Time and Transformation in Seventeenth Century Dutch Art

Landscape paintings with ruins, scenes of weathered cottages, still lifes that feature human skulls, pictures of newsworthy catastrophes: These were among the notable subjects of Dutch art of the Old Masters, as museum goers have long known. Until now, though, no single exhibition has identified and explored the theme that runs through all these images. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College offered just such a far-reaching exhibition when it presented this exhibition. Organized by Susan Donahue Kuretsky, the Sarah Gibson Blanding Professor of Art at Vassar College, the exhibition was the first to examine how Dutch artists of this period dwelt on the workings of time and circumstance upon the physical world.

This exhibition drew together a wide range of exceptionally fine works from the Art Center itself, from private holdings, and from the collections of more than a dozen major American museums. Included were some ninety paintings, drawings, prints, and illustrated books, ranging in date from 1600 to 1690. Among the artists represented were Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, Joachim Wtewael, Abraham Bloemaert, Hercules Segers, and Daniel Vosmaer. "The Dutch used this kind of imagery both to recall their communal past and to reflect upon the varied conditions of life in the present," noted Susan Kuretsky. "An exhibition focusing broadly on this material may help us further understand the complex relationship between art and life in the Dutch Republic."

Following its presentation at Vassar College, the exhibition traveled to the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida (August 20 - October 30, 2005) and the J. B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky (January 10 - March 26, 2006). To extend the impact of the exhibition, Vassar College published a major catalogue, featuring entries and an overview from Susan Kuretsky and essays by five noted scholars. This exhibition was supported by generous grants from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Inc., Smart Family Foundation, Inc., and the Agnes Rindge Claflin Fund. There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.