Gezicht op Huis de Oude Tempel en gezicht op Winssen 1750 - 1792

Hendrik Spilman created this print, "View of Huis de Oude Tempel and view of Winssen," sometime in the 18th century. Here, the artist gives us two images of the rural Dutch landscape. In the top half, we see figures approaching a grand house, and in the bottom half, a church stands proudly over grazing cattle. What is the public role of such images? We might ask. In the Dutch Golden Age, landscape painting exploded in popularity, and the art market boomed. These kinds of prints are related to this earlier movement. By the 1700s, the Netherlands had become a major economic and political power. Prints like these, sold as part of bound collections, allowed a growing middle class to imagine their place in this burgeoning nation. This print, like many others, reminds us that art exists within a web of social and economic relations. To understand this print further, we might look to archives of Dutch trade, records of land ownership, or even sermons given in the church depicted here.