The way we read any art is conditioned by our time. We cannot fully
Paulus Potter, The Young Thief (oil on panel, 1649) © The Royal Collection
grasp the originality of impressionism; we cannot fully comprehend the ‘Shock of New’ throughout the 20th century, or even fully grasp the early acceptance of the Young British Artists. So much has been written on all of these movements, that we cannot grasp the way in which any of them took off. The surprise of each movement has been dulled over time as they are forced into relationship and called to contend with newer schools with their own original elements. This not only challenges artists, but confronts curators: the time frame between the original planning and the last days of an exhibition is often months, and frequently (in the case of touring exhibitions) years. In this time our response to images change, reputations of artists and art establishments alter, and interest in one exhibition over another fluxes with competing marketing. This is especially for consideration when launching a potential exhibition for the Queen’s Gallery, attached to Buckingham Palace. When the gift shop contains as many postcards of Charles, Camilla, and 100 years of pageantry alongside more aged masterpieces, the inseparability of the Royals to the art displayed cannot be denied.
To follow these touristy-weekend musings to their logical end, am I asserting that the wedding of our Duke and Duchess of Cambridge influences how we view a 17thcentury Adriaen van de Velde landscape
Philip Wouwerman's, 'The Hayfield' (oil on canvas, 1660-68) © The Royal Collection
with a hawking party? Does a spirit of celebration make us look anew at a Wouwermann’s depiction of peasants in a Hayfield? The answer to this is a most resolute ‘Yes’. The royal wedding is to these landscapes what those sweet caramelised biscuits are to your afternoon cup of earl grey: they add that extra sweet flavour to the already satisfactory brew.
The audience are offered a series of approaches to the exhibition. In the first room the notion of the Dutch Golden age and its influence on contemporary art is expounded, most obviously in a particularly lengthy audio discussion on Paulus Potter’s “A Young Bull and Two Cows in a Meadow”, assuring the audience that this isn’t simply a bull and two cows, but a rich symbolist panel defining the anticipated wealth coming to the Netherlands.
However, between the valid academic arguments and rich symbolist readings of the landscapes, a theme of humour pushes to the foreground of this room – a rich, personal humour, an appeal to that strongest human emotion which connects the 17th century artist with the 21st century viewer and the royal collector (in this case George V) with the day-tripping tourist. It is communicated in Paulus Potter’s ‘The Young Thief’ (oil on panel, 1649), a heavily animated scene showing a child attempting to steal two new born puppies from their mother. The screaming boy startled the on-looking milkmaid and brings a thundering sense of human activity as he hurtles into the idyllic landscape. His guilt in his face, half elated with his success, half fearful of the bitch’s response, is instantly recognisable and recognisably comical.
Similarly, Potter’s “Two Sportsmen outside an Inn” (oil on panel, 1651), is filled with more humour and self-aware comments on social status than Michael MacIntyre’s stream of middle-class observations. The contrast between the moneyed huntsman and the poor inn-keeping family – a relationship which is mirrored in the huntsman’s spaniel sniffing the inn-keeper’s mongrel – is played out against a mixed background of broken pots and shabby walls buried in a landscape of golden dunes and a further huntsman. Meanwhile, the naked bather in the lower left corner of Philip Wouwerman’s “The Hayfield” (oil on canvas, 1660-68) brings the touch of humour into the corridor of the adjoining room, and, being influenced by the recent pageantry, one could not help but compare this bather to those members of the public who celebrated the royal wedding by jumping into the fountain outside Buckingham Palace (only 400 yards away) in joyous celebration two weeks before.
The second room replaces the focus on financial readings of the Golden Age with a spiritual light. Jennifer Scott, curator of Paintings at the Royal Collection, details the spiritual approach of Cuyp,
The final room of this small exhibition can be considered a chapel to Dutch Master Landscapes. These landscapes should not be considered “secular”, as we misleadingly use and loosely define the work today. Whilst religious subjects are not explicit, they are to be found symbolically. For example, on the left hand wall, amidst a serious of seascapes, Jennifer Scott puts forward an argument for the religious symbolism in Aelbert Cuyp’s ‘The Passage Boat’ (oil on canvas, c. 1650). Meanwhile, on the right hand side, she welcomes the viewer to explore the way in which Cuyp’s spirituality is present in his landscapes, describing this half-portrait, half-landscape, as deeply
"Deeply spiritual" - Aelbert Cuyp, 'A page with two horses' (c. late 1650's) © The Royal Collection
“spiritual”, not simply the arrival of wealth, but a “pause on a journey”. This religious approach to landscape reflects an important new trend in theological studies, and is becoming increasingly recognised as an invaluable school of reading in art history. Scott says “Cuyp does seem to have travelled extensively into his imagination”, and it is this which the current viewer recognises amidst foreign topographical scenes.
These two paths, the symbolic and spiritual presence of religion in Dutch Masterworks, are split at the top of the room by the only explicitly religious painting of the exhibition: Jan Booth’s “Landscape with St. Philip baptising the Eunuch”, (Acts Chapter 8). This oil on canvas showing the two paths on which the Eunuch has travelled, and is yet to travel, hangs in the alcove at the end of the arched hall, like an altarpiece below and arched window, fitting for its religious subject matter.
Thus, while the first room opens up a path for the viewer to relate to the artworks through the transcending understanding of humour, the second shows spiritual relationship between the artist and his brushwork. A further relationship, between the viewer and the artworks of the Dutch Golden Age – separated by as many miles as years – is created. Be it through spiritual means, humorous appeals or historical expounding of the golden age, it is a relationship which is founded in the more immediate connection of the visitor as a viewer to alongside the Royal’s role as a collector – it is a place which makes us aware of our position in our own landscape – and glorifies it.
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Dutch Landscapes is shown alongside Treasures from the Royal Collection, The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, 15 April – 9 October 2011. Buy tickets.
The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Dutch Landscapes by Desmond Shawe-Taylor, with contributions by Jennifer Scott (Royal Collection Publications, 176 pages, 110 colour illustrations). Exhibition price £14.95 from Royal Collection shops and online.
Preview a selection of highlights online in the exhibition microsite.
Diary of a Young Art Critic 
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