From the hardships of a long and arduous war against Spain, seventeenth-century Dutch artists seem to have drawn strength, and Dutch paintings of this period express pride in a unique social and cultural heritage. The ability of Dutch artists to convey the poetry of everyday life, represent the textures of the manmade and natural worlds, portray vivid likenesses, and reinterpret history and mythology themes is evident in such paintings as Vermeer's A Lady Writing, Willem Claesz.

Heda's Banquet Piece, Frans Hals' Willem Coymans, and Rembrandt's Lucretia. Paintings by these and other masters attracted the American collectors P. A. B. Widener, his son Joseph, and Andrew W. Mellon, whose bequests form the heart of the National Gallery's distinguished and remarkably cohesive collection of ninety-one Dutch paintings.

Included in this volume are: an essay on attribution to Rembrandt and his school; an appendix of artists' signatures and monograms; and a summary of the technical notes resulting from examinations in the National Gallery's conservation laboratories using infrared reflectography and x-radiography.