Ruth Leon recommends…Clouds, Ice, and Bounty – National Gallery of Art

Clouds, Ice, and Bounty – National Gallery of Art, Washington
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​The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC recently mounted a spectacular exhibition of 27 Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings collected by Lee and Juliet Folger.

A vast trading empire blossomed during the “Little Ice Age” of the 1600s, bringing great wealth to the Dutch Republic and neighbouring Flanders. In this introduction to the exhibition, curator Betsy Wieseman, head of the National Gallery’s department of northern European paintings, explores a few of the meticulously detailed landscapes, seascapes, still lifes, genre scenes, and portraits seen in Clouds, Ice, and Bounty. Clouds and ice abound in these wide-ranging works, but how much of the bounty did artists exaggerate to create a stronger impression of abundance? Learn how to untangle these subtly distorted realities.

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