Celebrating the enduring British taste for collecting Dutch paintings from the long seventeenth century, this exhibition catalogue will explore why and how this particular type of art was desired, commissioned and displayed, through the consideration of Golden Age masterpieces from a number of National Trust houses.
 
This catalogue will be published to accompany the fi rst ever exhibition of Golden Age Dutch pictures in the collection of the National Trust, which will be shown at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Holburne Museum in Bath and at Petworth House in West Sussex (2018–19).
 
Celebrating the enduring British taste for collecting Dutch paintings from the long seventeenth century, the publication will explore why and how this particular type of art was desired, commissioned and displayed through the consideration of masterpieces from a number of National Trust houses. It will feature portraits, still lifes, religious pictures, maritime paintings, landscapes, genre paintings and history pictures, painted by celebrated artists such as Rembrandt, Lievens, Hobbema, Cuyp, De Heem, Ter Borch and Metsu, as well as less well-known artists such as De Baen and Van Diest. The National Trust has the largest collection of art in the British Isles, including many great masterpieces, amassed by key patrons and displayed in some of the country’s greatest houses. Dutch Golden Age pictures form an important part of this collection, and National Trust houses with particularly important collections of Dutch pictures include Ham House, Dyrham Park, Ascott, Upton House and Polesden Lacey.
 
The catalogue will include essays by Quentin Buvelot (chief curator at the Mauritshuis) and David Taylor (curator of pictures and s culpture at the National Trust). Other aspects of the infl uence of Dutch culture in British country houses will be discussed (using national Trust examples) – on furniture, garden design and print and ceramics collecting.