‘A masterpiece, a brilliantly original synthesis, often revelatory, miraculously condensed, and always readable’ David Carrier, Counterpunch This authoritative book in the World of Art series offers a new perspective on the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, authored by one of the world's foremost experts on Dutch art. Renowned art historian Gary Schwartz offers a fresh and contemporary perspective on seventeenth-century Dutch painting, one of the most important schools of European art. This lively and authoritative guide brings together a range of notable paintings from leading museum collections to explore the work of well-known masters such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Judith Leyster and Johannes Vermeer, as well as artists that the reader may be encountering for the first time, such as Adriaen van de Velde and Gesina ter Borch.

Across nine chapters, particular attention is paid to patronage and the market; reception and study; gender and race; painters abroad, in Europe as well as Asia and elsewhere; and issues of attribution. Covering an impressively wide range of subjects and styles, Dutch Painting investigates the full panoply of works created by the largest school of seventeenth-century European painters, offering a comprehensive overview of Dutch painting in its own context – and in ours – with a fresh and insightful eye.