Fabritius’ Goldfinch, Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring, and Kalf’s Still-Life Topics of Presentation at Lyme Library March 27

  Robert Baldwin, Associate Professor of Art History at

Connecticut College, will present a slide presentation on three masterpieces of
Dutch art at the Lyme Public Library on Thursday, March 27 at 7 P.M.  The title of the program is  Fabritius’
Goldfinch, Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring, and Kalf’s Still-Life:
Humble Subjects and High

Aestheticism in Dutch Baroque Art.

           As the only country in seventeenth-century Europe
where ordinary citizens ruled themselves, the Netherlands favored an art of
everyday Dutch life. Most Dutch Baroque art depicted local, Dutch landscapes,
cityscapes, portraits, still-life objects, and scenes of everyday life, both
urban and rustic. To raise these mundane subjects to the high level of “Art,” a
few Dutch artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Fabritius, and Kalf developed
hyper-aesthetic styles featuring dramatic light, poetic color, and abstract
brushwork. This talk examines three works of Dutch art as examples of a new
self-conscious aestheticizing in Dutch art, irrespective of subject matter.

                The program is free and open to the public.  Please call the library at 860-434-2272 or
email programreg@lymepl.org to register.