A Dutch Italianate, Adriaen Van de Velde represents a point of artistic crosscommunication across borders, fusing agricultural landscapes in Holland with mythological Arcadian scenes in Italian settings. He died at the early age of 35, and yet he produced a great number of masterpieces that earned him tremendous posthumous fame in the 18th and 19th centuries, when he was one of the most sought-after names among collectors in Germany, France and England. Compared to Mozart's chamber music by the renowned art historian Wolfgang Stechow (1896-1974), Van de Velde's works are delicate and carefully composed and demonstrate his mastery of lighting effects as well as the human figure. His father Willem van de Velde the Elder and brother of the Younger were both marine painters, who in the winter of 1672-73 moved from Leiden to England to work in the service of King Charles II. Adriaen, by contrast, almost certainly never travelled outside his native country and chose to paint landscapes rather than seascapes. His meadows, Italianate views, beaches, dunes, forests, winter scenes and portraits in landscape settings and are among the very best that the Dutch Golden Age has produced. Moreover, the artist's drawings are widely considered to be a high point in 17th-century Dutch draughtsmanship. Yet despite his fame in previous centuries and the exquisite quality of his work, there has never been an exhibition devoted to the artist. As well as bringing together 60 of his finest works, the publication will reunite the paintings with their preparatory studies in seductive red chalk or pen and ink for the first time, making it possible to follow very precisely the various phases in the artist's creative process - perhaps more so than is possible for any other Dutch artist of the period. The publication will therefore offer not only a survey of the artist's oeuvre but also a rare glimpse of a seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painter at work, from conception to completion.

An illuminating study of the singularly gifted Dutch artist Frans Hals, a true revolutionary in the field of portraiture and one of the most sought-after painters of his generation   This beautifully illustrated book offers a fresh scholarly appraisal of Frans Hals, more than 30 years since the last large exhibition devoted to his work. Essays cover all the important aspects of Hals’s oeuvre, including his militia paintings, his spectacular family portraits and his depictions of laughter: he was one of very few artists throughout the history of Western painting who successfully managed to paint people smiling and laughing. The texts also provide an overview of the artist’s life, and examine his extraordinarily virtuoso technique, which involved painting extremely fast straight on to the canvas.   The authors set out to place Hals and his work firmly in the context of his time, employing new previously unpublished archival research and technical findings. For the first time, an overview is given of all the apprentices who worked for Hals. Other themes, such as the design for portrait prints or the humour seen in the works of Frans Hals, have never before been treated separately.   Published by National Gallery Global/Distributed by Yale University Press   Exhibition Schedule:   The National Gallery, London (September 30, 2023–January 21, 2024)   The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (February 15–June 9, 2024)

The latest in this annual bulletin based on research carried out at the National Gallery, London, draws on the combined expertise of scientists, conservators, and curators, bringing together a wealth of information about artists' materials, practices, and techniques. The cleaning and restoration of The Adoration of the Kings by Botticelli and Filippino Lippi reveals its unusually complex physical and attributional history. The relining of Van Dyck's equestrian portrait of Charles I is described, an operation that posed certain challenges due to its large size; at the same time the records of conservation of this painting offer a potted history of lining at the National Gallery. The recent cleaning of Jan van Eyck's Portrait of a Man ("Leal Souvenir") has shown that it retains an original surface coating that may explain its excellent condition. And finally, Leonardo's Virgin of the Rocks offers new discoveries from macro XRF scanning and hyperspectral imaging, which extend our knowledge of the evolution of the painting during its production. Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press