THE DUTCH MASTERS Art and culture flourished in Holland in the 1600’s. The seventeenth century was to be the golden age of painting in the Netherlands and produced the great Dutch masters. Within a span of 55 years, there was in chronological order: Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Flemish; Frans Hals; Anton Van Dyck; Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669); Jacob van Ruysdael and Jan Vermeer (born 1632), among many others. Between 1568 and 1648, the Dutch fought for their independence from Spain. During this time, secular art (non-religious, such as portraits, still life, landscape and genre) largely replaced religious art in Holland. All the secular themes (non-religious) that loom so large in Dutch and Flemish painting in the Baroque era (1600-1700) were first defined between 1500 and 1600. The process was gradual and shaped by a need to cater to popular taste as church and state commissions became steadily scarcer. Dutch artists did not have the large-scale public commissions sponsored by State and Church that were available throughout the Catholic world. This was  so because Protestant iconoclasm (no religious images allowed) was particularly widespread in the Netherlands where the Reformed Faith was the official religion. The general public developed so insatiable an appetite for pictures that the whole country became gripped by a kind of collector’s mania. One observer noted in 1641, “It is an ordinary thing to find a common farmer lay out two to three thousand pounds in this commodity. Their houses are full of them ...“ The Dutch looked for themselves in art and therefore wanted portraits of themselves, their wives and children and also scenes representing their own life within the home (genre) and outside it. They were realists and the paintings they commissioned from their artists were realistic. The naturalism of the Great Italian painter Caravaggio was being felt (a big influence on the young Rembrandt) outside Italy and the Dutch painters that studied in Italy brought back paintings in the new style and a knowledge of its techniques. The paintings of the Baroque Period have always been a favorite of mine and especially seventeenth century Dutch paintings. Represented here are my versions of some great works by Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael and Vermeer.