Talk:Dutch School (painting)

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Okay, I have to wonder, is there really a "Dutch School" of artists before c. 1600? One might be able to argue for the Dutch Baroque painting as the "Dutch School", but before that it's not really possible (very localised tendencies: yes; but a greater concept: doubtfully). And then the article confuses the matter even more by saying the Dutch school encompasses all of the artists of Early Netherlandish painting and Dutch Renaissance painting (assuming only those active in the northern Low Countries—something Karel van Mander didn't express in his Het schilderboek—that is further exemplified by the fact that I need to actually link to Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting to make the latter reference work at present) and only the first thirty years or so of Dutch Baroque painting, but goes on to only list artists that were primarily active after 1630 (most of Rembrandt's and Frans Hals's careers, Jan Vermeer, Jan Steen and Jacob van Ruisdael). Is the purpose mostly to be a list duplicating the List of people from the Dutch Golden Age#Painting or the Baroque section of List of Dutch painters? I have no problem with that, but how many different ways do these same artists need to be listed? It needs some massaging (only Baroque artists are included right now, most of whom fall outside of the description presented in the lead).

So, my question is, what is the basis for the description? Is there a credible source that describes the "Dutch school" as it is here presented? Okay, I know there are similar descriptions, but very few credible ones written in the past fifty years or so?

Those are my objections: now, I'm going to remove the part about only including the "Dawn" of the "Golden Age" so that we can include those artist I just mentioned. I'm also going to remove Anthony van Dyck from the list since his brief dealings with the Orange court don't make him any more a part of this so-called "Dutch School" than was Peter Paul Rubens (although they all were pretty much part of the same school—the paintings of the Oranjezaal in the Huis ten Bosch attest to that). I'll also add a citation tag about Haarlem. Is that in Montias (mostly Delft and Amsterdam), or in, erm, Schema? I'm sure I can track it down, but maybe not immediately, and when I do it will probably get moved over Dutch Golden Age painting, which itself is in dire need of help. I mainly wrote all of this to document that some work needs to be done and if I make some changes with which you disagree, at least you know where I'm coming from and we can go from there.

By the way, I think there is enough artistic cooperation and stylistic affinity for there to be a Delft School and a few others, but with limitations (although I do respect traditional groupings as acceptable for Wikipedia). Wayne Franits's recent book Dutch seventeenth-century genre painting is good example of how different Dutch geographic centres reflect local tendencies. A "Dutch school" as it is described, however... --Stomme (talk) 10:50, 7 April 2008 (UTC)