The Dutch Golden Age (17th century) produced some of history’s greatest painters. Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) mastered chiaroscuro (licht en donker — light and shadow) and psychological portraiture. His Nachtwacht (Night Watch, 1642) is the centrepiece of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) painted intimate scenes of domestic life with extraordinary light effects — Het meisje met de parel (Girl with a Pearl Earring) is his most famous work.
Dutch painting vocabulary: het schilderij (painting), de schilder (painter), de stillevens (still lifes — a typically Dutch genre of food, flowers, and objects), het portret (portrait), het landschap (landscape), de genreschilderij (genre painting of everyday life), het doek (canvas), het olieverf (oil paint), het museum (museum), de galerie (gallery), de tentoonstelling (exhibition).
The tradition continues. Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), though his famous works were painted in France, was Dutch and is honoured in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) developed De Stijl abstract art. MC Escher (1898-1972) created mathematical impossible drawings. Contemporary Dutch visual arts are supported by generous cultural subsidies — kunstsubsidie (arts subsidy) — and the Netherlands maintains one of the highest museum densities per capita in the world.