Product Description

The varieties of pleasure and their expression in Dutch rustic landscapes of the seventeenth century are recurring themes in Walter S. Gibson's engaging new book. Gibson focuses on Haarlem between 1600 and 1635, in his interpretation of Dutch landscapes and emphasizes prints, the medium in which the rustic view was first made available to the general art-buying public.

Gibson begins by looking at the origins of the rustic landscape in the sixteenth-century Flanders and its later reformation by Dutch artists, a legacy very much alive today. He next offers a critical review of "scriptural reading," a popular mode of interpreting the Dutch rustic landscape that incorporates Calvinist-influenced moral allegories. Gibson then explores traditional ideas concerning recreation and suggests that the pleasure of rural landscapes, not preaching, constituted their chief appeal for seventeenth-century urban viewers.

Using Visscher's Plaisante Plaetsen ("Pleasant Places") as a point of departure, Gibson examines the ways that townspeople, both the day-trippers and owners of country houses, experienced the Dutch countryside. He also discusses the role of staffage and suggests how the representations of peasants might have conditioned the responses of contemporary viewers to rural images.

Finally, Gibson considers how scenes of the dilapidated farm buildings, dead trees, and other evidence of material decay may reflect traditional ideas rustic life as imagined by a townsperson. Or how they may represent another way for the artist to engage his urban audience: far removed from the idealized landscapes of a Giorgione, the rustic landscape of a Ruisdael conveys a countryside that was beginning to disappear under the relentless pressures of urbanization.

Gibson's multilayered exploration of the rustic landscape enhances our understanding of the Golden Age in Dutch art. His richly illustrated book recalls a countryside now largely gone; at the same time, his evocative language gracefully articulates the role of the Dutch rustic landscape in the history of landscape painting.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1183935 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From the Inside Flap
"Walter Gibson's study on the rustic landscape provides a refreshing new approach to this subject so important to artists of the Low Countries during the 'Golden Age' of Dutch art. By investigating landscape along broad thematic lines, the author makes us query anew why the Dutch, to a unique degree, utilized landscape as a visual metaphor for their sense of well-being." --George Keyes, Elizabeth and Allan Shelden Curator of European Paintings, The Detroit Institute of Arts

"How often does one encounter a truly scholarly book that is also a 'page-turner'? The book's readability is the result of Professor Gibson's urbane and engaging writing style, which has served as a refreshing example to art historians for decades." --Laurinda S. Dixon, Professor of Art History, Syracuse University

About the Author
Walter S. Gibson is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities Emeritus at Case Western Reserve University. His published works include Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Two Studies (1993) and Mirror of the Earth: The World Landscape in Flemish Painting of the Sixteenth Century (1989). He lives in Vermont.

Customer Reviews

A Pleasant Book
Walter Gibson's "Pleasant Places" will help you enjoy the quiet and unassuming genre of 17th Century northern European landscape art. The author accepts the works at face value: pleasant images of places the Dutch in particular liked to visit. Gibson does not read religious allegory into them as some art historians do, but he instead shows you how to appreciate the quality of light, the sense of place, and the Dutch character that emerges from Dutch landscape art. He perhaps inadvertently offers some examples where religious interpretations may be more important than he allows, and you do not feel that he is forcing all of the works to fit his premise even though he is steadfast. The book is well-written, and I especially appreciate the author's parenthetical definition of Dutch terms and concepts as they are introduced. In addition, he gently reminds you of their meanings when they are reintroduced in subsequent chapters, so you won't have to hunt through the index and text to find them again. Some of the black-white reproductions of prints are too small, and not clear enough to enable detailed study, but this is a common problem with art history books, and this book will motivate you to visit the nearest art museum to study the genre in any case. Walter Gibson communicates a love and respect for 17th Century northern European landscape art that makes me want to visit Holland and experience it first-hand. Walter Gibson has persuaded me that I will find the Dutch countryside a pleasant place laden with history and wonderful light.