Amsterdam to Paris from Van Eyck to Van Gogh

AMSTERDAM TO PARIS FROM VAN EYCK TO VAN GOGH MAY 19 – 4 JUNE, 2017 TOUR LEADER: DR NICK GORDON Amsterdam Overview To Paris From the 15th century the Low Countries witnessed an extraordinary Van Eyck to Van Gogh period of cultural brilliance. Brisk trade, merchant-based governments, humanistic education, religious dissent and a taste for luxury and everyday detail combined with an artisan culture to produce a period now Tour dates: May 19 – June 4, 2017 known as the Northern Renaissance. The visual worlds and distinctive Tour leader: Dr Nick Gordon religious and political identities that emerged from the region continue to influence Western art. Tour Price: $8,970 per person, twin share Landscape, still life, genre painting and the modern portrait were all Single Supplement: $2,440 for sole use of developed in the Low Countries, starting with the innovations introduced to double room oil painting by Jan van Eyck and continuing through the work of Bosch, Brueghel, Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer and down to Van Gogh. But Booking deposit: $500 per person the political and religious map of Europe was reshaped here too, with the emergence of Protestant republics in the north and the struggles of Recommended airline: Emirates peasants and burghers against the ambitious Holy Roman Empire. With the glory of the Dutch Golden Age, a vast colonial empire brought Maximum places: 20 fabulous riches and ensured the posterity of the art and history of the Low Countries. Itinerary: Amsterdam (4 nights), Delft (2 nights), Brussels (4 nights), Bruges (3 nights), Paris (3 This 17-day tour goes beyond the clichés of windmills and wooden shoes, nights) taking us from Amsterdam to Delft, Brussels, Bruges and Paris, exploring the fascinating art and history of the Low Countries along the way. Visiting Date published: May 17, 2016 both the larger cities as well as smaller centres such as Utrecht and Ghent, we enjoy exceptional museums and galleries, and appreciate the cityscapes that have remained largely unchanged since the glory days of the Northern Renaissance Your tour leader Dr Nick Gordon holds a University Medal and PhD in History from the University of Sydney. He specialises in medieval and early modern European history and has taught at Australian universities for 10 years, on topics ranging from Ancient Greek democracy to the art and culture of Renaissance Italy, the French and industrial revolutions and the rise of modern psychology. He has presented numerous popular art history courses at the University of Sydney’s Centre for Continuing Education, and is a regular speaker in the Nicholson Museum’s public lecture series. Nick’s academic expertise is complemented by the specialised knowledge Enquiries and he has gained as a practicing artist, and he brings these insights to the art enjoyed throughout this tour. Nick has been leading cultural tours to bookings Europe since 2006 and his passion and for the extraordinary art and history of the region led him to develop this tour in 2014. For further information and to secure a place on this tour “So many details combined to make this a tour I will never forget. It was a please contact Hannah thoroughly rich and enjoyable experience, so a huge thanks to Dr Nick, Kleboe at Academy Travel on Hannah, and all the other staff involved. I’m looking forward to my next 9235 0023 or 1800 639 699 tour with Academy Travel.” Group member on our Amsterdam to Paris (outside Sydney) or email tour in 2015. [email protected]. au The Art of Light Image: The Ghent Altarpiece, upper register, depicting the Virgin Mary, the Almighty and John the Baptist For centuries, Jan van Eyck was honoured as the ‘inventor of oil painting’. The claim is erroneous – linseed and walnut oils had been used from at least the 12th-century, mostly for furniture and outdoor banners. The idea of him as the inventor comes from an elision of a medium with a technique, which is all the more curious because the claim was made by the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari, who himself was an accomplished painter who should have known better. There are also a handful of oil paintings from the decades before Van Eyck, mostly produced in the Low Countries. These works, however, are not as skilfully rendered. While oils had already been used, Van Eyck revolutionised how they were used. What Jan van Eyck accomplished with his earliest surviving work with oils – the Altarpiece of the Mystic Lamb in the Cathedral of St Bavo in Ghent – is extraordinary, and must have been more so to his contemporaries. That the work possesses such a high level of detail is not surprising. Van Eyck had been a manuscript illuminator, and the Low Countries had produced some of the finest manuscript illuminators of the late Middle Ages – the Limbourg Brothers, for example, had been employed extensively by John, Duke of Berry. The altarpiece is different, however, in the range of naturalistic effects it captures. Most importantly, Van Eyck catalogues the ways that light acts – its reflections and refractions, the different types of shadows it casts, the ways it falls on different materials, how it is caught in the atmosphere – and how objects appear at different distances. In this regard, Van Eyck’s pioneering of a new, less economical medium begins to make some sense. Light had long been used as a metaphor for spiritual illumination and there is a growing body of scholarship suggesting that Van Eyck was in contact with Nicholas of Cusa, who theorised that one comprehended the nature of God through close observation of the particularities of the material world. The carefully constructed layers of transparent oil paint (in some places painted over tempera underpainting) were better able to render the variety of effects of light and the particularity of each object than other available media. He was not a faultless painter, however. Many of the pearls in his works have been identified as painted from actual unique and individual pearls. But the ones that are not perfect show that he has overgeneralised a rule he had learned from a Latin translation of Al Hazan’s 12th-century treatise on optics. Perhaps we may permit Van Eyck to have taken some short cuts. Painting was not his main profession; he was a chamberlain to the Duke of Burgundy, who paid him handsomely for secret diplomatic missions to the other courts of Europe. Close observation is perhaps also a handy tool for a spy. Tour Highlights The extraordinary art of the Low Countries, with masterpieces by Vermeer, Jan van Eyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, the Brueghels, Magritte and Van Gogh 4 nights in Amsterdam, the cosmopolitan city at the heart of the Dutch Golden Age, with an extended visit to the recently reopened Rijksmuseum Day trips to well-preserved medieval centres, including Utrecht, Ghent and Tournai 2 nights in Delft, Vermeer’s hometown, and a visit to Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans van Beuningen to see works by Bosch and Brueghel 4 nights in Brussels, with its Gothic churches and palaces and World Heritage-listed art nouveau buildings by Victor Horta Day trip to the Meuse Valley, visiting the landscapes that inspired early landscape painters 3 nights in beautiful Bruges, with its World Heritage-listed medieval centre and tranquil canals 3 nights in Paris, exploring two of the world’s finest art collections at the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay Above: The Grand Place or Grote Markt in Brussels Above: René Magritte’s Not to be Reproduced (La reproduction interdite, 1937); Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1889); and Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) Detailed itinerary Included meals are shown with the symbols B, L and D. Friday 19 May Arrive After meeting in our hotel this afternoon we stroll through historic Amsterdam, the cultural and economic centre of the Dutch Republic. The merchants, artists and religious minorities who flocked here made it one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan cities and today we walk along its World Heritage-listed canals, lined with the townhouses of the wealthy burghers who ushered in the Golden Age. Dinner in a local restaurant. (D) Saturday 20 May Old Amsterdam The Dutch Republic emerged from the religious conflict that reshaped Europe. This morning we explore the transformation of the city that became the centre of a Protestantempire extending from Japan to Brazil. We see how Gothic churches were redesigned for Calvinism and how Catholics worshipped in a clandestine chapel in a Above: the Oudegracht, or “old canal” runs through the centre of Utrecht patrician’s attic. At Rembrandt’s House, we see how art was and the old warehouses now house a lively restaurant and cafe scene made and sold to wealthy upper and middle-class patrons. After a welcome lunch in one of Amsterdam’s fine restaurants the afternoon and evening are at leisure. (B, L) Below: a detail from Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, 1642, one of many treasures in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Sunday 21 May Utrecht and the Vecht Canal estates Utrecht was the focal point of Catholicism in the Netherlands, even after the city joined the Calvinist Dutch Republic. We tour the city in the morning, with its peaceful tree-lined canals and magnificent 13th-century cathedral. In the afternoon we travel through the Vechtstreek, the picturesque countryside between Utrecht and Amsterdam, where feudal lords and the burghers of the Golden Age built their castles and estates. (B) Monday 22 May A wealth of art Dutch Golden Age painters redefined the art of oil painting and popularised new genres, such as still life and landscape. This morning we visit the recently renovated Rijksmuseum, where we see masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Ruisdael, Franz Hals and more.

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