the Dutch Baroque Can Be Attributed to
- Patronage, Competition and Diversifications
- Specialization
- Paintings for Sale
- Artists' Income & Economic Background
- The Guild of Saint Luke and Preparation
- Earnings of Painters Belonging to the Guild of Saint. Luke
- Categories of Painting
- Pass up
The Abundance of Paintings
It has been estimated that betwixt five and ten million works of fine art had been produced during the century of the Aureate Historic period of Dutch fine art. Very few of these, possibly less than 1%, accept survived. "Works of art, ranging from simple prints and copies to originals hung in almost all Dutch homes. For example, pictures of some kind or some other were institute in about two thirds of Delft households.one
Detail of a Dutch painting showing
paintings for sale on the street
After the terminate of the 80-year war with Spain in 1648, the netherlands had emerged as a vital new political, economic and cultural force. One of the consequences of the Republic's independence was the change in the residue of power, power which had for the beginning time in modern history, passed into the hands of bourgeois. This change was to have enormous repercussions on the art market.
Although the nativity of a capitalistic club is often cited in relation to the sudden explosion of creative production in the Netherlands, the affluence of money may explicate why pictures could exist bought, but information technology does not explain why they were and then strongly desired. Curiously, only to the south, France, a much large country, had far fewer painters even though the arts had been actively encouraged past Louis Xiv.
One explanation for the Dutch want for paintings is related to the population's quintessential affection for their land and home. "A considerable proportion of inhabitants of Dutch towns had more than than sufficient income to provide for their fundamental needs. Many chose to spend their surplus on furnishing for their homes, including pictures. This atomic number 82 to a peachy demand for paintings at low prices. Since these paintings were to be hung in rooms of ordinary Dutch houses, most of them were small."2 In 1968, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga explained the Hollanders' dear for pictures in a different way calling upon their "intense enjoyment of shapes and objects, the(ir) unshakable faith in the reality and importance of all earthly things, a organized religion that... was the direct effect of a deep love of life and interest in one's surroundings."
"Seventeenth-century Dutch art has long been recognized as a distinctly urban form of visual expression. In holland quickly expanding cities and towns were the main location for artists, patrons and the market place, while much of the subject matter of Dutch art reflects the experiences and aspirations of middle-class urban elites. It has become commonplace to use urban origins equally ane of the key criteria in classifying Dutch art. Artists working in close proximity in a common mode and with shared iconographic interests are grouped together under such designations as "the Leiden fijnschilders" and "the Utrecht Caravaggists." Others have gone farther to assign labels to unabridged communities and coin terms such as "the Haarlem School" or "the Delft manner."3 In their travel diaries, many foreigners, among them, Englishmen John Evelyn (fig. 1) and Peter Mundy and the Frenchman Samuel Sorbière, commented on the amazing abundance of paintings in the Netherlands. Mundy, visiting Amsterdam in 1640, wrote:
Equally for the Art off Painting and affection off the people to Pictures, I thincke none other goe beeyond them, ... All in generall striving to adorne their houses ... with costly peeces, Butchers and bakers ... yea many tymes Blacksmiths, Coblers, etts. [etc], will take some moving picture or other by their Forge and in their stalle. Such is the generall Notion, enclination and delight that these Countrie Native[s] have to Paintings.
Evelyn wrote, "pictures are very common hither [in the Netherlands], there being scarce an ordinary tradesman whose business firm is non busy with them." The figures given to us past historical documents confirm the travelers' anaesthesia. In the center of the seventeenth century some Dutch homes had thirty to fifty paintings per room, rooms which, it should exist noted, were not all that spacious.
The thought that the netherlands abounded with skillful painting "must accept become commonplace at the fourth dimension. Quite likely, a proud awareness of this phenomenon was already imbedded in the self-prototype of the prosperous Dutch burgher."4 Ane of the most influential men of civilisation in the Netherlands and connoisseur par excellence, Constantijn Huygens, noted that mural painters "in the present Netherlands are so tremendously plentifully represented and of such high quality that it would take an unabridged book to discuss them all individually."
However, opinions vary every bit to whether or not the lower socio-economic classes besides had significant access to the art market.
While Mundy'due south and Evelyn'south comments were likely based on fact, it is important to note that the pictures they mentioned varied greatly in quality and price. A cheap engraving, for example, could exist had for almost a 3rd of the price of a small-scale fish or bloom still life painting—and for near a seventh of the price of a more elaborate, high-finish banketje however life. On the other mitt, a cutting-edge fijnschilder (fine painting) work of Gerrit Dou might be sold for 1,000 guilders or more than, the toll of a comfy Dutch house. While acknowledging the abundance of paintings in the Netherlands, the art historian Mariët Westermann believes that the foreigners' accounts should not be taken literally considering laborers and small peasants surely could not beget more than than a few mediocre prints, if that.5
Nonetheless rather than embracing the fine art of painting wholeheartedly, a minority of Dutchmen condemned it on moral and religious grounds as a unsafe form of "deception."half dozen As early on as 1624, the ire of Dirck Raphaelsz. Camphuyzen…was roused considering the art of painting was so well-liked that ane could say cypher against it: "Painting! ha, who can denounce it without [inciting] general rebellion?" I can turn nowhere without seeing pictures: "The whole world depends on engraving, cartoon, painting," he cries out in despair. "Painting is the common allurement for the uneasy heart overwhelmed past choice, / That despite having to meet essential needs charms the money out of one'due south purse, / Painting seems to be the sauce for all that sprouts from the human listen."7
Leonaert Bramer
-
Brush and black ink, 200 x 160 mm.
Prentenkabinet der Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, Leiden
In any case, despite the extremist religious opposition in some quarters, "for the Dutch...art functioned every bit a social cement, reinforcing the shared beliefs and aspirations that helped unite communal concerns. In the works of most artists both style and content reflected gustation non of the wealthy and sophisticated, merely of people in moderate circumstances. For this, international fashion could exist largely ignored. This immune the full evolution of native artistic species."8 Perhaps no pictures more than Hendrick Avercamp's wintertime scenes stand for the extraordinary social and artistic cohesion exclusive to the Netherlands among European nations.
What, if whatever, issue did the unprecedented availability of artworks to a broad range of the population have on the perception of art itself? "Once a luxury item reserved for the leading elite and the House of God, paintings were typically unattainable and somewhat incomprehensible for about citizens…" and with the transformation of "the nature of art buying and appreciation," the work of art "was transformed into something that was frequent and familiar. Though art had not degenerated into an overlooked object of utility, the differentiation between paintings and other objects was somehow weakened."ix It may not be an exaggeration to say that in seventeenth-century Netherlands "paintings were treated in a similar style to furniture or plate—they embellished the domicile, and could be expected to proceed their value or perhaps even increase it."10 Certainly, only a handful of artists attained an aura comparable to that which surrounds the figure of the artist today. Dissimilar their colleagues from the south where history painting had originated, Dutch painters no longer burdened by theoretical obligations of morally uplifting contents or divine spirituality. And maybe, this unassuming character of Dutch art,...is precisely what causes it to be and then appealing in modernity—making information technology more special to us, in some ways, than the self-important fine art commissioned by the pretentious patrons of princely courts and powerful priests.11
It is curious to note that neither Rembrandt, Hals, Van Ruisdael nor Vermeer had e'er traveled to Italy simply were content to develop their own particular mode of painting in the comfort of their homeland studios even though Italy had been considered throughout Europe the cradle of art, the knowledge of whom was indispensable to create true art.
from the abstract of:
HOE SCHILDER HOE WILDER: DISSOLUTE Self-PORTRAITS IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY DUTCH AND FLEMISH ART
Ingrid A. Cartwright, Ph.D., 2007
In the seventeenth century, Dutch and Flemish artists presented a strange new face to the public in their self-portraits. Rather than assuming the traditional guise of the learned gentleman artist that was fostered past Renaissance topoi, many painters presented themselves in a more than unseemly calorie-free. Dropping the noble robes of the pictor doctus, they smoked, drank and chased women. Dutch and Flemish artists explored a new style of self-expression in dissolute self-portraits, embracing the many behaviors that art theorists and the culture at large disparaged.
Dissolute self-portraits stand apart from what was expected of a conventional
self-portrait, withal they were nonetheless appreciated and valued in Dutch culture and in the fine art market place.
Dissolute cocky-portraits also reverberate and reply to a larger trend regarding
artistic identity in the seventeenth century, notably, the stereotype "hoe schilder hoe wilder" [the more of a painter, the wilder he is] that posited Dutch and Flemish artists as intrinsically unruly characters prone to prodigality and dissolution. Artists embraced this special identity, which in turn granted them certain freedoms from social norms and a license to misbehave.
http://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/1903/7720/i/umi-umd-4997.pdf
Patronage, Contest and Diversification
The church building and monarchy, which had been traditionally the most powerful patrons of the arts, were substituted in the Netherlands by a newly formed and wide based middle course. Subsequently the iconoclasm of the Calvinists in the 1560s, the church had all but ceased to provide commissions for painters. The Reformed Church allowed coin to be spent only for the decoration of church building organs. "Compared with the rulers of other European countries, the Business firm of Orange was relatively modest patrons of the arts, especially in regard to Dutch painters who rarely received commissions from them."12
With scarce aristocratic patronage, history painting, which once dominated the pictorial arts, gradually became a minority art. The vacuum was barely noticed: new categories of painting quickly evolved in this dramatically new economic environment. Portraits, landscapes, seascapes, all the same-lives, blossom painting and genre themes, which had once existed primarily as descriptive elements within history painting, became independent motifs in the early sixteenth century. In the need to keep step with the rapidly evolving market, some painters developed more efficient techniques to increase their output and maintain affordable prices for a broader consumer base of operations. The invention of tonal painting made the new landscapes [due east.k. Jan van Goyen, January Porcellis], which were painted in this manner, much cheaper to produce, making secularized demand for non-religious subjects possible on a chiliad scale.13 On the other mitt, the Leiden fijnschilders took the opposite route and produced works of such technical perfection and intellectual stardom that their makers could demand extraordinary prices not just from occasional elite buyers but self-styled Mecenas who entertained the hope of linking the fame of a great painter to their ain posterity. Yet, "in that location is no evidence that these patrons commissioned specific themes. They simply bought the correct to buy any picture show the master chose to make.xiv In the example of Vermeer's patron, Pieter van Ruijven, who had nerveless perhaps one-half or more than of the creative person's unabridged output, it has been impossible to ascertain if he had exercised his volition as to the choice of subject thing or mode even though the starting time pictures Van Ruijven bought were Vermeer's very first interiors. In whatever case, producing such expensive, time-consuming paintings had the reward that the upper economic crust who could afford them remained largely isolated from the effects of by economic downturns, in fact, their wealth often increased.
Each category of painting was subdivided into even more specific categories. Seventeenth-century Netherlanders had developed a particular a passion for depictions of urban center and countryside, either existent or imaginary unfound in other parts of Europe. Landscape painters, for example, produced naturalistic views of the Dutch countryside, cityscapes, winterscapes, imaginary landscape, seascapes, Italianate, nocturnal landscapes and fifty-fifty birds-eye view of the sprawling Amsterdam urban center. "Local scenery asserted The netherlands's national pride, while vistas of foreign sites recalled the extent of its overseas commerce. Holland's ocean ports teemed with fishing and trading ships, and the tiny land'southward merchant armada was about as big as all the rest of maritime Europe's combined. The Dutch prized seascapes and insisted on accurate renderings of each hull and rigging line."fifteen
How did Vermeer fit into the dynamic Dutch art scene? When the Delft artist became active in the tardily 1650s, subject matter had largely been staked out. Dutch painters—the great office of whom would non have objected to be called craftsmen—were infatigable workers, exceptional inventors and they had an enviable knack for pictorial juggling. In comparison to the rest of Europe, the diverseness of independent subject categories and painting styles at the fingertips of Dutch art shoppers was bewildering. Subjects ranged from Biblical scenes to life-size pictures of blank-breasted prostitutes. One could choose from low-priced landscapes, seascapes, snowscapes, Italianate countrysides with an aboriginal ruin or two or a jiff-taking bird's-heart view of Amsterdam. For those who preferred depictions of fellow Dutchman over pictures of Dutch country, sea heaven and bricks, paintings of folk people skating, aristocrats surveying the countryside on horseback, people arguing, people making business, soldiers making war and dignitaries making peace were bachelor in whatever size and style. These paintings were so popular and and then conveniently priced that they could be fabricated on order and exported to European capitols by art dealers.
One of the most original types of painting to be developed was interior genre works which displayed well-to-practise going about daily life, from ritualized courtship to letter reading, letter writing and housekeeping (today grouped under the term "genre"). "Vermeer, who begun to produce his genre paintings in the late 1650s, could not have embarked upon a career in this specialty at a more cheering moment. The Dutch economy virtually exploded with the cessation of hostilities with Kingdom of spain in 1648; indeed, the nation'south economy would reach its apogee within a few curt years after that issue.sixteen
Specialization
The multiplicity of categories in Dutch seventeenth-century paintings was fostered by the fact that instead of painting to the social club the few wealthy and powerful, painters were (for the starting time fourth dimension in the history of Western art) producing wares for individual buyers each with a different economical and cultural backgrounds receptive to pictures with all kinds of subject matter and a wide range of styles. Since it took a very long time to get expert in any 1 area, painters ordinarily specialized and concentrated their efforts to i area. Vermeer and Rembrandt were among the few painters who were able to create masterpieces in different categories.
Information technology has been hypothesized that the "surprising development of specialties effectually 1600 stemmed partly from the partition of labor adept in the large Antwerp workshops earlier in the sixteenth century. The leading Antwerp painters were accustomed to leaving the execution of considerable parts of their pictures to other artists. Equally heads of workshops they decreed the option of subjects and he style of execution; they also supplied the design and maintained contact with the customers."17 Still, specialized assistants were recruited for landscapes, drapery, animals and landscape architecture.18 By concentrating solely on drapery, a painter could dedicate full time to excogitate new techniques to depict different textures with the utmost fidelity. The power to render textures and fine fabrics soon became i of the tests of Dutch genre painters. Philip Angels, a minor painter who wrote an eulogy on the art of painting (In praise of the Art of Painting, Leiden, 1642), maintained that the viewer should exist able to distinguish the divergence between satin and silk from "Tours."
By the fourth dimension Vermeer had begun to depict his interiors, painters had devised formulae to depict virtually every natural or man-fabricated textures that one might come across. In effect, when Vermeer included satin garments in his painting, he was well aware that they would exist compared to those of one of the most highly appraised and sought after painters of the moment Gerrit ter Borch.
Gerrit ter Borch
Oil on canvas, c. 1658–1659
Private Collection
Gerrit ter Borch
1665
Oil on sheet, 38 x 34 cm.
Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki
Peradventure, the inclusion of many finely rendered wall maps in Vermeer'southward compositions was an effort to compete with the best specialist of the high end of interior genre painting. In fact, compared to Vermeer's more than elaborately depicted maps past Vermeer, in almost every instance, those of his contemporaries are executed with what can only be termed nonchalance. Many non-painters may fail (understandably) to grasp the extraordinary pictorial intelligence and visual sensitivity necessary to render with the utmost naturalness the gradual loss of intensity daylight as it rakes across the maps' irregular surface while contemporarily describing their intricate topographical features with just iii or 4 pigments. For gimmicky art lovers with a the trained eye, Vermeer'due south maps may take appeared to plant a veritable tour de forcefulness of painting technique, a pictorial accomplishment on par with, or even a trump of Ter Borch's showy satin gowns or Dou'due south renditions of stone, brass, pewter and glass. For it is one matter to astound the eye by representing precious and oddly textured materials, it is some other to stir equal interest with apartment expanse of apprehensive newspaper. It cannot be ruled out that Vermeer's wall maps were dictated past aesthetic and compositional exigencies although the opportunity to showcase in a highly original way the creative person's hard-won technical command of the medium must have been in the back of his mind as he planned his expensive pictures.
The principal sub-themes of interior genre—letter-reading and writing, music making, courtship, child rearing and domestic labor—formed a commonage stock house from which anyone could depict as he pleased without the slightest preoccupation of being accused of plagiarism. Painters continually cloned their own works. Eye-communicable details were "copied and pasted" endless times. For example, Ter Borch, a painter blessed with both supreme talent and business savvy, made a mirrored version (fig. 2) his Woman Drinking with a Drunken Soldier (fig. three) a few years afterward to picture he swapped the lazy folds of a carpet and wine jug for the drowsing young cavalier contemporarily substituting the pristine porcelain vino jug held tightly by the maid with an unfolded alphabetic character: a new composition, a new meaning.
Painters of lesser talent hoped their remanaged works would entreatment to the tastes of clients who desired the cutting edge works of the near renowned painters at an attractive price, while more talented painters factored in their specific artistic inclination besides. Whatsoever salable looking motif could be made to wait a bit newer by calculation a colorful Turkish carpet, a cute lad domestic dog or a doorkijkje (see-through view leading the viewer's to some other environment).
Painters like Dou, Frans van Mieris and Gabriel Metsu had reached such a point of technical virtuosity that there was fiddling room to move forward. Many of their paintings must be, and certainly were studied with the aid of a magnifying glass in order to appreciate their astounding microscopic level of item, unseen even the works of the early Flemish painters.
Artistic Rivalry
from:
Eric Jan Sluijter, "On Brabant Rubbish, Economic Competition, Creative Rivalry, and the Growth of the Market for Paintings in the Showtime Decades of the Seventeenth Century." http://www.jhna.org/index.php/past-issues/volume-i-result-ii/109-on-brabant-rubbish
Writing in 1678, Samuel van Hoogstraten noted that "In the commencement of this century, The netherlands's walls were non as densely hung with paintings as they are now." He continued, "Still, this custom crept in more and more every 24-hour interval, seriously spurring some artists to acquire to paint speedily, indeed to make a work, whether big or small, every day." He ends this passage past saying that "seeking both profit and fame," a wager was ultimately made every bit to who could manner the best painting betwixt sunrise and sunset, following which Van Hoogstraten recounted the famous anecdote about the competition between Porcellis, Van Goyen, and Knibbergen.
The above suggests that Van Hoogstraten was enlightened of the fact that people had been filling their houses with increasing numbers of paintings every bit of the beginning of the century, a development he links with the emergence of a rapid production technique. He also posits that financial profit was not the sole motive for painting more rapidly, but that the want to achieve fame was a cistron too. Finally, in pursuit of fame, creative rivalry, as well, proves to have played an of import role. Van Hoogstraten's remarks encompass ...the manner of decorating houses with a corking many paintings, the spectacular growth in their production and the bellboy technical innovations, economic competition, and creative rivalry.
* English translation of E. J. Sluijter, "Over Brabantse vodden, economische concurrentie, artistieke wedijver en de groei van de markt voor schilderijen in de eerste decennia van de zeventiende eeuw," in Kunst voor de markt, ed. R. Falkenburg, J. de Jong, and B. Ramakers, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek fifty (1999): pp. 112–143.
Artistic rivalry was too lauded in contemporary art literature as it was regarded non simply as an endeavor at surpassing the not bad masters from the past, but likewise as an endeavor of outdoing their own contemporaries. "These writings and the actual exercise betoken an artistic climate in which specific interaction amid artists and fine art lovers could be regarded as a 'symbiosis' that inevitably must take led to choices on the basis of social-economic and creative motivations… and thereby it distances itself from the term 'influence' which traditionally has been used in art history to describe the interaction between artists."19
Paintings for Sale
In the seventeenth-century Netherlands, paintings were sold in a wide variety of styles, prices and places. Paintings could be bought straight from artists in their studios or from art dealers who had go the about important buyers of art. Each dealer bought and sold works of unlike origins and at unlike prices. Some commissioned works of important painters for their best clients and bolstered their stock by employing copyists or "gallery slaves" who produced any kind of painting that was asked of them. Some dealers sent printed illustrated catalogues to potential clients. Some painters were called upon to illustrate books or to invent decorative motifs for ceramic wares.
In the Netherlands, decorating "the business firm with a variety of rather inexpensive paintings, something the immigrants were already familiar with, caught on with the native population. Second generation immigrants took advantage of this profitable gap in the marketplace and competed with the imported works by producing paintings with similar techniques and subjects, only of a college quality.",xx
When previous purchasers deceased, paintings which they had been bought and hung in their houses constitute their way again into the open market through estate auctions which were attended by dealers. Innkeepers, such equally Vermeer's own male parent, ofttimes dealt in paintings. Paintings were also sold fairs and at lotteries which were organized for the do good of charitable organizations. The Guild of Saint Luke of Delft organized such an auction each year its members.
Prices were mostly low for undistinguished works because competition was violent. On the lower range paintings could be bought for a few guilders. On the upper range for 500 guilders, approximately half of the price of an boilerplate house. Painters who had been trained in the Society of Saint Luke had better chances of earning a respectable living.
Artists' Income and Economic Background
To meet demand for works of art, an boggling number of artists provided an as extraordinary number of paintings. According to the scholarly enquiry, in the 1650s, painters in the Netherlands belonging to the Social club of Saint Luke numbered most 650–700, or about one painter for every ii,000–3,000 inhabitants, a ratio which far exceeded that of Italy, 1 of the nigh artistically productive areas of Europe.
The average income of those artist's who were registered with the guild exceeded that of other craftsman. A number of noted artist were able to earn slap-up sums of coin (particularly through portraiture) and elevate themselves to higher cultural levels within Dutch society.
Social club restrictions were intended to ease the backlog of competition by limiting the sales of works of fine art by painters who were not registered in the Social club of Saint Luke of that municipality in which the artist wished to sell his works, just abuses of these restrictions were widely reported. By guild definition, both business firm-painters and artists were considered painters since they both used brushes, whatever their size. In the center of the seventeenth century, painters broke off and formed their own merchandise organizations called brotherhoods in a few cities. Brotherhoods were founded in Dordrecht in 1642, in Hoorn in 1651 and in the Hague in 1656, which was called Pictura. In Delft, where Vermeer resided, fine artists controlled the guild so there was nothing to be gained by breaking off into a separate organization.
Success was guaranteed by the production of art which matched the buyers' expectations. Only many painters depended on secondary sources of income to survive. Vermeer was known to take dealt in works of other painters but information technology is not known how much success he had. Even so, even though in his early years Vermeer had secured a patron, the well-to-do Delft burger Pieter van Ruijven who bought approximately half of his production, in the later role of his career, he was unable to support his numerous family unit with his own dealings owing to his unusually large family every bit the ruinous war with France which had all simply leveled the so flourishing art market. Ironically, the reward of having a stock-still client/artist human relationship with Van Ruijven hindered the spread of the artist'south proper name outside his native Delft since almost all his works were in the hands of few clients. Vermeer depended largely on the generosity of his well-to-practice mother-in-law in those difficult years.
Specialist research21 has demonstrated that although Dutch painters were generally believed to take come up from lower social classes it has been shown that their groundwork was solidly centre-form. "For case, twenty half-dozen of twenty seven Delft painters whose origins are known nigh and who were registered with the club between 1613 and 1679, were sons or wards of painters, art dealers, engravers or glass makers who themselves were members of the Club of Saint Luke or elsewhere."22 Vermeer's own father was registered on the Order of Saint Luke of Delft as an fine art dealer. The level of literacy among painters seems to take been very high. Although Vermeer's mother was illiterate, his father signed and witnessed a number of legal documents.
The Guild of Saint Luke and Training
Immature Painter in his Studio
Barent Fabritius
1655–1660
Oil on panel, 72 ten 54 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, forth with faience-makers, printers, bookbinders, glassmakers, embroiderers, fine art-dealers, sculptors were bound together in local merchandise organizations called the Guild of Saint Luke. These organizations dated back to the eye ages. The guilds' principal function was to regulate commerce of artists and artisans and to control the education of young artists and painters. Local art markets were protected from external artistic production by imposing fines. However, in general guilds were unable to preclude foreigners and non-club members from selling their fine art.23 Roughly a third of the guild'southward income was devoted to the needs of poor members and their families.
Training was expensive. The aspiring immature painter who wished to become an accustomed member of the Guild of Saint Luke had to undergo a period of apprenticeship that lasted from 4 to six years with a recognized master painter of the lodge. On the average, the family of a young apprentice who lived with his parents paid between 20 and 50 guilders per yr. Without board and lodging, upward to 100 guilder were needed to study with more famous artists such as Rembrandt and Dou. If we consider that school didactics generally toll two to 6 guilders a year and that apprenticeship generally lasted betwixt four and six years, the financial burden of educating a young artist was considerable. Moreover, during the apprenticeship, the parents had to do without their son'southward potential earnings since during this menstruum the amateur could non sign and sell his own paintings rather, all the works he produced became holding of that master. Apparently, the lure of significant hereafter earnings must take existed.
Boys customarily became apprentices at the historic period of x or twelve, through the signing of a detailed contract past the father of the apprentice, who paid specific fees, and the principal to whom the boy would study. Creative training started with the copying of drawings and prints. Next, the student would learn to describe from plaster casts, some of which were fragments of human being figures, including classical sculpture. Successively, the student was permitted to depict from the live model. A number of interesting paintings portray groups of apprentices attentively cartoon from a live model while the principal patiently looks on. Simply when the apprentice had acquired skill in cartoon was he permitted to paint copies of other artist's piece of work. These copies were often sold in order to increment the earnings of the apprentice's master. The student might also re-create the works by his master and lastly he painted directly from the live model.
The Hall of the Delft Saint Luke on the Voldersgracht
Gerrit Lambert
1820
Graphite, pen and brownish ink, brush and gray ink, 24.ix x nineteen.3 cm.
Gemeenarchief, Delft
The facade on the left represents the inn/house owned past Vermeer's father.
The apprentices obligations were many. Menial chores were required of him such as cleaning the studio, grinding pigments, stretching canvases, placing paint on the masters palette each twenty-four hour period. As he advanced in his ability, he was permitted to piece of work on the areas of his master'due south canvases of lesser importance such every bit the foliage in the painting'southward background or some of the less evident draperies. Ordinarily, later on six years of training he could endeavour and utilise for membership in the guild by submitting a painting, called the masterpiece. If approved, he began to pay his ante and was immune to paint, sign and sell his own work and accept on apprentices of his own. The master-amateur relationship contemporarily permitted the primary to increment his output and earnings while preparation new painters.
Earnings of Painters Belonging to the Guild of Saint Luke
A detailed study of the Dutch fine art market has shown24 that artists who had received formal training and belonged to the Club of Saint Luke earned on the average between one,150 and 1,400 guilders a year. This sum was between two and 3 times as much as a main carpenter earned in the same catamenia. However, if an artist was able to fulfill the expectations of the most flush members of the public he could rise to be a member of the leading artistic group and in a few cases, such equally Ter Borch, to city'south upper-class. A few painters like Rembrandt, Honthorst and Dou were and so popular that their studios operated like large firms rather than the humble studios which were represented in many Dutch genre paintings of the time.
A unmarried portrait by Rembrandt could bring as much as 500 guilders while a small genre slice by Dou could exist sold between 500–ane,000 guilders. It is interesting to note that most elevated prices were paid for works past celebrated Renaissance Italian ranged from 2,000 and three,000 guilders in the later part of the sixteenth century. An incredible number of artists were successful and prosperous in their careers merely became impoverished later on.25 Among painters of the fijnschilder mode, information technology was, was customary to charge for the time he worked on a painting, using and hourly rate.
Generally speaking, 20 guilders was a practiced price for a painting when wages for a Delft cloth-worker were less than 1 guilder a day. "Some artists like Jan Steen and Gerard Houckgeest had income from breweries. Jan van de Capelle owned a cloth-dying works. Philips Koninck bought a culvert shipping business. Many painters were happy to take up other better-paying jobs or to ally well. Meyndert Hobbema seems to have become a role-time painter in 1668 when he married the maid of an Amsterdam burgomaster and was given a well-rewarded mail equally a vino gauger, a sort of weights-and-measure inspector. Ferdinand Bol and Aelbert Cuyp both married wealthy women and could afford to paint less. Yet many artists, even the greatest, plant it hard to sell their work for enough money and went through the ordeal of insolvency: amongst them were Jan van Goyen, who died in 16565; Frans Hals, who died in 1666; and Rembrandt, who died in 1669. Some, like Brouwer, Hals and de Witte turned to potable. Hals was usual 'filled up to his neck with drink every night,' Houbraken tells the states. De Witte, dreadfully poor at the final, was found drowned in an Amsterdam canal, and presumed a suicide."26 Vermeer died presumably from a stroke brought on by his inability to provide for his northumerous family brought on past the ruinous war with French republic which had virtually destroyed the art market. A side from these particular cases, an average artist's income exceeded that of near other craftsman.
Categories of Painting 27
In the seventeenth century, painting was divided into roughly five categories: histories, including subjects from the Bible, history, mythology and allegories; landscapes, including seascapes and a variety of marine paintings; nonetheless-lives; genre painting; portraits. Although histories had been traditionally held as the near praiseworthy of all painting categories, the other four had gained considerable popularity from the early years of the century. In the start of the seventeenth century, histories had comprised most half of the half of those paintings listed while landscapes nigh one-fifth.
By the end of the century, landscape had increased to slightly less that one-half while histories had decreased to about only ten meager ten percentage. Paintings with historical, mythological or allegorical content were significantly establish only in the more valuable inventories, that is, in wealthy and, presumably, educated families. All the same, the persistent increase in the number of landscapes was accompanied by the lowering of price. Landscapes had go so popular and the competition so tearing that artist were ever at odds as how to go along upward with market'southward demand. Industrious Dutch painters experimented innovative techniques and considerably shortened the time necessary to finish a landscape. Consequentially they became cheaper. Descriptive detail gave way to a more "painterly" mode in which artists had learned to suggest an space variety of lighting weather with only few carefully chosen tones. The landscapes of Van Goyen, who had been one of the most prolific painters of his fourth dimension (he painted more 1,000 motion picture), were widely copied.
The third most popular category was portraits, followed past still life and genre. By the stop of the century, the lure of having oneself portrayed seems to have waned, perhaps in result of a society who had grown less confident in its means.
Past the end of the seventeenth century, the painting market had considerable declined although the older and more expensive masters were still sought afterwards.
I of the final developments in painting styles was the increase of genre painting, or representations of everyday life. The term "genre," which reassumed paintings of bordellos, tavern brawls, peasant life and quiet upper-class interiors such equally those of Vermeer, each had its own denomination.
Decline
While the product of paintings in the get-go half of the seventeenth century rose, it leveled off for a few years so plummeted afterwards the war with England of 1665–1667 and trickled to nothing after the and so-chosen rampjaar (twelvemonth of disaster) in 1672. Some cities in the netherlands were more vulnerable than others to the pass up in the art market.
Utrecht'due south fine art community stopped growing nigh 1650 while the number of painters in Delft increased for another decade. Marten January Bok has argued that "the market for paintings was vulnerable to cyclical trends in the economy, since art is not one of life'south primary necessities. Moreover the immovability of paintings was such that living masters were increasingly forced to compete with their deceased colleagues, whose piece of work reappeared on the market every tine an estate was put upward for sale. At some indicate in the 1650s crowd began negatively to affect prices, and many artists were forced to declare bankruptcy or to seek other employment."28
Vermeer'south ain financial situation had been gravely effected past the plummet of the art market. After the artists' sudden decease in 1675, his wife declared to her creditors that post-obit the French invasion, her husband had no longer been able to sell his own paintings or those of other painters he dealt in. And "as a result and owing to the great brunt of his children, having no means of his ain, he had lapsed into such decay and decadence, which he had so taken to eye that, as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in a twenty-four hours or solar day and a one-half had gone from being healthy to existence dead.
A contemporary observer named Van der Saan compared the late seventeenth-century merchandise in paintings with that in tulips. Every bit a consequence of the economical decline, he said, "many no longer desired to buy paintings or to establish flowers. And then many scarcely earned in one year what in former times they had recklessly spent in one hour."
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Source: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/dutch-painters/dutch_art/ecnmcs_dtchart.html
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