From the museum website, 25 January 2010
This exhibition brings together 42 remarkable landscapes from the “golden age” of Dutch 17th-century painting. Following the Protestant Reformation, landscape painting was no longer confined to the background of a religious narrative, but gained an independent status and currency in its own right. Artists turned to the countryside and to the sea to convey a pride in their homeland – the newly reformed Dutch Republic.
While some painters looked to their native surroundings for subject-matter, others found inspiration in the mountainous vistas and golden light of Italy. The exhibition includes outstanding works by Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, Nicolaes Berchem and Meindert Hobbema.