The gift of Mr and Mrs Edward W. Carter, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Anyone who pores over auction catalogues will be aware of the act that Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century--otherwise known as the Golden Age--are still readily available in a way other old master pictures are not. On the other hand, this does not mean that the creme de la creme are easy to come by, and it is the breathtaking distinction of the works in this numerically modest (twelve pictures in all) but qualitatively peerless gift that makes it worthy of special mention.

The late Edward W. Carter was LACMA'S founding president, and both he and his wife Hannah have been among that institution's staunchest supporters. They started collecting Dutch Golden Age paintings in the late 1960s, and now Mrs Carter has decided to give a choice group of a dozen of their treasures to LACMA for the best of reasons. As she puts it: 'These paintings represent many years of exploring and pursuing our love for the arts. My late husband and I enjoyed these beautiful images for decades--now our joy lies in knowing that the people of los Angeles, and visitors from around the world, may share our love for these paintings.'

All the obvious categories by means of which the Dutch school distinguished itself are on display here, invariably in the form of superlative examples, and often in the form of nicely contrasted offerings to boot. This is certainly true in the case of still lifes, where the beginnings of the genre as an independent phenomenon are represented by a small but flawless oil on copper by Ambrosius Bosschaert (Fig. 1), which is complemented by an altogether more monumental Jan van Huysum dating from a century or so later. In the Bosschaert, the precisely observed bouquet is shown in a roemer on a ledge with a misty panoramic landscape beyond, as if the artist were aspiring to encapsulate all of nature, from the macrocosmic expanse to the microcosmic detail of the insects and shells.

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The two other still lifes in the gift are not of flowers--or indeed fruit--but instead concentrate on more solid if no less transient pleasures. One is a quintessentially cool and almost monchrome Still life with tobacco, wine, and a pocket watch by Willem Claesz. Heda, while the other is a mouthwateringly lavish Still life with cheeses, artichokes, and cherries by Clara Peeters (Fig. 3). Peeters is less well known than the other great woman still life painter of the age, Rachel Ruysch, but this succulent piece reveals her as every bit her equal.

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Both seascape and landscape, two of the most splendid and also influential accomplishments of the Dutch school, are no less well represented, the former by Jan van de Capelle and Simon de Vlieger, the latter by the likes of Jacob van Ruisdael, Aert van der Neer, and Aelbert Cuyp. However, even these outstanding examples of what their respective creators were capable of arguably cannot quite compare with Frans Post's Brazilian landscape with a worker's house (Fig. 2). Post, who was in Brazil from 1636 to 1644 in the retinue of Count Johan Maurits of Nassau, is one of the great one-offs in the entire history of art, and although it is generally agreed that the landscapes he painted in Brazil tend to be his best works, this retrospective evocation of what must truly have seemed like another world is a remark able achievement.

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The Carters' taste led them to collect immaculately preserved paintings that combine precise observation with a vein of poetry. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Pieter Jansz. Saenredam's Interior of the Mariakerk, Utrecht (Fig. 4), whose ecclesiastical pendant is an Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the tomb of William the Silent by Emmanuel de Witte. It may be inevitable that the creamy abstraction of Saenredam has been particularly admired in the century of Mondrian and even Jasper Johns, but it is hard to believe that a taste for this remarkable painter is a mere modish fad. On the contrary, like all of the Carter pictures, this work seems destined to give abiding pleasure to those who have eyes to see for a good while yet.

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