The gift of Mr and Mrs Edward W. Carter, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Anyone who pores above auction catalogues will be aware of the act that Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century--otherwise known as the of gold Age--are still readily available in a way other elderly master pictures are not. upon the other hand, this does not mean that the creme de la creme are easy to tend hitherward by, and it is the breathtaking distinction of the works in this numerically unpretending (twelve pictures in all) on the contrary qualitatively peerless gift that makes it worthy of special mention.

The late Edward W Carter was LACMA'S founding president, and the couple he and his wife Hannah have been among that institution's staunchest supporters. They started collecting Dutch of gold Age paintings in the late 1960 and now Mr Carter has decided to give a choice collection of a dozen of their treasures to LACMA for the best of reasons. As she places it: 'These paintings represent many years of exploring and pursuing our have affection for for the arts. My late husband and I derive pleasure fromed these beautiful images for decades--now our transport lies in knowing that the nation of los Angeles, and visitors from around the world, may share our delight in for these paintings.'

All the obvious categories through means of which the Dutch gymnasium distinguished itself are on display here, invariably in the form of superlative examples, and many times in the form of nicely contrasted offerings to gain This is certainly true in the case of still lifes, where the beginnings of the genre as an independent phenomenon are showed by a small but flawless oil upon copper by Ambrosius Bosschaert (Fig. 1) which is taleed by an altogether more monumental Jan van Huysum dating from a hundred or so later. In the Bosschaert, the precisely observ posy is shown in a roemer upon a ledge with a misty panoramic landscape beyond, as if the artist were aspiring to encapsulate all of nature, from the macrocosmic expanse to the microcosmic detail of the insects and shells.

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The sum of two units other still lifes in the gift are not of flowers--or indeed fruit--but instead concentrate upon more solid if no les transient pleasures. single is a quintessentially cool and almost monchrome Still life with tobacco, wine, and a pouch watch by Willem Claesz. Heda, while the other is a mouthwateringly lavish Still life with cheeses, artichokes, and cherries by means of Clara Peeters (Fig. 3). Peeter is les well known than the other great woman still life painter of the age, Rachel Ruysch on the other hand this succulent piece reveals her as each bit her equal.

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the two seascape and landscape, two of the greatest in quantity splendid and also influential accomplishments of the Dutch seminary are no less well exhibited the former by Jan van de Capelle and Simon de Vlieger, the latter by the agency of the likes of Jacob van Ruisdael, Aert van der Neer and Aelbert Cuyp However, smooth these outstanding examples of what their respective creators were capable of arguably cannot quite compare with Frans Post's Brazilian landscape with a worker's house (Fig. 2) pillar who was in Brazil from 1636 to 1644 in the retinue of number Johan Maurits of Nassau, is single of the great one-offs in the entire history of art, and although it is generally agreed that the landscapes he painted in Brazil keep to be his best works, this retrospective evocation of what must in fact have seemed like another world is a remark able achievement.

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The Carters' taste l them to bring together immaculately preserved paintings that combine precise observation with a vein of poesy Nowhere is this more apparent than in Pieter Jansz. Saenredam's Interior of the Mariakerk, Utrecht (Fig. 4) whose ecclesiastical pendant is an Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the tomb of William the Silent by the agency of Emmanuel de Witte. It may be inevitable that the creamy abstraction of Saenredam has been particularly admired in the hundred of Mondrian and even Jasper John on the other hand it is hard to believe that a taste for this remarkable painter is a nothing else but modish fad. On the contrary, like all of the Carter pictures, this work have the appearances destined to give abiding pleasure to those who have organ of visions to see for a useful while yet.

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