(Series) Dutch Art and the City: Commerce, Trade, and Art in the 17th Century
Wed, Oct 28
|Online and Replay
In five sessions, explore how trade, finance, and maritime power shaped Dutch art from the sea paintings of van de Velde to Rembrandt's merchant portraits.
Time & Location
Oct 28, 2026, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Online and Replay
About the Event
Session 3: 28/10/2026
The Faces of the Golden Age: Merchants, Regents, and Civic Portraiture
Who were the people who built this world? Unlike any other European society of the period, the Dutch Republic was run not by an aristocracy or a court but by an urban merchant class that governed its own cities, ran its own companies, and commissioned its own art. This talk is devoted to portraiture — Frans Hals's civic guard groups, Rembrandt's Syndics of the Drapers' Guild, the great individual merchant portraits — as a form of social self-definition. We ask what these men and women chose to say about themselves in paint, and what that tells us about the values of the first modern bourgeois society.
delivered by Mariska Beekenkamp-Wladimiroff in partnership with New York Y92 Roundtable. You will be redirected to their website for booking.