What Encouraged the Development of a Specialized Art Market in Antwerp
- Patronage, Competition and Diversifications
- Specialization
- Paintings for Sale
- Artists' Income & Economic Background
- The Guild of Saint Luke and Training
- Earnings of Painters Belonging to the Gild of Saint. Luke
- Categories of Painting
- Decline
The Abundance of Paintings
It has been estimated that between five and 10 million works of art had been produced during the century of the Golden Age of Dutch art. Very few of these, peradventure less than ane%, have survived. "Works of art, ranging from simple prints and copies to originals hung in near all Dutch homes. For example, pictures of some kind or some other were institute in near two thirds of Delft households.1
Detail of a Dutch painting showing
paintings for sale on the street
After the end of the 80-year war with Spain in 1648, the Netherlands had emerged equally a vital new political, economic and cultural force. 1 of the consequences of the Republic's independence was the modify in the balance of power, power which had for the first time in modern history, passed into the hands of bourgeois. This alter was to have enormous repercussions on the art marketplace.
Although the nascency of a capitalistic order is oftentimes cited in relation to the sudden explosion of creative production in the netherlands, the abundance of money may explicate why pictures could be bought, but it does not explain why they were so strongly desired. Curiously, only to the due south, France, a much large country, had far fewer painters even though the arts had been actively encouraged by Louis XIV.
I caption for the Dutch desire for paintings is related to the population's quintessential affection for their state and home. "A considerable proportion of inhabitants of Dutch towns had more than sufficient income to provide for their key needs. Many chose to spend their surplus on furnishing for their homes, including pictures. This pb to a great need for paintings at low prices. Since these paintings were to be hung in rooms of ordinary Dutch houses, most of them were minor."2 In 1968, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga explained the Hollanders' dear for pictures in a different style calling upon their "intense enjoyment of shapes and objects, the(ir) unshakable faith in the reality and importance of all earthly things, a faith that... was the direct issue of a deep love of life and interest in one'southward environment."
"Seventeenth-century Dutch art has long been recognized every bit a distinctly urban form of visual expression. In the Netherlands rapidly expanding cities and towns were the main location for artists, patrons and the market, while much of the subject matter of Dutch fine art reflects the experiences and aspirations of middle-form urban elites. It has become commonplace to use urban origins as 1 of the fundamental criteria in classifying Dutch art. Artists working in shut proximity in a common style and with shared iconographic interests are grouped together nether such designations as "the Leiden fijnschilders" and "the Utrecht Caravaggists." Others have gone further to assign labels to unabridged communities and coin terms such equally "the Haarlem School" or "the Delft mode."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:
As for the Art off Painting and amore 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 have some flick 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 mutual here [in holland], there being scarce an ordinary tradesman whose house is not busy with them." The figures given to united states by historical documents ostend the travelers' amazement. In the middle of the seventeenth century some Dutch homes had thirty to fifty paintings per room, rooms which, information technology should exist noted, were non all that spacious.
The idea that the Netherlands abounded with good painting "must have get commonplace at the time. Quite likely, a proud awareness of this miracle was already imbedded in the cocky-epitome of the prosperous Dutch burgher."4 One of the most influential men of culture in the Netherlands and connoisseur par excellence, Constantijn Huygens, noted that landscape painters "in the present Netherlands are so tremendously plentifully represented and of such loftier quality that information technology would take an entire book to discuss them all individually."
However, opinions vary as to whether or not the lower socio-economic classes also had meaning access to the art market.
While Mundy'due south and Evelyn's comments were likely based on fact, it is important to note that the pictures they mentioned varied greatly in quality and price. A inexpensive engraving, for case, could be had for most a tertiary of the cost of a small fish or flower withal life painting—and for about a 7th of the price of a more elaborate, high-finish banketje still life. On the other paw, a cutting-edge fijnschilder (fine painting) piece of work of Gerrit Dou might be sold for 1,000 guilders or more, the cost of a comfortable Dutch house. While acknowledging the abundance of paintings in the netherlands, the art historian Mariët Westermann believes that the foreigners' accounts should not exist taken literally because laborers and small peasants surely could not afford more a few mediocre prints, if that.5
Withal rather than embracing the art of painting wholeheartedly, a minority of Dutchmen condemned it on moral and religious grounds every bit a dangerous course of "deception."6 As early as 1624, the ire of Dirck Raphaelsz. Camphuyzen…was roused because the art of painting was and so well-liked that i could say nothing against it: "Painting! ha, who tin can denounce it without [inciting] general rebellion?" One tin plough nowhere without seeing pictures: "The whole world depends on engraving, drawing, painting," he cries out in despair. "Painting is the common bait for the uneasy center overwhelmed past choice, / That despite having to encounter essential needs charms the money out of one's purse, / Painting seems to be the sauce for all that sprouts from the man mind."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 equally 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 sense of taste non of the wealthy and sophisticated, but of people in moderate circumstances. For this, international fashion could be largely ignored. This allowed the total evolution of native creative species."8 Perhaps no pictures more Hendrick Avercamp'due south winter scenes stand for the boggling social and creative cohesion exclusive to kingdom of the netherlands among European nations.
What, if any, effect did the unprecedented availability of artworks to a broad range of the population have on the perception of fine art itself? "One time a luxury item reserved for the leading elite and the House of God, paintings were typically unattainable and somewhat incomprehensible for nearly citizens…" and with the transformation of "the nature of art ownership and appreciation," the work of fine art "was transformed into something that was frequent and familiar. Though fine art had not degenerated into an overlooked object of utility, the differentiation betwixt paintings and other objects was somehow weakened."9 It may not exist an exaggeration to say that in seventeenth-century Netherlands "paintings were treated in a similar way to furniture or plate—they embellished the dwelling house, and could exist expected to proceed their value or perhaps fifty-fifty increment information technology."10 Certainly, only a scattering of artists attained an aura comparable to that which surrounds the figure of the artist today. Different their colleagues from the southward where history painting had originated, Dutch painters no longer burdened past theoretical obligations of morally uplifting contents or divine spirituality. And mayhap, this unassuming character of Dutch art,...is precisely what causes it to be so appealing in modernity—making it more special to us, in some ways, than the self-important fine art commissioned by the pretentious patrons of princely courts and powerful priests.xi
It is curious to note that neither Rembrandt, Hals, Van Ruisdael nor Vermeer had e'er traveled to Italy but were content to develop their own particular style of painting in the comfort of their homeland studios fifty-fifty 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 bold the traditional guise of the learned gentleman creative person that was fostered by Renaissance topoi, many painters presented themselves in a more unseemly light. Dropping the noble robes of the pictor doctus, they smoked, drank and chased women. Dutch and Flemish artists explored a new mode of cocky-expression in dissolute cocky-portraits, embracing the many behaviors that art theorists and the culture at large disparaged.
Dissolute self-portraits stand up apart from what was expected of a conventional
cocky-portrait, withal they were yet appreciated and valued in Dutch civilization and in the art market.
Dissolute cocky-portraits also reflect and respond to a larger trend regarding
creative 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 sure freedoms from social norms and a license to misbehave.
http://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/1903/7720/1/umi-umd-4997.pdf
Patronage, Competition and Diversification
The church 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 center class. After the iconoclasm of the Calvinists in the 1560s, the church building had all but ceased to provide commissions for painters. The Reformed Church immune money to be spent just for the decoration of church organs. "Compared with the rulers of other European countries, the Business firm of Orangish was relatively minor patrons of the arts, peculiarly 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 economical environment. Portraits, landscapes, seascapes, nonetheless-lives, flower painting and genre themes, which had one time existed primarily as descriptive elements within history painting, became contained motifs in the early on sixteenth century. In the need to go along pace with the apace evolving marketplace, some painters adult more efficient techniques to increment their output and maintain affordable prices for a broader consumer base of operations. The invention of tonal painting made the new landscapes [e.g. January van Goyen, Jan Porcellis], which were painted in this mode, much cheaper to produce, making secularized demand for non-religious subjects possible on a grand scale.thirteen On the other hand, 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 merely from occasional elite buyers but self-styled Mecenas who entertained the promise of linking the fame of a great painter to their own posterity. Yet, "at that place is no prove that these patrons commissioned specific themes. They merely bought the right to buy any film the primary chose to make.14 In the example of Vermeer'south patron, Pieter van Ruijven, who had collected perhaps ane-half or more of the artist'south entire output, information technology has been impossible to define if he had exercised his will as to the choice of subject affair or style even though the first pictures Van Ruijven bought were Vermeer'south very first interiors. In any case, producing such expensive, time-consuming paintings had the advantage that the upper economic crust who could afford them remained largely isolated from the furnishings of by economic downturns, in fact, their wealth ofttimes increased.
Each category of painting was subdivided into fifty-fifty more than specific categories. Seventeenth-century Netherlanders had developed a detail a passion for depictions of urban center and countryside, either real or imaginary unfound in other parts of Europe. Mural painters, for instance, produced naturalistic views of the Dutch countryside, cityscapes, winterscapes, imaginary landscape, seascapes, Italianate, nocturnal landscapes and even birds-middle view of the sprawling Amsterdam metropolis. "Local scenery asserted Holland's national pride, while vistas of strange sites recalled the extent of its overseas commerce. Kingdom of the netherlands's ocean ports teemed with fishing and trading ships, and the tiny country's merchant armada was almost equally big as all the rest of maritime Europe'due south combined. The Dutch prized seascapes and insisted on authentic renderings of each hull and rigging line."xv
How did Vermeer fit into the dynamic Dutch art scene? When the Delft artist became active in the late 1650s, subject matter had largely been staked out. Dutch painters—the great part of whom would not have objected to be chosen craftsmen—were infatigable workers, infrequent inventors and they had an enviable knack for pictorial juggling. In comparison to the residuum of Europe, the multifariousness of contained subject area 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 cull from depression-priced landscapes, seascapes, snowscapes, Italianate countrysides with an ancient ruin or two or a breath-taking bird's-heart view of Amsterdam. For those who preferred depictions of boyfriend Dutchman over pictures of Dutch state, sea sky and bricks, paintings of folk people skating, aristocrats surveying the countryside on horseback, people arguing, people making business concern, soldiers making war and dignitaries making peace were available in any size and style. These paintings were so popular and then conveniently priced that they could be made 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 alphabetic character 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 accept embarked upon a career in this specialty at a more auspicious moment. The Dutch economy about exploded with the cessation of hostilities with Spain in 1648; indeed, the nation's economy would attain its apogee within a few curt years subsequently that event.sixteen
Specialization
The multiplicity of categories in Dutch seventeenth-century paintings was fostered by the fact that instead of painting to the society the few wealthy and powerful, painters were (for the outset fourth dimension in the history of Western fine art) producing wares for individual buyers each with a different economic and cultural backgrounds receptive to pictures with all kinds of subject matter and a wide range of styles. Since information technology took a very long time to become proficient in whatever one 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 dissimilar categories.
It has been hypothesized that the "surprising evolution of specialties around 1600 stemmed partly from the division of labor good 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. As heads of workshops they decreed the selection of subjects and he style of execution; they also supplied the design and maintained contact with the customers."17 However, specialized administration were recruited for landscapes, drapery, animals and landscape architecture.18 Past concentrating solely on drapery, a painter could dedicate full time to excogitate new techniques to draw different textures with the utmost fidelity. The ability to render textures and fine fabrics shortly became one 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 be able to distinguish the difference betwixt satin and silk from "Tours."
By the time Vermeer had begun to depict his interiors, painters had devised formulae to depict near every natural or homo-made textures that one might encounter. In effect, when Vermeer included satin garments in his painting, he was well enlightened that they would exist compared to those of 1 of the most highly appraised and sought afterward painters of the moment Gerrit ter Borch.
Gerrit ter Borch
Oil on canvas, c. 1658–1659
Private Drove
Gerrit ter Borch
1665
Oil on canvas, 38 x 34 cm.
Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki
Perhaps, the inclusion of many finely rendered wall maps in Vermeer's compositions was an try to compete with the best specialist of the loftier end of interior genre painting. In fact, compared to Vermeer's more than elaborately depicted maps by Vermeer, in almost every case, those of his contemporaries are executed with what tin can just be termed nonchalance. Many not-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 information technology rakes across the maps' irregular surface while contemporarily describing their intricate topographical features with merely three or four pigments. For contemporary art lovers with a the trained eye, Vermeer's maps may have appeared to constitute a veritable bout de force of painting technique, a pictorial achievement on par with, or even a trump of Ter Borch'due south showy satin gowns or Dou'due south renditions of stone, brass, pewter and drinking glass. For it is one matter to astound the centre by representing precious and oddly textured materials, it is some other to stir equal interest with flat expanse of humble paper. It cannot be ruled out that Vermeer's wall maps were dictated by aesthetic and compositional exigencies although the opportunity to showcase in a highly original fashion the artist's hard-won technical command of the medium must accept 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 collective stock firm from which anyone could draw as he pleased without the slightest preoccupation of beingness defendant of plagiarism. Painters continually cloned their ain works. Eye-catching details were "copied and pasted" countless times. For instance, Ter Borch, a painter blest with both supreme talent and business concern savvy, made a mirrored version (fig. 2) his Adult female Drinking with a Drunken Soldier (fig. 3) a few years afterwards to picture he swapped the lazy folds of a carpet and wine jug for the drowsing immature cavalier contemporarily substituting the pristine porcelain vino jug held tightly past the maid with an unfolded letter: a new composition, a new meaning.
Painters of lesser talent hoped their remanaged works would appeal to the tastes of clients who desired the cutting edge works of the nigh renowned painters at an attractive toll, while more talented painters factored in their specific artistic inclination as well. Any salable looking motif could be made to look a bit newer past adding a colorful Turkish carpet, a cute lad canis familiaris or a doorkijkje (meet-through view leading the viewer's to another surroundings).
Painters like Dou, Frans van Mieris and Gabriel Metsu had reached such a point of technical virtuosity that there was lilliputian room to move frontward. Many of their paintings must be, and certainly were studied with the assist of a magnifying glass in order to capeesh their astounding microscopic level of item, unseen fifty-fifty the works of the early Flemish painters.
Creative Rivalry
from:
Eric Jan Sluijter, "On Brabant Rubbish, Economic Competition, Artistic Rivalry, and the Growth of the Market for Paintings in the First Decades of the Seventeenth Century." http://www.jhna.org/alphabetize.php/past-issues/book-1-result-ii/109-on-brabant-rubbish
Writing in 1678, Samuel van Hoogstraten noted that "In the commencement of this century, Holland's walls were not equally densely hung with paintings equally they are at present." He continued, "However, this custom crept in more and more than every day, seriously spurring some artists to larn to paint quickly, indeed to make a work, whether large or pocket-size, every solar day." He ends this passage by saying that "seeking both profit and fame," a wager was ultimately made as to who could fashion the best painting between sunrise and dusk, following which Van Hoogstraten recounted the famous anecdote about the competition between Porcellis, Van Goyen, and Knibbergen.
The to a higher place suggests that Van Hoogstraten was enlightened of the fact that people had been filling their houses with increasing numbers of paintings equally of the beginning of the century, a development he links with the emergence of a rapid product technique. He also posits that financial turn a profit was not the sole motive for painting more quickly, simply that the desire to attain fame was a cistron as well. Finally, in pursuit of fame, artistic rivalry, too, proves to have played an important role. Van Hoogstraten'south remarks comprehend ...the way of decorating houses with a slap-up many paintings, the spectacular growth in their product and the attendant technical innovations, economic competition, and artistic 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 50 (1999): pp. 112–143.
Artistic rivalry was also lauded in gimmicky art literature equally it was regarded not merely equally an attempt at surpassing the great masters from the past, merely also equally an endeavor of outdoing their ain contemporaries. "These writings and the bodily practice indicate an artistic climate in which specific interaction amid artists and art lovers could be regarded as a 'symbiosis' that inevitably must accept led to choices on the basis of social-economical and creative motivations… and thereby it distances itself from the term 'influence' which traditionally has been used in art history to draw 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 directly from artists in their studios or from art dealers who had become the about important buyers of fine art. Each dealer bought and sold works of different origins and at unlike prices. Some deputed works of important painters for their all-time 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 house with a variety of rather inexpensive paintings, something the immigrants were already familiar with, defenseless on with the native population. 2d generation immigrants took reward of this profitable gap in the marketplace and competed with the imported works by producing paintings with similar techniques and subjects, but of a higher quality.",xx
When previous purchasers deceased, paintings which they had been bought and hung in their houses plant their way over again into the open up market through estate auctions which were attended by dealers. Innkeepers, such as Vermeer'south ain father, frequently dealt in paintings. Paintings were as well sold fairs and at lotteries which were organized for the benefit of charitable organizations. The Guild of Saint Luke of Delft organized such an auction each year its members.
Prices were generally low for undistinguished works because contest was fierce. 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 firm. Painters who had been trained in the Gild of Saint Luke had improve 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 equally boggling number of paintings. According to the scholarly research, in the 1650s, painters in the Netherlands belonging to the Guild of Saint Luke numbered near 650–700, or about 1 painter for every 2,000–3,000 inhabitants, a ratio which far exceeded that of Italian republic, one of the near artistically productive areas of Europe.
The average income of those artist's who were registered with the lodge exceeded that of other craftsman. A number of noted creative person were able to earn great sums of money (especially through portraiture) and elevate themselves to higher cultural levels inside Dutch society.
Guild restrictions were intended to ease the backlog of competition past limiting the sales of works of art by painters who were not registered in the Society 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 house-painters and artists were considered painters since they both used brushes, any their size. In the eye of the seventeenth century, painters broke off and formed their ain trade 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 aught to be gained past breaking off into a separate organization.
Success was guaranteed by the production of art which matched the buyers' expectations. But many painters depended on secondary sources of income to survive. Vermeer was known to have dealt in works of other painters simply it is not known how much success he had. Still, 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 product, in the afterwards part of his career, he was unable to support his numerous family with his own dealings owing to his unusually large family unit as the ruinous state of war with France which had all but leveled the then flourishing art market. Ironically, the reward of having a fixed client/artist relationship with Van Ruijven hindered the spread of the artist'south name outside his native Delft since nearly all his works were in the easily of few clients. Vermeer depended largely on the generosity of his well-to-do mother-in-law in those hard 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 background was solidly middle-form. "For example, 20 six of xx seven Delft painters whose origins are known about and who were registered with the guild between 1613 and 1679, were sons or wards of painters, art dealers, engravers or drinking glass makers who themselves were members of the Gild of Saint Luke or elsewhere."22 Vermeer'south own father was registered on the Guild of Saint Luke of Delft equally an art dealer. The level of literacy amidst painters seems to have 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 Fabritiusouth
1655–1660
Oil on panel, 72 x 54 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, along with faience-makers, printers, bookbinders, glassmakers, embroiderers, art-dealers, sculptors were bound together in local trade organizations called the Guild of Saint Luke. These organizations dated back to the middle ages. The guilds' principal role 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. Nevertheless, in general guilds were unable to forbid foreigners and non-guild members from selling their art.23 Roughly a third of the guild's income was devoted to the needs of poor members and their families.
Preparation was expensive. The aspiring young painter who wished to become an accepted member of the Society of Saint Luke had to undergo a catamenia of apprenticeship that lasted from four to half-dozen years with a recognized chief painter of the lodge. On the average, the family of a young apprentice who lived with his parents paid between xx and 50 guilders per year. Without board and lodging, up to 100 guilder were needed to study with more famous artists such as Rembrandt and Dou. If we consider that school instruction generally cost two to vi guilders a year and that apprenticeship generally lasted between four and six years, the financial brunt of educating a young artist was considerable. Moreover, during the apprenticeship, the parents had to do without their son's potential earnings since during this flow the apprentice could not sign and sell his own paintings rather, all the works he produced became property of that master. Plain, the lure of significant future earnings must have existed.
Boys customarily became apprentices at the age of ten or twelve, through the signing of a detailed contract by the begetter of the amateur, who paid specific fees, and the master to whom the male child would study. Artistic training started with the copying of drawings and prints. Next, the educatee would larn to draw from plaster casts, some of which were fragments of human figures, including classical sculpture. Successively, the student was permitted to draw from the live model. A number of interesting paintings portray groups of apprentices attentively drawing from a live model while the master patiently looks on. Only when the apprentice had acquired skill in drawing was he permitted to pigment copies of other artist's work. These copies were oftentimes sold in gild to increase the earnings of the amateur'due south master. The student might too copy the works by his primary 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 brown ink, brush and gray ink, 24.9 x nineteen.3 cm.
Gemeenarchief, Delft
The facade on the left represents the inn/house owned by Vermeer's father.
The apprentices obligations were many. Menial chores were required of him such equally cleaning the studio, grinding pigments, stretching canvases, placing paint on the masters palette each day. As he avant-garde in his ability, he was permitted to work on the areas of his principal's canvases of lesser importance such every bit the foliage in the painting's groundwork or some of the less evident draperies. Normally, after six years of training he could try and apply for membership in the gild past submitting a painting, called the masterpiece. If canonical, he began to pay his dues and was allowed to pigment, sign and sell his own work and take on apprentices of his ain. The main-apprentice human relationship contemporarily permitted the master to increment his output and earnings while training new painters.
Earnings of Painters Belonging to the Guild of Saint Luke
A detailed study of the Dutch art market place has shown24 that artists who had received formal training and belonged to the Guild of Saint Luke earned on the average between i,150 and i,400 guilders a yr. This sum was between two and three times every bit much every bit a master carpenter earned in the same period. All the same, if an artist was able to fulfill the expectations of the most affluent members of the public he could ascent to be a member of the leading artistic grouping and in a few cases, such as Ter Borch, to metropolis's upper-class. A few painters like Rembrandt, Honthorst and Dou were and so pop that their studios operated like large firms rather than the apprehensive studios which were represented in many Dutch genre paintings of the time.
A single portrait past Rembrandt could bring as much equally 500 guilders while a small genre piece by Dou could be sold between 500–1,000 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 but became impoverished later on.25 Amid painters of the fijnschilder mode, it was, was customary to charge for the time he worked on a painting, using and hourly rate.
Generally speaking, twenty guilders was a skillful cost for a painting when wages for a Delft textile-worker were less than one guilder a twenty-four hour period. "Some artists like Jan Steen and Gerard Houckgeest had income from breweries. Jan van de Capelle owned a fabric-dying works. Philips Koninck bought a canal shipping business. Many painters were happy to take up other better-paying jobs or to marry well. Meyndert Hobbema seems to take get a role-fourth dimension painter in 1668 when he married the maid of an Amsterdam burgomaster and was given a well-rewarded post as a wine 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, found information technology difficult to sell their work for enough money and went through the ordeal of insolvency: amid them were Jan van Goyen, who died in 16565; Frans Hals, who died in 1666; and Rembrandt, who died in 1669. Some, similar Brouwer, Hals and de Witte turned to beverage. Hals was usual 'filled upward to his neck with drinkable every night,' Houbraken tells united states. De Witte, dreadfully poor at the last, was found drowned in an Amsterdam culvert, and presumed a suicide."26 Vermeer died presumably from a stroke brought on by his inability to provide for his due northumerous family brought on by the ruinous war with France which had virtually destroyed the art market. A side from these item cases, an average creative person's income exceeded that of most other craftsman.
Categories of Painting 27
In the seventeenth century, painting was divided into roughly 5 categories: histories, including subjects from the Bible, history, mythology and allegories; landscapes, including seascapes and a diversity of marine paintings; still-lives; genre painting; portraits. Although histories had been traditionally held equally the nigh praiseworthy of all painting categories, the other four had gained considerable popularity from the early years of the century. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, histories had comprised almost half of the half of those paintings listed while landscapes about ane-5th.
By the end of the century, landscape had increased to slightly less that half while histories had decreased to virtually only x meager ten percent. Paintings with historical, mythological or allegorical content were significantly constitute just in the more valuable inventories, that is, in wealthy and, presumably, educated families. Notwithstanding, the persistent increase in the number of landscapes was accompanied by the lowering of cost. Landscapes had become so popular and the competition so violent that creative person were e'er at odds as how to proceed upward with market's 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" fashion in which artists had learned to advise an infinite variety of lighting conditions with only few carefully chosen tones. The landscapes of Van Goyen, who had been one of the almost prolific painters of his time (he painted more than 1,000 picture), were widely copied.
The third most popular category was portraits, followed by nevertheless life and genre. By the cease of the century, the lure of having oneself portrayed seems to accept waned, perhaps in effect 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 nonetheless sought after.
One of the last developments in painting styles was the increment 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.
Refuse
While the production of paintings in the outset one-half of the seventeenth century rose, it leveled off for a few years so plummeted after the war with England of 1665–1667 and trickled to naught after the so-called rampjaar (year of disaster) in 1672. Some cities in the Netherlands were more vulnerable than others to the turn down in the fine art marketplace.
Utrecht'south art customs stopped growing almost 1650 while the number of painters in Delft increased for another decade. Marten January Bok has argued that "the market place for paintings was vulnerable to cyclical trends in the economy, since art is not one of life's chief necessities. Moreover the durability of paintings was such that living masters were increasingly forced to compete with their deceased colleagues, whose piece of work reappeared on the market place every tine an estate was put up for sale. At some point in the 1650s crowd began negatively to affect prices, and many artists were forced to declare bankruptcy or to seek other employment."28
Vermeer's ain financial situation had been gravely effected by the plummet of the art market. Afterward the artists' sudden death in 1675, his married woman alleged to her creditors that following 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 consequence and owing to the great burden of his children, having no ways of his own, he had lapsed into such disuse and decadence, which he had and then taken to center that, as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in a day or day and a half had gone from beingness healthy to being dead.
A contemporary observer named Van der Saan compared the late seventeenth-century trade in paintings with that in tulips. As a result of the economic pass up, he said, "many no longer desired to buy paintings or to plant flowers. Then many scarcely earned in i yr what in former times they had recklessly spent in 1 60 minutes."
Source: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/dutch-painters/dutch_art/ecnmcs_dtchart.html
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