| This study demonstrates the widespread influence that trade by the Dutch East India Company (in Dutch, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or V.O.C.) had on seventeenth-century Netherlandish art. From the founding of the Company in 1602 until the end of the century, many categories of painting--images of shipping, landscapes, still lifes, genre, allegories, and portraiture--revealed the considerable impact that the Company and its trade with the exotic East had on the Dutch. The Dutch response to their maritime prowess, to the eastern lands, to the exotic trade goods imported into their country, and to their differing roles as merchants at home and in the East are all revealed in these paintings. The majority of V.O.C.-inspired paintings were found to date from after 1640, indicating that the Company's effect on art was directly tied to its successful trade expansion in the East. The use of trading issues as the focus of this study allowed the paintings to be placed in their larger social and historical context.;This examination of the paintings corresponds with the categories of imagery that resulted from the interest of Dutch artists and patrons in V.O.C. trade. Successful trips to the East contributed to the expanding market for shipping scenes, and V.O.C. shipping scenes at home and abroad are discussed first. The relatively rare representations of Dutch territorial possessions in the East, most of which were used by the Company as a visible manifestation of its widespread trading network, are the focus of the second chapter. Next, the items imported from the East are shown to have been of the greatest interest to the Dutch, resulting in many paintings that contain exotic eastern merchandise in the categories of still life, genre, allegory, and portraiture. The patterns of trade in the pertinent oriental goods is analyzed in order to more fully understand these paintings. Finally, portraits of those involved in Dutch East India Company trade are shown to indicate that those who worked in the Netherlands had a different self-image from those who worked in the East. |
