In this artwork, how is the Dutch pride discussed?
In the wake of the Eighty Years' War, a new nation was born: the Dutch Republic. Expressions of Dutch pride of place in prints and paintings were crucial in cultivating a sense of nationalism and cultural identity in this young nation. Its inhabitants were eager to depict the prosperity of their newly independent country. Art Historian H. Perry Chapman argues that landscape paintings with views of Haarlem with its bleaching fields were inspired by a series of landscape prints featuring Haarlem's bleaching fields, titled Pleasant Places Around Haarlem, done years earlier by printmaker Claes Jansz Visscher the Younger during the Twelve Years' Truce, a time during which the Northern Netherlands first tasted independence from Spain and struggled to begin to unite into what would eventually become the Dutch Republic. It is during the Truce that a sub-genre of Dutch landscape painting appears, one that exalts the rural lands of the Netherlands and the livelihoods of the people that inhabit it; Chapman asserts that these prints inspired Dutch Golden Age landscape paintings celebrating rural life. In addition to the expression of Dutch, and more specifically local Haarlem, pride through the prominent depiction of linen-bleaching fields just outside of the town, there is another much less prominently displayed expression of Dutch pride within this work: the windmills. Specifically the polder mill is responsible for much of the economic prosperity experienced in the Netherlands at this time. Much of the Netherlands is Lowlands, resulting in many marshes and pools of stagnant water, which can be seen in the lefthand corner of this work. The polder mill was used to pump water out of the Dutch landscape and create more land that could then be used for farming or even linen-bleaching. The windmills dotting the skyline of View of Haarlem with Bleaching Fields are symbols of the Dutch land reclamation effort occurring when this was painted, a popular theme in Dutch landscape paintings of the seventeenth century. Without the use of the windmill for both land reclamation and energy production, the Dutch economy would not have reached the heights it did. As a reminder of the land reclamation effort, this is also an expression of Dutch pride because the adaptation of the windmill in order to battle nature for the Lowlands was a tremendous technological feat of the Dutch, and ended up becoming their most significant contribution to the history of technology.
Lowland Haarlem Dutch Twelve Years' Truce Dutch Republic Dutch Golden Age windmill Eighty Years' War Netherlands