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| | This immense room has an unusual roof reminiscent of a tent. Light pours through the large windows and patches of summer sunlight play on the patterned parquet floor. The same real-life motif is contained in a painting by a Dutch artist who was able to reveal the ineffable charm in the interior of an ordinary house whose walls were hung with paintings in dark frames - townscapes and seascapes, often featuring ships plying the seas or lying at anchor, as well as genre scenes painted with gentle humour. They exude the atmosphere of Dutch daily life. Here too are portraits of Dutch people with their joie-de-vivre and self-confidence and still lifes offering philosophical reflection or simply a delight to the eyes. There were, though, other painters who had fallen in love with the sights of another country - Italy. Among them was Nicolaes Berchem, one of the foremost representatives of the Italianate tendency in Dutch painting. |
