1: Art and Society in 16th-Century Netherlands
This lecture outlines the art to be discussed and provides historical background about the Protestant Reformation, Catholic Counter-Reformation, and the beginning of the Eighty Years' War between the Northern Netherlands (Holland) and the Spanish-ruled Southern Netherlands (Flanders).
20: Still-Life Painting, c. 1652–82
We conclude our examination of still-life painting with a look at the work of artists Samuel van Hoogstraten, Pieter Anraadt, Willem Kalf, Willem van Aelst, Abraham van Beyeren, and Jan Weenix, and also special categories such as illusionistic art, banquet pieces, and dead game.
21: Landscape Painting—The Early Decades
Dutch artists essentially invented naturalistic landscape painting, producing thousands of views of land and sea, in Holland and abroad. This is the first of seven lectures surveying the subject with examples ranging from Hendrik Goltzius around 1600 to the early work of Salomon van Ruysdael around 1630.
23: Foreign Landscapes
The Dutch were world traders and colonizers, and their interest in the world beyond Holland was expressed in landscapes by painters who went on foreign missions and by others who traveled alone or with other artists, including Frans Post, Allart van Everdingen, and Jan Both.
32: Rembrandt and the Baroque Style
Although he never left Holland, Rembrandt was acutely aware of the extroverted drama of the Baroque style that characterized much Italian and Flemish painting, and it found a place in his art, especially in the mid-1630s, when he painted some of his most dramatic works.
36: Rembrandt's Last Years
This final lecture features some memorable paintings of the last decade of Rembrandt's life. It discusses the fascination Dutch artists showed in creating their seemingly realistic record of the world with a lifelikeness and truthfulness that have made Dutch art of the Golden Age recognized everywhere.
Standards of beauty are seemingly endless and contradictory, which is why the rather hopeless phrase 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' was coined.
ALMA MATER
INSTITUTION
About William Kloss
Professor William Kloss is an independent art historian and scholar who lectures and writes about a wide range of European and American art. He was educated at Oberlin College, where he earned a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Art History. He continued his postgraduate work on a teaching fellowship at the University of Michigan and was then awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for two years of study in Rome. As Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia, he taught 17th- and 18th-century European art and 19th-century French art. Professor Kloss has enjoyed a long association with the Smithsonian Institution, presenting more than 150 courses in the United States and abroad on subjects ranging from ancient Greek art to Impressionism to the works of Winslow Homer. He has also been a featured lecturer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and for The Art Institute of Chicago. Professor Kloss serves on the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, a presidential appointment he has held since 1990. He is the author of several books, including Art in the White House: A Nation's Pride (2nd edition), which won the 2009 National Indie Excellence Award in the Art Category, as well as a 2009 USABookNews award for Best Book in Art. Most recently, he coauthored the United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art. He also has written articles published in Winterthur Portfolio, The Magazine Antiques, American Arts Quarterly, and Antiques & Fine Art.
