De halteplaats 1606 - 1656

Jan van Goyen made this pen and brown ink drawing of a stagecoach stop somewhere in the Netherlands. The scene is a snapshot of Dutch Golden Age life and the burgeoning transportation systems that were linking the cities. Van Goyen was one of the key figures in the artistic turn towards landscape as a primary subject in Dutch art. If Italian art institutions valued the human figure above all else, then the newly independent Dutch Republic was increasingly interested in its own towns, citizens, and countryside. Art was becoming increasingly commercialized, and this aesthetic turn went hand-in-hand with a growing urban middle class interested in purchasing scenes of daily life to hang in their homes. To understand the image better, we can consult historical maps, travel logs, and municipal records. Van Goyen's genre scene reflects the social and economic transformations of his time.