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The Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century was home to one of the greatest flowerings of painting in the history of Western art. Freed from the constraints of royal and church patronage, artists created a rich outpouring of naturalistic portraits, genre scenes and landscapes that circulated through a newly open market to patrons and customers at every level of Dutch society. Their closely observed details of everyday life offer a wealth of information about the possessions, activities and circumstances that distinguished members of social classes, from the nobility to the urban poor. The dazzling array of paintings gathered here - from artists such as Frans Hals, Jan Steen and Gerrit Dou, as well as Rembrandt and Vermeer - illuminated by essays by leading specialists, invite us to explore a vibrant early modern society and its reflection in a golden age of brilliant painting.

Based on a retrospective exhibition that originated in Japan and travels to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography includes many seminal paintings from both his Chadds Ford and Maine work - including Distant Thunder, Garret Room, and several paintings of Helga - as well as recent work from the 1990s and some rarely seen images. As Thomas Hoving writes in his introduction, "Wyeth, in essence, has always painted for himself." This beautifully printed, elegantly designed book reveals that self as no other collection has done before.