This comprehensive book explores the evolution of genre painting throughout the Dutch Golden Age, beginning in the early 1600s and continuing through the opening years of the 18th century. Wayne Franits, a well-known scholar of Dutch genre painting, offers a wealth of information about these works as well as about seventeenth-century Dutch culture, its predilections and its prejudices.
The author approaches genre paintings from a variety of perspectives, examining their reception among contemporary audiences and setting the works in their political, cultural, and economic contexts. Luxuriously illustrated and with a full representation of the major artists and the cities where genre painting flourished, this book is a welcome addition to the literature of the Dutch Golden Age and should delight students, scholars and the general public.