When Modern Home Life Began: Holland, 1600

NEWARK, N.J., Nov. 7 (UPI) -- When did middle class domestic life as we know it, with comfortable furnishings and other amenities previously enjoyed only by the rich, become a reality?

It was in the 17th century in the Dutch Republic, only recently freed from Spain and a lively hub of commerce that reached as far as the East Indies. This was the time and the place when modernity came within reach of the many rather than the few, an era of great art, cabinetry, silver, glass, ceramics and textiles.

The first exhibition ever to explore a turning point in how the common man thought of his home -- as a private realm for family and leisure pursuits -- is "Art and Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt," now showing at the Newark Museum through Jan. 20. It will move to Denver for exhibition March 2 -- May 26, 2001.

At the core of this multidimensional show are 50 important paintings of Dutch family life as documented by Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu, Gerard Terborch, Nicolaes Maes, Pieter de Hooch, and Samuel van Hoogstraeten. They are surrounded by 70 extraordinary domestic objects of the period from a rococo silver baptismal clothes basket and elaborately veneered "kas" cupboard to an earthenware colander and a footwarmer.

These treasures are on loan from museums and private collections around the world, many of them in The Netherlands. They cover the era from 1630 to 1700, a period of conspicuous consumption when patronage of the arts by the church and royalty had been replaced by the patronage of the middle class urban population, mostly Protestant Calvinists who were people of humor who liked the good things of life.

"It was a period of social cohesion which doted on marriage and family," guest curator Mariet Westermann told UPI. "The home was seen as a private place to retreat into, and there was plenty of money to build such homes and decorate them beautifully. People got their own rooms for the first time, even their own studies. These were proto-modern homes with privacy people had not enjoyed before."

The Dutch nouveau riche loved to entertain their friends in their homes at drinking parties and musicales that were for the most part sedate but sometimes became so animated that they look like tavern scenes. When artists tired of depicting the starchy upper classes, they liked to catch a more slovenly level of society at play. One prominent artist, Jan Steen, had a license to sell wine out of his home.

The poster girl for the show, a 1657 Nicolaes Maes oil titled "The Eavesdropper," shows a tippling matron in an ermine-edged gown (and an apron that identifies her as the mistress of the house) watching a young couple embracing in a lower hallway while guests are merrymaking in a room beyond. The interior of the house is luxurious and a glimpse of a neighboring mansion through a doorway gives some idea of its own stately exterior.

Art for wall decoration was so popular that the Dutch Republic supported scores of artists who could hardly paint fast enough to meet he demand. Cheaper etchings also were popular and there are five of Rembrandt's finest portrait etchings of men in domestic interiors in the show. Art patrons sat for their portraits singly and in groups, both inside and outside their tall, narrow canal houses.

One of the most interesting studies by Steen is "The Burgher of Delft and His Daughter," showing a portly businessman in elegant black seated on his stoop patiently listening to a beggar woman's pleas while his daughter in colorful silks appears to be shunning the woman and her little son, who is standing hat in hand. Like so many Dutch paintings, a moral seems to be lurking in this glimpse of everyday street life.

Other aspects of Dutch 17th century life are touched on in the show including respect for the elderly, who are sometimes painted doing useful work, and the emergence of children as individual personalities dressed up like miniature adults. A final display room recreates the opulence of a Dutch interior, right down to wide floorboards in blonde wood.

When the Dutch weren't collecting paintings of hearth and home, they were buying splendid repousse and open work silver in the form of dishes, table silver, wedding cups, jewelry boxes, candlesticks, cruets, and toilette sets such as the silver-gilt one comprised of 12 pieces including mirror, basin, ewer, comb box, and even a porringer so the lady of the house could have breakfast while making up for the day. The rare complete set on display was made in The Hague.

All the decorative things the Dutch loved and had portrayed in their interior paintings are included in the show -- rare "turkey" carpets from the Orient that were used as table covers rather than rugs, Delft tiles with blue and white designs that were often used to frame fireplaces, and beautifully shaped stoneware jugs with pewter lids.

Furniture tended to be heavy but magnificently inlaid with patterns of flowers in rare woods by the French technique of marquetry. This art was refined by the Dutch and used in furniture exported to England where all things Dutch were popular after the Dutch prince, William of Orange, and his English queen, Mary, came to the throne in 1690.

Flowers, fruit, partly peeled citruses, fish, shellfish, glasses of wine, and Delft faience pottery were the favorite subjects of floral and still life painters who thrived in this era. Maria van Oosterwyck's "Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase," dating to the 1670s is gorgeous in color and movement and teams a rare Dutch tulip with a common sunflower.

Still life was taken one step further by illusionist "trompe l'oeil" artists who attempted to fool the eye of the beholder with objects so deceptively lifelike that they invite the viewer to touch them. This form of art, which originated in the Dutch Republic, is best exemplified by Van Hoogstraten's "Letter Rack," a painting that looks like a board with horizontal leather straps behind which letters and other personal objects are tucked.

Dutch trompe l'oeil paintings were a powerful influence on a few American 19th century artists, as can be seen in a pendant exhibition in another part of the museum. Titled "American Art in the Dutch Tradition," the show includes trompe l'oeil canvasses by John Frederick Peto and William Harnett along with still lifes by James Peale and Severin Rosen, and domestic scenes by Lilly Martin Spencer, Edward Lamson Henry, and John George Brown.