Dutch art spans the history of Western easel painting from the Middle Ages to the present, and has a psychological development of its own which makes it a fascinating field of study. With a fresh and critical eye, Fuchs reviews its evolution from the foundation of Netherlandish realism in the fifteenth century with the Van Eycks, through the elevated style of Renaissance history painting, the language of symbols of the seventeenth century and the work of its masters--Claesz's still-lifes, the portraits of Hals and Rembrandt, and Ruisdael's landscapes--and on through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century realism, right up to Van Gogh's pioneering Expressionism, the radical simplification of Mondrian, and the art of Dibbets and Brouwn. 197 illus., 20 in color.