PAINTERS OF AND FOR THE ELITE 85 A striking characteristic of seventeenth-century Dutch painting is the artists’ orientation towards their own cities. In the history of art, this orientation is reflected in such designations as the Utrecht Caravaggisti, the Haarlem Mannerists and the Leiden ‘fine’ painters. All of these terms refer to local styles of painting with distinguishing, city- specific characteristics, which resulted from various forms of interaction between local artists. 1 This prompted Bob Haak, the author of The Golden Age (1984), one of the most influential overviews of Dutch painting, to choose an artist’s place of activity as the basis of his classification system. 2 A justifiable choice, certainly since socio-economic research has demonstrated that the strict rules enforced by artists’ guilds to the sale of paintings from other cities forced painters in the major cities of Holland to mainly work for local markets. 3 Even so, not every development fits seamlessly into this picture. In a recent overview of seventeenth-century genre painting, the author described the emergence of domestic genre painting (in line with Haak’s book) from the perspective of the cities where its practitioners were active. 4 However, the works in this exhibition by Gerrit Dou, Gerard ter Borch, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch, Gabriel Metsu, Johannes Vermeer, Frans van Mieris, Caspar Netscher and others display so many similarities in style, subject, composition and technique that this local perspective does not suffice, and a broader view seems appropriate. The problem, however, is that this approach presupposes familiarity with each other’s work, although meetings between genre painters from different cities must have happened, but they are hardly, if ever, documented. All the same, they must have taken place. Yet knowledge of one another’s work did not necessarily require personal contact. Acquaintance with the work of artists from other towns could also come about through the paintings on offer at annual markets, the holdings of collectors or art dealers’ stock in trade. Various painters represented in this exhibition knew one another personally, which stands to reason in the case of painters active in the same city. 5 Vermeer, De Hooch and 6. PAINTERS OF AND FOR THE ELITE Relationships, Prices and Familiarity with Each Other’s Work PIET BAKKER Detail, CAT. 7.3 Gerrit Dou, Lady at her Toilet, 1667