The National Gallery of Art is going Dutch. Pedestrians ambling along Amsterdam canals; boats filling the harbor; vintage maps with smoothed-out folds: the newly-opened exhibit at the NGA offers sweeping Dutch cityscapes with dazzling attention to light and detail.
The exhibit "Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age" pieces together richly colored oil paintings and cartographic memorabilia to create a beautifully anachronistic sense of place. Rising as a genre in the 17th century as the Dutch economy boomed, the cityscape began as commissioned artwork for the town halls of newly prosperous communities. The works were majestic and commanding, occasionally large enough to fill entire walls.
Accordingly, the works from this era showcased in the exhibit share the same quiet sense of Dutch pride. These are the paintings of a nation coming into its own. With golden light casting the clustered buildings aglow and the rippling teal blue of the harbors, the paintings are unabashedly beautiful.
At 15 feet long, Jan Van Goyen's "View of the Hague from the Southeast," for example, covers an entire wall of the exhibit. Originally painted for the town hall of The Hague, the commanding work had to be airlifted from the first-floor window of its home in the Netherlands before beginning the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean to D.C. to appear in this exhibit. A busy canal seams together the foreground's agricultural scenery. Beneath a brilliant blue sky, the city of The Hague beckons. Despite its majesty, the painting's prideful sense of place is unexpectedly humble and quiet. It shares the same unself-conscious rendering of Dutch scenic beauty explored in the exhibit's other, smaller works.
One of the exhibit's most compelling attributes is its use of vintage cartographic memorabilia. The restored maps have smoothed-out folds and the subdued-sepia coloring from having withstood centuries. Hung next to the scenic paintings, the maps reflect the themes of the artwork. They are two visuals of the same Dutch landscape; two vehicles for piecing together history.
Further, the maps are just plain cool and unexpected. A lion-shaped map from the 16th century Dutch revolt against Spanish rule places the colored veins of the map within the boldly sketched body of a lion. It's hard not to feel nostalgic for an era where geography and place were so tangible and immediate, for the light and texture lost in the modern methods of finding our way.
The social fabric depicted in these works was one that pulled Dutch citizens to the city centers, pulling the light and detail of the works to the cluttered canals and bustling streets. In Jan Christiaen Micker's "Bird's Eye View of Amsterdam," the aerial view conjures a compact city clustered in the painting's center, giving way abruptly at its fringes to desolate farmland. With near-cartographic rendering, the painting evokes the strong Dutch sense of community.
The new NGA exhibit is aptly named: this collection is truly golden. The exhibit's thoughtful layout and incorporation of unexpected materials crafts a beautiful reflection on the building of community. "Pride of Place" will be at the National Gallery of Art until May 3. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Sunday, and from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. Sundays. Visit www.nga.gov for more information.
You can reach this staff writer at agoldstein@theeagleonline.com.
