Dutch genre painting

 Anne Hollander

The viewer knows where he is, as he “reads” the picture. But here, as in cinema, a great many things are visible just in order to be so, and only some have direct pertinence t0 the theme. The jumble of phenomena defies reading; the picture must be stared at for a long time so that the eye can gulp one thing after another, both piecemeal and in different combinations, as it scans back and forth. While some of them may pointedly signify, the elements of the decor seem random and the style of rendering neutrally photo-graphic. The gestures and postures in Steen’s comedies may resemble the exaggerated comic-acting style of his day, but for drama done in “takes,” as it is in these works, the set has that very intentional casual artlessness we see in modern film. It is the same combination we see in a Jerry Lewis movie: zany or gross behavior in carefully normal locations. which are then thrown into disorder by the action.

The same idea using different themes is expounded by Metsu. and later by Xetscher and Van Mieris. These painters are more romantic. and coarse comedy is subdued in favor of gentle amusement and some sentimentality -nothing is raffish. everything is sweetly respectable. and everyone is very pretty. Metsu 05ers a great number of rich possessions shown to the best advantage. just as in film melodramas showing Kim Novak anxiously and prettily betraying her husband. but also happily at ease and not at all stifled amid the satisfying trappings of middle-class comfort. Metsu's rugs and jugs and satin skirts. embroidered slippers and glossy lutes are never excessive: as in the most successful film melodramas. they look attainable. Sight is always the point-to see is not only to know. but to possess. A large component in the appeal of such paintings must then have been just this opportunity for studying. savoring. and visually possessing lovely material objects. while being pleasantly entertained by subjects slightly risqué. slightly sentimental, or slightly funny. The moral meanings about the wickedness of sloth. greed. and lechery are neatly folded into a delicious package. just as in "Dallas" and "Dynasty," consisting largely of material things exquisitely rendered to show that their true value is quite detached from the moral of the story (5.9).

There is something not only cinematic (in the woman's-picture style) but positively American about this pictorial mode. It demonstrated the same unstable combination of puritanism and self-indulgence, of prudery and licentiousness that has stamped much American culture-and there are real affinities between seventeenth-century Holland and us, when we are seeing ourselves not only as progressive and prosperous, highly moral. and rather piously materialistic, but also as simple-hearted, unsophisticated. and sexually volatile-as many of our Hollywood films have often shown us doing. There are even moreexcruciating echoes. With these lovesick maidens visited by pompous doctors, or tipsy housewives about to warm up unbeconr ingly to dashing casual callers, there is a familiar yet uncomfortable sense of the sexes, one we used to see constantly in films of thirty years ago and before. These well-to-do middle-class women have the kind of freedom that comes with enlightened bourgeois leisure and affluence, that permits comradeship and social parity with men but no practical power or active ambition. They may play around, and also spend money on themselves. and keep the house exquisitely without a husband's or father's supervision: wives and girls have great freedom, but no other work. Tending and brooding about love and possessions-sometimes children-are their preoccupation. The expensive prostitute, the chic matron, and the princesslike