Enchanting the Eye: Dutch Paintings of the Golden Age
Until November 7; The Queen’s Gallery, Edinburgh

It’s quite an experience, walking up the stairs in the Queen’s Gallery to see the new exhibition of Dutch paintings. First, you’re bowled over by the heady fragrance of the most enormous vase of flowers known to man, and then you’re struck by the vivid royal blue of the gallery walls. Meanwhile your audio headset delivers the languorous tones of the Royal Collection’s Director into your ear, against a background of 17th century court music.

This sensual fanfare is quite overpowering, and a bit out of tune with the resolutely modest note struck by Dutch art of the period. Like presbyterian Scotland, The Netherlands of the 17th century was a largely Calvinist state full of hard-working burghers who frowned upon gratuitous displays of ostentation.

The hang is poetic, grouping like with like, creating symmetry, and at the same time bringing out less obvious affinities between the paintings. Rembrandt’s mother is flanked by two flower paintings from the only woman artist in the show, creating a dignified, feminine space. On another wall, it’s the marvellously chunky cloud formations which unify two hunting scenes and a marine painting. The grander pictures are in the front gallery, while the more domestic scenes are saved for the small back room.

There are thousands of good Dutch pictures in the world, and not all of the paintings in this show rank among the real stars. However there are two which really get me excited. Rembrandt’s eyes fix on you in his glowing self-portrait, and seem to be offering you worldy-wise advice. The gloopy highlights of his chain and earring are grounded by the subdued darkness of his cloak, while the glazed layers of colour in his skin are otherworldly.

My other favourite is de Hooch’s Courtyard in Delft, where the red brick buildings cut a silhouette into the white of the sky, and the two women getting on with their work don’t even bother to look at you. The open doorways leading out of the courtyard are a hint of freedom, and the weather is sunny and crisp, just like the best days in Scotland.

The pictures – 51 of them in total – are for the most part quite small. Surprisingly so, in some cases. Looking at a reproduction of Rembrandt’s Christ and St Mary Magdalene at the Tomb, you might expect it to be a grand biblical painting of cathedral scale. Instead, it’s an intimate size, drawing you close, not pushing you away as many giant religious paintings tend to do.

When you get close, it’s fascinating to see the surfaces of the paintings – something that reproductions can’t offer. For me the most intriguing part of that Rembrandt is an incidental section: the clump of earth Christ stands on, with cabbagey plants around, and two women heading into the distance. These are roughly painted almost in a monochrome orangey-brown, in the half-light of Mary Magdalene’s dawning realisation that the gardener is in fact the risen Christ.

Looking at the loosely-brushed highlights in Albert Cuyp’s big, unglazed landscape it’s as if they were applied yesterday (I do hope they weren’t). The act of his painting is there in front of you – not a mystery despite the centuries that have passed since its creation. At the other extreme, the highly polished finish of Willem van Mieris’s scenes are impenetrable, the brushwork a closely-guarded secret.

This back room is like a social documentary, telling us of the social mores of the time, the produce that was sold in shops, the places people lived and the games they played. The stories are told in loving detail and often with a strong sense of narrative. Ter Borch shows us a young girl politely drinking her wine at the behest of a lascivious gentleman, his eyes narrowed with lecherous intent. The power balance is achingly obvious, and you want to grab the naïve innocent by her fur-coated shoulders and march her back home to safety. Too late now, I suppose.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 23.05.04