Classic Reprint Rembrandt. Dutch painting may properly be described as an outcome of the independence of Holland as a state. So long as the Netherlands formed a whole, the predominant art was that of Flanders, and there was no Dutch art to speak of, as distinct from the Flemish. But the long and bloody war against the Spanish rule led for the northern and the southern provinces respectively to very different results, and one of these results was a decided divergence in the development of art in the two regions. Still th is community of origin was never entirely ignored, and Flemish and Dutch painting were in agreement in the one essential characteristic, that they sought and found the means of poetical expression in colour rather than in form. The year 1609, in which the conclusion of a truce for twelve years carried with it virtually the recognition of the seven United Provinces as an independent state, may be said to have witnessed the birth of Dutch painting. Which now became About the Publisher...