In 1644 the young Alkmaar artist Allart van Everdingen (1621-1675) travelled through Norway. It was an inspiring experience that set the course for his career. He went on to make countless paintings, drawings and etchings of rugged landscapes with waterfalls, log cabins and pine trees. These seemingly realistic snapshots of Norwegian scenery prove on closer examination to be artistic constructs, conceived and executed in the workshop. Van Everdingen had created a new genre in Dutch art that sold very well and was picked up by other artists, Jacob van Ruisdael among them. In the nineteenth century, his impressive mountain views became an important inspiration for the Romantics. He also painted dramatic seascapes and river views, Dutch landscapes full of narrative details, scenes of the springs at Spa and illustrations for the Tale of Reynard the Fox. This book is the first to be devoted to Allart van Everdingen's oeuvre in all its surprising scope. Exhibition: Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar, The Netherlands (18.09.2021 - 16.01.2022).

There are many stories featuring the villainous hero Reynard the Fox in many languages told over many centuries, goingback as far as the early 12th century. All these stories are comic and much of the humour depends on parody and satire resulting in mockery, sometimes the subversion of certain kinds of serious literature, of political and religious institutions and practices, of scholarly argument and moralizing, and of popular beliefs and customs. The contributors to this volume, all of them experts in one or more of the Reynard stories and their backgrounds, focus on the transformation of these tales through various media and to what extent they reflect differences in the cultural, class, and generational background of their tellers.

A richly illustrated celebration of Ruisdael's achievements as the greatest and most versatile of seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painters