LOS ANGELES, CA.-The meteoric rise of the Dutch economy around 1600 created a rich merchant class that could afford to buy and collect art. In this developing market, artists began to make drawings for sale as finished works in their own right. Often signed and dated, these drawings are among the most vivid and engaging works on paper produced during this period. This phenomenon of finished drawing is examined in Paper Art: Collecting Drawings in Holland, 1600–1800, at the Getty Center, through November 20, 2005.

Paper Art explores the techniques, subject matter, and style of these finished drawings, along with the rise of collecting and the cultural context that surrounded its development in the 17th and 18th centuries. Of the 35 works on display, nearly one third are new acquisitions, highlighting the recent growth of the Museum’s collection of Dutch drawings. Among them are works that sketch a lively and intimate portrait of Dutch life, including Cows Crossing a Ford with a Couple and a Dog by Nicolaes Berchem, Peasants Playing Backgammon and Merry-Making in a Tavern by Cornelis Dusart, and Hendrik Meyer’s A Summer Scene.

Finished drawings were a significant and lucrative part of the creative output of Golden Age artists such as Jan van Goyen, Pieter Molijn, and Adriaen van Ostade. Purchased at print and bookshops or at auctions, drawings were sometimes assembled loose in books, forming a type of collection that the Dutch called papierkunst or “paper art.” These collections were often organized by subject matter, with natural history illustration being a prominent category. Gerardus van Veen was one of many Dutch artists making refined watercolors of animals and plants that catered to a clientele of amateur naturalists and wealthy collectors. In his profile portrait of a shorebird, Standing Ruff, he articulated individual feathers with scientific accuracy and consciously left room at the bottom left corner for his elaborate signature and date. Drawings of this period were produced in great quantity, frequently in series. Jan van Goyen’s A Village Festival with Musicians Playing Outside a Tent was probably originally part of a suite of town views. It is one of some 250 produced by the artist in 1653 alone.

Drawings were also framed and hung like small paintings. Adriaen van Ostade’s reputation as one of 17th-century Holland’s best-loved draftsmen is based largely on his finished watercolors of peasant scenes, such as Peasant Festival on a Town Street. During the 1670s, he produced many such multi-figured watercolors that became sought-after collectors’ pieces, notable for their picturesque charm, jewel-like palette, and a degree of finish approaching that of an easel panel. Another example is Adriaen van de Venne’s Moralizing Scene with an Old Woman and a Man. The work uses oil paint in monochromatic tones of brown, gray, and yellow to produce the virtuosic effects of moonlight and candle illumination that give it the look of a small, exquisite painting.

The vogue for finished drawings became even more popular among 18th-century collectors. Drawings such as those featured in the exhibition were studied and admired at kunstbeschouwingen or “art showings,” where 18th-century connoisseurs held evening gatherings to discuss their collections and to enjoy a shared enthusiasm for paper art.