A famous work in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, this picture requires a slow, close look in order to see beyond its reputation and observe its subtleties. Walsh examines the place of the work in the career of Jacob van Ruisdael, the finest of all Dutch landscape painters, and considers it in the context of the many new landscape subjects that developed in the 17th century.

Recorded on Friday, February 6, 2015, 1:30 pm.

1. Abraham Bloemaert’s Deluge and the Dawn of the Golden Age
2. Jan Steen’s Card Players and Dutch Genre Painting
3. Jacob van Ruisdael’s Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede and Dutch Landscape
4. The Night Watch: Rembrandt, Group Portraiture, and Dutch History
5. Frans Hals’s Portrait of a Preacher: Virtuosity and the Rough Style
6. Johannes Vermeer’s View of Delft: The Prose and Poetry of View Painting

In January and February 2015, John Walsh offered a series of six lectures that explores the Golden Age of Dutch art.

John Walsh, B.A. 1961, is Director Emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and a specialist in Dutch paintings. He was a paintings curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He received a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has taught history of art courses at Columbia and Harvard and currently teaches at Yale.