title: R/K selection theory

text: Eventually a new equilibrium is approached (sometimes referred to as a climax community), with "r"-strategists gradually being replaced by "K"-strategists which are more competitive and better adapted to the emerging micro-environmental characteristics of the landscape. Traditionally, biodiversity was considered maximized at this stage, with introductions of new species resulting in the replacement and local extinction of endemic species. However, the intermediate disturbance hypothesis posits that intermediate levels of disturbance in a landscape create patches at different levels of succession, promoting coexistence of colonizers and competitors at the regional scale.


title: R/K selection theory

text: While usually applied at the level of species, "r"/"K" selection theory is also useful in studying the evolution of ecological and life history differences between subspecies, for instance the African honey bee, "A. m. scutellata", and the Italian bee, "A. m. ligustica". At the other end of the scale, it has also been used to study the evolutionary ecology of whole groups of organisms, such as bacteriophages. Other researchers have proposed that the evolution of human inflammatory responses is related to "r"/"K" selection.


title: R/K selection theory

text: Some researchers, such as Lee Ellis, J. Philippe Rushton, and Aurelio José Figueredo, have applied "r"/"K" selection theory to various human behaviors, including crime, sexual promiscuity, fertility, IQ, and other traits related to life history theory. Rushton's work resulted in him developing "differential "K" theory" to attempt to explain many variations in human behavior across geographic areas, a theory which has been criticized by many other researchers.


title: R/K selection theory

text: Although "r"/"K" selection theory became widely used during the 1970s, it also began to attract more critical attention. In particular, a review by the ecologist Stephen C. Stearns drew attention to gaps in the theory, and to ambiguities in the interpretation of empirical data for testing it.


title: R/K selection theory

text: In 1981, a review of the "r"/"K" selection literature by Parry demonstrated that there was no agreement among researchers using the theory about the definition of "r"- and "K"-selection, which led him to question whether the assumption of a relation between reproductive expenditure and packaging of offspring was justified. A 1982 study by Templeton and Johnson showed that in a population of "Drosophila mercatorum" under "K"-selection the population actually produced a higher frequency of traits typically associated with "r"-selection. Several other studies contradicting the predictions of "r"/"K" selection theory were also published between 1977 and 1994.


title: R/K selection theory

text: When Stearns reviewed the status of the theory in 1992, he noted that from 1977 to 1982 there was an average of 42 references to the theory per year in the BIOSIS literature search service, but from 1984 to 1989 the average dropped to 16 per year and continued to decline. He concluded that "r"/"K" theory was a once useful heuristic that no longer serves a purpose in life history theory.


title: R/K selection theory

text: More recently, the panarchy theories of adaptive capacity and resilience promoted by C. S. Holling and Lance Gunderson have revived interest in the theory, and use it as a way of integrating social systems, economics and ecology.


title: R/K selection theory

text: Writing in 2002, Reznick and colleagues reviewed the controversy regarding "r"/"K" selection theory and concluded that:


title: R/K selection theory

text: Alternative approaches are now available both for studying life history evolution (e.g. Leslie matrix for an age-structured population) and for density-dependent selection (e.g. variable density lottery model).


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The Ford Motor Company produced straight-six engines from 1906 until 1908 and from 1941 until 2016. In 1906, the first Ford straight-six was introduced in the Model K. The next was introduced in the 1941 Ford. Ford continued producing straight-six engines for use in its North American vehicles until 1996, when they were discontinued in favor of more compact V6 designs.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Ford Australia also manufactured straight-six engines in Australia for the Falcon and Territory models until 2016, when both vehicle lines were discontinued. Following the closure of the Australian engine plant, Ford no longer produces a straight-six gasoline engine.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The first-generation Ford six-cylinder engines were all flatheads. They were the G- and H-series engines of used in cars and trucks and the M-series of used in larger Ford trucks and for industrial applications.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Introduced for the 1941 model year, the first Ford L-6 (designated G-series) displaced and produced , the same as the Flathead V-8 that year. Like the V-8, it was also a flathead or L-head engine. In 1948, Ford raised the compression of the flathead six or L-6 (designated H-series or Rouge 226) so that it generated and of torque. The G- and H-series engines were used in the full-sized Ford cars and trucks to replace the smaller Flathead V8 that was used in the 1937 Ford. Ford discontinued production of the H-series engine for the 1951 model year.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: A version of the L-6 (designated the M-series or Rouge 254) was used from 1950 to 1953 in F6-series Ford trucks (COE, dump, truck-tractor, etc.), and small Ford school buses. The M-series engine produced and . of torque. They were also used in miscellaneous industrial applications, e.g., to power water pumps for irrigation purposes and within wine-producing farms to manage risk by powering giant frost-control propellers on stands in the middle of rows of grapes.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The second generation was a newly designed inline-six, produced from 1952 through 1964; it shared many parts with Ford Y-blocks such as the entire valve train and the problems associated with the Y-block's lubrication system. These engines have the exhaust and intake on the driver's side and the distributor on the passenger side. It is referred to as Mileage Maker or I-Block Mileage Maker (with the "I" referring to "inline") in the passenger cars and Cost Clipper in the trucks.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: A completely new OHV I-6 was offered for the 1952–53 F-Series. It displaced and produced . It was also used in the 1952–53 Ford full-sized cars.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The 215 grew to for the 1954 F-Series. Output was now in the trucks and in the 1954 Ford cars. Power was up to in the 1956 trucks. While not the popular engine option, the was the only inline-six offered in the Fairlane (until 1961), Galaxie, and F-Series trucks between 1955 and 1964, causing it to be not quite a rarity, but not easy to come across. The 223 I-6 was also used in 1963–1964 Ford trucks, which also used the Autolite 1100 carburetor with stamping C4TF-E and produced with 206 ft-lb of torque, and Mercury Meteor-Monterey in 1961. The 223 was also used in Onan 30EC generator sets and possibly others.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: A I-6 version was also produced. The 262 I-6 was built from 1961 to 1964 for use in medium- and heavy-duty Ford trucks. This engine was also used for industrial applications.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The third generation was produced at the Lima Engine plant in Lima, Ohio, from 1960 through 1984. Officially dubbed the Thriftpower Six, this engine line is sometimes referred to as the Falcon Six. Note that car companies, including Ford, switched from gross ratings to net horsepower and torque ratings in 1972 (mainly because of the emissions laws being enacted nationwide at the time), so changes in engine compression and emissions controls make comparing engines from various production years (especially pre-1972) difficult.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The inline-six engine was first introduced in the 1960 Ford Falcon. The 144 was made from 1960 through 1964 and averaged during the production run. While not known for being powerful or a stout engine, it proved to be economical and could get fairly good gas mileage for the time, up to . This small six was the basis for all the Ford "Falcon" straight-six engines. The intake manifold on this series was cast integrally with the cylinder head (this design was also used by Chevrolet with some of their later third-generation inline-sixes, the older engines had separate manifolds); as a result, they could not be easily modified for greater power. This engine had four main bearings and can be identified by the three core plugs on the side of the block.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: In 1961, the became an option for the Falcon and Comet lines. The 170 Special Six was a stroked version of the 144, increasing the stroke from to . The original 1965 Ford Mustang used a version from March (production start) through July 1964. The Econoline van and Ford Bronco received a heavier-duty version with mechanical valve lifters. This engine had four main bearings and can be identified by the three freeze (core) plugs on the side of the block. The 170 Special was dropped from production in 1972.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: From 1965 to 1969, Ford Argentina produced a specific block similar to the earlier (four main bearings, stroke) but with a


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The inline-six model was introduced in the middle of 1963 with bore and stroke, and shared the four main bearing design of the 170. Early 200s can be identified by three freeze plugs. Beginning in 1965, the 200s were upgraded to seven main bearings to reduce harmonic vibrations and increase durability. The 1965 and later engines can be identified by four freeze plugs and the casting code C5DE-H. The 1965 Mustang (August 1964 onward) used this engine as standard, rated at . The Mustang continued to use the 200 as its base engine until it was dropped in 1971. Starting in 1966, a six-bolt bellhousing flange block was introduced. Beginning in 1980, one version of the 200 block was redesigned with a bell housing flange and a low-mount starter very similar to the low-mount starter 250 inline-six. This version is easily identified by starter location down by the oil pan rail and is referred to as the Big Bell 200. The big bell design is uncommon, but sought after by I-6 performance enthusiasts because it can be modified to accept a Ford small block V8 six bolt bell housing. There were concurrent high-mount starter 200 blocks made till 1983 model year, and they are more common than low-mount starter 200s.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: When Ford launched the third-generation Fox body Mustang in 1979, the original engine lineup included the Cologne V6. The same engine was also offered in the hugely successful Ford of Europe Capri Mk II. The 2.8L V6 engine was a popular option for the US Mustang and the European Capri Mk II, and as a result, the Cologne engine plant could not meet the demand for engines for both continents. As a result, the Cologne 2.8L V6 was dropped from the Mustang's engine lineup in the middle of the 1979 production year and replaced with the 200 Falcon inline-six, which was then referred to as the 3.3L engine. The engine and front suspension K-member were transferred from the Fairmont, which helped reduce costs instead of having to redesign the Mustang for a different engine.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The 200 was used in the Ford Maverick and Mercury Comet and continued in the Fairmont (and essentially identical Mercury Zephyr) until these were replaced at the end of the 1983 model year. The Ford Granada and Mercury Monarch offered the 250 inline-six (1975–1980) and then the 200 inline-six (1981–1982) as part of their engine lineup. The Ford LTD and Mercury Marquis, introduced in 1983 as the successors to the Granada and Monarch, carried over the 200 engine until it was replaced by the 3.8L Essex V6 in 1985.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Ford was also having problems meeting demand for its 2.3L OHC engine, which was used in a multitude of models worldwide. In anticipation of another engine shortage, the Ford engine plant in Lima, Ohio, which was already producing the 2.3L OHC engine, decided they could modify the Falcon inline six block casting molds to remove cylinders 4 and 5 to create a four-cylinder engine. A cast-iron high-swirl cylinder head was developed, and the motor was designated the 2.3L HSC to help differentiate it from the same displacement 2.3L OHC design. This motor shared many common parts with the 200, and it is common for persons rebuilding their 200 engines to use the 2.3L HSC pistons as a cheap replacement.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The inline-six engine was offered in 1969 in the Mustang, and 1970 in compact Ford cars (Maverick). The 250 was a stroked 200, made by increasing the stroke from to . Output was in the Mustang, and the 250 became the base engine in 1971. The Ford Granada and Mercury Monarch offered the 250 inline-six for the 1975–1980 model years, when it was replaced by the 200 inline-six.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Power was re-evaluated at for 1972 (because of power rating changes) and the next year. This engine had seven main bearings, and can be identified by the five freeze (core) plugs on the side of the block. The block uses a low-mount starter and six bellhousing bolts, sharing its bellhousing pattern with the 302 and 351 Windsor V8s, late (1965–68) 289, early 4.6L V8, and the 240 and 300 inline-six. Production of the 250 ended in 1980.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Produced at the Cleveland Engine plant in Brook Park, Ohio, from 1964 through 1996, the 240 and 300 inline-six engines are well known for their durability. Their simple design and rugged construction continue to endear these engines to a number of Ford enthusiasts to this day. The engine has earned the monikers "bulletproof" and "indestructible" by many. Popular legend holds that are numerous claims by owners who have purposely sought to destroy a Ford straight-six through intentionally abusive use, but who were unsuccessful in doing so.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: One example of the engine's sturdy design is the fact that no timing chain or timing belt (both of which can break, causing unwanted downtime or even engine damage, although this is extremely unlikely in the case of a chain) is used. This generation of Ford Six was designed with long-wearing gears for that purpose instead. These engines also employed seven main bearings.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Both the 240 and the 300, no matter the application, used a single-barrel Autolite 1100/1101 (or Carter YF/A) carburetor until the introduction of electronic fuel injection in 1987. With proper gearing, many F-Series trucks and Broncos achieve . This fact was heavily used by Ford's advertising campaign (some television advertisements and written literature even claimed ), since the V8 engines in these trucks rarely achieved over .


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The fuel economy of the 300 makes the engine a popular choice among truck enthusiasts that want both power and economy. The addition of performance parts (such as intake and exhaust manifolds with a four-barrel carburetor) place the engine power output near the same levels as the stock "HO" (High Output) version of the optional 351 V8, with little or no change in economy.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The inline-six for 1965–1972 full-sized cars (continued to 1974 in fleet models) and 1965–1974 trucks and vans produced (gross). In stationary service (generators and pumps) fueled by LPG or natural gas, this is known as the CSG-639. The 240 had a bore of and a stroke of .


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The six was first offered in the F-Series for 1965. It is essentially a with a longer stroke of . The two engines are nearly identical; the differences are in the rotating assembly and combustion chamber sizes in the head (the heads are interchangeable). It produced (gross). The 300 became the base F-Series engine in 1978 at (horsepower number changes due to Ford switching to net power ratings in 1971). Power outputs were increased to roughly during the early 1980s, before fuel injection was introduced. This became the primary engine of the line, eclipsing the 240. Unlike the Falcon engine, it featured separate intake and exhaust manifolds, which could be easily replaced with aftermarket manifolds offering the promise of even more power, through the installation of larger carburetors and a higher flowing exhaust system.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Also during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the 300 was used in larger vehicles such as dump trucks, many weighing into the to range. These engines were equipped with a higher flow HD (Heavy Duty) exhaust manifold and forged crankshafts and rods since the engines were going to be constantly working in the 3,000–4,000 rpm range. These rare yet effective manifolds had a much higher exhaust flow rate because many of these engines would spend hours at 3,000 rpm or more. Due to their straightforward and high flowing design, enthusiasts often seek these manifolds out because they allow turbochargers to be easily retrofitted to the engine.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Beginning in 1978, the engine displacement was advertised in metric, becoming "4.9 L." Fuel injection and other changes in 1987 pushed output up to horsepower with an 8.8:1 compression ratio. Even though this engine was renowned for its durability, low-end torque, and ease of service, it was gradually phased out. Production ended in 1996, making it the last inline-six gasoline engine offered in a Ford car or light truck in North America. It was replaced by the 4.2L Essex V6 for 1997 in the radically redesigned F-150 and the E-150 and E-250. The 300 was mated to the Ford C6, E4OD, AOD, ZF S5-42 and S5-47 transmissions, as well as the Mazda built M5OD 5-speed manual transmission, and the Borg-Warner T18, Tremec RTS, and New Process NP435 4-speed manual transmissions.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Race car driver Scott Donohue raced a rally truck with a Ford 300 inline-six in it and won the Baja 1000 three times. This engine is also used by Stewart & Stevenson in the MA Baggage Tow Tractor, and Harlan in their standard tow tractors, as well as a multitude of other pieces of equipment, such as ski lifts, power generators, wood chippers, tractors, and, until they converted to diesel engines, most UPS trucks. In stationary service (generators and pumps) fueled with LPG or natural gas, this engine is known as the CSG-649.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Starting in 1960, Ford Australia used the same inline-six engines as offered in North America, featuring the 144 and 170 cu in pursuit models. The 144 was discontinued in late 1966. As in North America, a 200 cu in 'Super Pursuit' motor was added in February 1964. In 1968, the deck height of the design was increased to make room for increased crankshaft stroke, resulting in displacements of 188 and 221 cu in (badged 3.1 and 3.6 litres). They superseded the 170 and 200 engines in the lineup. The 188 and 221 also powered the Ford Falcon (Argentina) from 1970 to 1991.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: In , Ford Australia enlarged the motors to 200 and 250 cu in. The head was of the same design as previous models, with an integral intake catering for a single-barrel Bendix-Stromberg carburettor. In the configuration, the Falcon 250 I-6 was rated at . Also in 1970, the Falcon Inline 6, on both 200 and 250 cu in variants, became available on locally manufactured Ford Cortinas, Around this time, the company also developed the '2V' ('two venturi', or '2 barrel' in Ford terminology, reflecting a new 2-barrel carburettor as opposed to the previous single-barrel) cylinder head, which in all respects was similar to the previous integral "log head" intake, with the exception of a removable aluminium intake which mounted a Bendix-Stromberg WW two-barrel carburettor. To take advantage of the much improved breathing ability that the removable intake brought to the new head, the 250-2V also featured a much better breathing exhaust manifold. The result was the engine being rated at .


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: For years, the 250-2V cylinder head was very popular for racing and many have been imported to North America, where owners of cars with the Falcon inline six have upgraded their engines with the better cylinder head.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: In , Ford Australia updated the engines with a new cast-iron crossflow head design. Engine displacements remained 200 and 250 cu in, but were now badged 3.3 and 4.1 litres, respectively. These engines were offered in the Ford Falcon XC in Australia. Whereas the previous integral "log head" I-6 motor borrowed from the Ford FE engine family design, the new crossflow motor borrowed from the Ford Cleveland engine family. A common upgrade for a crossflow head engine is to use 351 Cleveland roller tip rocker arms.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Ford Australia updated the crossflow design in mid-1980 with a new aluminium head casting. The alloy head was used to improve warmup time and reduce fuel consumption and emissions. Until 1982, the engines were fitted with a single-barrel Bendix-Stromberg carburettor, but from March 1982 were fitted with a Weber two-barrel carburettor, which had improved fuel consumption over the single-barrel carburettor. The Weber carburettor engines were badged Alloy-Head II.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Later, a fuel-injected version with direct-port fuel injection was offered in the XE Falcon, and was only available as an aluminium-head 4.1 L. The XF Falcon's 4.1 then received Ford's EEC-IV engine management system with Multi Point Electronic Fuel Injection (MP-EFI). The carburettor engine was still fitted standard, and EFI was optional. Changes to the carburettor-based engine were made to accommodate the EFI system. The compression ratio on the 4.1 L was 8.89:1. The cylinder head intake ports had been modified to provide clearance for the injectors, and a new intake manifold was designed and many other changes were made in the engine bay to accommodate the new fuel system.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: In , the inline six engines underwent a major redesign for the EA Falcon and now featured a new single overhead cam (SOHC) crossflow aluminum head. The camshaft and auxiliary shaft are driven by a 'duplex' chain. The duplex chain drives the distributor and the oil pump shafts. The camshaft is supported on the cylinder head by using 'topless' bearings. Bearing liners are not used. The camshaft is held in position using valve spring pressure. Hydraulic lash adjusters mounted on the rocker arms are used to provide zero valve lash. As with all previous and current models, the block is cast iron, but with a reduction in the cylinder bore to try to reduce emissions.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The SOHC engines were offered as the 3.2 L (with throttle body injection) and the 3.9 L (with throttle body or multipoint fuel injection). In 1989, the 3.2 L TBI version was discontinued, and in 1991, the 3.9 L's displacement was enlarged to 4.0 L (now only with MPI) and was rated at . In 1995, a dual resonance intake manifold for the EF series was introduced. Also for the EF series Falcon, the standard engine employed a high-energy coil-pack ignition system. However, the subsequent EL Falcon reverted to a distributor/coil ignition setup.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Ford Australia redesigned the I-6 again in 1998 alongside the introduction of the Ford Falcon (AU), and increased the main bearing size and added a ladder style main stud girdle integral with the oil pan to increase low end rigidity. The engine also received variable camshaft timing technology in some of the XR6 models, which can advance or retard camshaft timing depending on engine speed, which gives a much broader power band.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The Falcon Forte (base model) engine had a power rating of 157 kW, the sports XR6 model variants had either 164 kW (HO - High Output) or 172 kW (VCT) and the luxury-focused Fairmont had 168 kW (VCT).


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: In , the engine underwent a significant upgrade receiving dual overhead cams (DOHC) with variable cam timing and coil-on-plug ignition. The engine gained the nickname "Barra", named after the "Barramundi" code name used during the development of the Ford Falcon (BA). Producing 182 kW (244 hp) and , it debuted in the Ford Falcon (BA) of 2002 and also powered the Ford Territory introduced in 2004. In October 2005, alongside the introduction of the Ford Falcon (BF) and Ford Territory (SY), these outputs rose to 190 kW (255 hp) and . In 2008 the Barra was upgraded a final time, debuting in the Ford Falcon (FG) with power outputs of 195 kW (261 hp) and .


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Turbocharged versions were also manufactured. The initial version, known as Barra 240T with and of torque was offered between 2002 and 2005 in the BA Falcon XR6 Turbo, as well as the Territory Turbo. This was followed in the BF and BF Mk II XR6 Turbo (between 2005 and 2008) by the Barra 245T producing of power and of torque, which in turn was followed by the Barra 270T from 2008-2016 in the FG and FG X XR6 Turbo and G6E Turbo models producing of power and of torque.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Ford Australia's high-performance division, Ford Performance Vehicles (FPV), created even more powerful turbocharged variants. The first turbocharged straight-6-engined car from FPV was the BA Mk II F6 Typhoon (2004), which produced of power and of torque. The first power and torque upgrade came with the FG range of 2008, which saw outputs rise to of power @ 5500 rpm and of torque. This engine, the Barra 310T, was the first Australian-built engine to achieve over 100 hp per litre.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: The ultimate iteration of the Barra engine was installed in the limited-production FG X XR6 Sprint (limited to 500 units) of 2016. This engine produced @ 6000rpm and @ 2750 rpm. The engine features an overboost function that can increase output to and for up to ten seconds.


title: Ford straight-six engine

text: Ford Australia had intended to discontinue production of the I-6 engine at their engine plant in Geelong in 2010 and replace it in the Falcon and Territory models with an imported V6 engine, although later reversed this decision in favour of upgrading the Barra to meet then-upcoming Euro IV emissions standards. This would prove to be only a temporary stay of execution as the Geelong factory eventually closed on 26 September 2016, following Ford's decision in May 2013 to discontinue the Falcon and Territory and cease manufacture of vehicles in Australia.


title: Karina Lombard

text: Karina Lombard is a Tahitian-born American actress. She appeared as Isabel Two in "Legends of the Fall", as chief Nonhelema in "Timeless", and as Marina Ferrer in the first season of "The L Word".


title: Karina Lombard

text: She has also appeared in the films "Wide Sargasso Sea" and "The Firm", and the television series "", "", "NCIS", "Rescue Me" and "The 4400".


title: Karina Lombard

text: Lombard's major break in modeling was a photoshoot with a 'Native American' theme. A year later, one of her photographs was chosen for a billboard that led to her first acting role. Photographs of her as a model have appeared in the magazines "Elle" and "Vogue".


title: Karina Lombard

text: Lombard studied acting in New York City at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and the Actors Studio, where she also gained stage experience performing at the Gallery Theatre and Neighborhood Playhouse.


title: Karina Lombard

text: Lombard's first film role was as a princess in "L'île" ("The Island"). In 1993, she played her first major role as Antoinette Cosway, a Jamaican heiress, in "Wide Sargasso Sea", based on the novel of the same name by Jean Rhys. She had supporting parts in "The Firm" (1993) and "Legends of the Fall" (1994), and starred in "Last Man Standing" (1996) with Bruce Willis.


title: Karina Lombard

text: In the 2000s, she moved to television, appearing in "The 4400" and as restaurateur Marina Ferrer in the first season of "The L Word". She also played the recurring character Geneviève on FX's "Rescue Me".


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The new Dutch Republic was the most prosperous nation in Europe and led European trade, science, and art. The northern Netherlandish provinces that made up the new state had traditionally been less important artistic centres than cities in Flanders in the south. The upheavals and large-scale transfers of population of the war, and the sharp break with the old monarchist and Catholic cultural traditions, meant that Dutch art had to reinvent itself almost entirely, a task in which it was very largely successful. The painting of religious subjects declined very sharply, but a large new market for all kinds of secular subjects grew up.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Although Dutch painting of the Golden Age is included in the general European period of Baroque painting, and often shows many of its characteristics, most lacks the idealization and love of splendour typical of much Baroque work, including that of neighbouring Flanders. Most work, including that for which the period is best known, reflects the traditions of detailed realism inherited from Early Netherlandish painting.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: A distinctive feature of the period is the proliferation of distinct genres of paintings, with the majority of artists producing the bulk of their work within one of these. The full development of this specialization is seen from the late 1620s, and the period from then until the French invasion of 1672 is the core of Golden Age painting. Artists would spend most of their careers painting only portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, seascapes and ships, or still lifes, and often a particular sub-type within these categories. Many of these types of subject were new in Western painting, and the way the Dutch painted them in this period was decisive for their future development.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: A distinctive feature of the period, compared to earlier European painting, was the small amount of religious painting. Dutch Calvinism forbade religious painting in churches, and though biblical subjects were acceptable in private homes, relatively few were produced. The other traditional classes of history and portrait painting were present, but the period is more notable for a huge variety of other genres, sub-divided into numerous specialized categories, such as scenes of peasant life, landscapes, townscapes, landscapes with animals, maritime paintings, flower paintings and still lifes of various types. The development of many of these types of painting was decisively influenced by 17th-century Dutch artists.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The widely held theory of the "hierarchy of genres" in painting, whereby some types were regarded as more prestigious than others, led many painters to want to produce history painting. However, this was the hardest to sell, as even Rembrandt found. Many were forced to produce portraits or genre scenes, which sold much more easily. In descending order of status, the categories in the hierarchy were:


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The Dutch concentrated heavily on the "lower" categories, but by no means rejected the concept of the hierarchy. Most paintings were relatively small – the only common type of really large paintings were group portraits. Painting directly onto walls hardly existed; when a wall-space in a public building needed decorating, fitted framed canvas was normally used. For the extra precision possible on a hard surface, many painters continued to use wooden panels, some time after the rest of Western Europe had abandoned them; some used copper plates, usually recycling plates from printmaking. In turn, the number of surviving Golden Age paintings was reduced by them being overpainted with new works by artists throughout the 18th and 19th century – poor ones were usually cheaper than a new canvas, stretcher and frame.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: There was very little Dutch sculpture during the period; it is mostly found in tomb monuments and attached to public buildings, and small sculptures for houses are a noticeable gap, their place taken by silverware and ceramics. Painted delftware tiles were very cheap and common, if rarely of really high quality, but silver, especially in the auricular style, led Europe. With this exception, the best artistic efforts were concentrated on painting and printmaking.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Foreigners remarked on the enormous quantities of art produced and the large fairs where many paintings were sold – it has been roughly estimated that over 1.3 million Dutch pictures were painted in the 20 years after 1640 alone. The volume of production meant that prices were fairly low, except for the best known artists; as in most subsequent periods, there was a steep price gradient for more fashionable artists. Those without a strong contemporary reputation, or who had fallen out of fashion, including many now considered among the greatest of the period, such as Vermeer, Frans Hals and Rembrandt in his last years, had considerable problems earning a living, and died poor; many artists had other jobs, or abandoned art entirely. In particular the French invasion of 1672 (the "Rampjaar", or "year of disaster"), brought a severe depression to the art market, which never quite returned to earlier heights.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The distribution of pictures was very wide: "yea many tymes, blacksmithes, cobblers etts., will have some picture or other by their Forge and in their stalle. Such is the generall Notion, enclination and delight that these Countrie Native have to Painting" reported an English traveller in 1640. There were for virtually the first time many professional art dealers, several also significant artists, like Vermeer and his father, Jan van Goyen and Willem Kalf. Rembrandt's dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh and his son Gerrit were among the most important. Landscapes were the easiest uncommissioned works to sell, and their painters were the "common footmen in the Army of Art" according to Samuel van Hoogstraten.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The technical quality of Dutch artists was generally high, still mostly following the old medieval system of training by apprenticeship with a master. Typically workshops were smaller than in Flanders or Italy, with only one or two apprentices at a time, the number often being restricted by guild regulations. The turmoil of the early years of the Republic, with displaced artists from the south moving north and the loss of traditional markets in the court and church, led to a resurgence of artists guilds, often still called the Guild of Saint Luke. In many cases these involved the artists extricating themselves from medieval groupings where they shared a guild with several other trades, such as housepainting. Several new guilds were established in the period: Amsterdam in 1579, Haarlem in 1590, and Gouda, Rotterdam, Utrecht and Delft between 1609 and 1611. The Leiden authorities distrusted guilds and did not allow one until 1648.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Later in the century it began to become clear to all involved that the old idea of a guild controlling both training and sales no longer worked well, and gradually the guilds were replaced with academies, often only concerned with the training of artists. The Hague, with the court, was an early example, where artists split into two groups in 1656 with the founding of the Confrerie Pictura. With the obvious exception of portraits, many more Dutch paintings were done "speculatively" without a specific commission than was then the case in other countries – one of many ways in which the Dutch art market showed the future.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: There were many dynasties of artists, and many married the daughters of their masters or other artists. Many artists came from well-off families, who paid fees for their apprenticeships, and they often married into property. Rembrandt and Jan Steen were both enrolled at the University of Leiden for a while. Several cities had distinct styles and specialities by subject, but Amsterdam was the largest artistic centre, because of its great wealth. Cities such as Haarlem and Utrecht were more important in the first half of the century, with Leiden and other cities emerging after 1648, and above all Amsterdam, which increasingly drew to it artists from the rest of the Netherlands, as well as Flanders and Germany.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Dutch artists were strikingly less concerned about artistic theory than those of many nations, and less given to discussing their art; it appears that there was also much less interest in artistic theory in general intellectual circles and among the wider public than was by then common in Italy. As nearly all commissions and sales were private, and between bourgeois individuals whose accounts have not been preserved, these are also less well documented than elsewhere. But Dutch art was a source of national pride, and the major biographers are crucial sources of information. These are Karel van Mander (Het Schilderboeck, 1604), who essentially covers the previous century, and Arnold Houbraken ("De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen" – "The Great Theatre of Dutch Painters", 1718–21). Both followed, and indeed exceeded, Vasari in including a great number of short lives of artists – over 500 in Houbraken's case – and both are considered generally accurate on factual matters.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The German artist Joachim von Sandrart (1606–1688) had worked for periods in Holland, and his "Deutsche Akademie" in the same format covers many Dutch artists he knew. Houbraken's master, and Rembrandt's pupil, was Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627–1678), whose "Zichtbare wereld" and "Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst" (1678) contain more critical than biographical information, and are among the most important treatises on painting of the period. Like other Dutch works on the theory of art, they expound many commonplaces of Renaissance theory and do not entirely reflect contemporary Dutch art, still often concentrating on history painting.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: This category comprises not only paintings that depicted historical events of the past, but also paintings that showed biblical, mythological, literary and allegorical scenes. Recent historical events essentially fell out of the category, and were treated in a realist fashion, as the appropriate combination of portraits with marine, townscape or landscape subjects. Large dramatic historical or Biblical scenes were produced less frequently than in other countries, as there was no local market for church art, and few large aristocratic Baroque houses to fill. More than that, the Protestant population of major cities had been exposed to some remarkably hypocritical uses of Mannerist allegory in unsuccessful Habsburg propaganda during the Dutch Revolt, which had produced a strong reaction towards realism and a distrust of grandiose visual rhetoric. History painting was now a "minority art", although to an extent this was redressed by a relatively keen interest in print versions of history subjects.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: More than in other types of painting, Dutch history painters continued to be influenced by Italian painting. Prints and copies of Italian masterpieces circulated and suggested certain compositional schemes. The growing Dutch skill in the depiction of light was brought to bear on styles derived from Italy, notably that of Caravaggio. Some Dutch painters also travelled to Italy, though this was less common than with their Flemish contemporaries, as can be seen from the membership of the Bentvueghels club in Rome.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: In the early part of the century many Northern Mannerist artists with styles formed in the previous century continued to work, until the 1630s in the cases of Abraham Bloemaert and Joachim Wtewael. Many history paintings were small in scale, with the German painter (based in Rome) Adam Elsheimer as much an influence as Caravaggio (both died in 1610) on Dutch painters like Pieter Lastman, Rembrandt's master, and Jan and Jacob Pynas. Compared to Baroque history painting from other countries, they shared the Dutch emphasis on realism, and narrative directness, and are sometimes known as the "Pre-Rembrandtists", as Rembrandt's early paintings were in this style.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Utrecht Caravaggism describes a group of artists who produced both history painting and generally large genre scenes in an Italian-influenced style, often making heavy use of chiaroscuro. Utrecht, before the revolt the most important city in the new Dutch territory, was an unusual Dutch city, still about 40% Catholic in the mid-century, even more among the elite groups, who included many rural nobility and gentry with town houses there. The leading artists were Hendrick ter Brugghen, Gerard van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen, and the school was active about 1630, although van Honthorst continued until the 1650s as a successful court painter to the English, Dutch and Danish courts in a more classical style.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Rembrandt began as a history painter before finding financial success as a portraitist, and he never relinquished his ambitions in this area. A great number of his etchings are of narrative religious scenes, and the story of his last history commission, "The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis" (1661) illustrates both his commitment to the form and the difficulties he had in finding an audience. Several artists, many his pupils, attempted with some success to continue his very personal style; Govaert Flinck was the most successful. Gerard de Lairesse (1640–1711) was another of these, before falling under heavy influence from French classicism, and becoming its leading Dutch proponent as both artist and theoretician.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Nudity was effectively the preserve of the history painter, although many portraitists dressed up their occasional nudes (nearly always female) with a classical title, as Rembrandt did. For all their uninhibited suggestiveness, genre painters rarely revealed more than a generous cleavage or stretch of thigh, usually when painting prostitutes or "Italian" peasants.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Portrait painting thrived in the Netherlands in the 17th century, as there was a large mercantile class who were far more ready to commission portraits than their equivalents in other countries; a summary of various estimates of total production arrives at between 750,000 and 1,100,000 portraits. Rembrandt enjoyed his greatest period of financial success as a young Amsterdam portraitist, but like other artists, grew rather bored with painting commissioned portraits of burghers: "artists travel along this road without delight", according to van Mander.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: While Dutch portrait painting avoids the swagger and excessive rhetoric of the aristocratic Baroque portraiture current in the rest of 17th-century Europe, the sombre clothing of male and in many cases female sitters, and the Calvinist feeling that the inclusion of props, possessions or views of land in the background would show the sin of pride leads to an undeniable sameness in many Dutch portraits, for all their technical quality. Even a standing pose is usually avoided, as a full-length might also show pride. Poses are undemonstrative, especially for women, though children may be allowed more freedom. The classic moment for having a portrait painted was upon marriage, when the new husband and wife more often than not occupied separate frames in a pair of paintings. Rembrandt's later portraits compel by force of characterization, and sometimes a narrative element, but even his early portraits can be dispiriting "en masse", as in the roomful of 'starter Rembrandts' donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The other great portraitist of the period is Frans Hals, whose famously lively brushwork and ability to show sitters looking relaxed and cheerful adds excitement to even the most unpromising subjects. The extremely "nonchalant pose" of his portrait of Willem Heythuijsen is exceptional: "no other portrait from this period is so informal". The sitter was a wealthy textile merchant who had already commissioned Hals' only individual life-sized full-length portrait ten years before. In this much smaller work for a private chamber he wears riding clothes. Jan de Bray encouraged his sitters to pose costumed as figures from classical history, but many of his works are of his own family. Thomas de Keyser, Bartholomeus van der Helst, Ferdinand Bol and others, including many mentioned below as history or genre painters, did their best to enliven more conventional works. Portraiture, less affected by fashion than other types of painting, remained the safe fallback for Dutch artists.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: From what little we know of the studio procedures of artists, it seems that, as elsewhere in Europe, the face was probably drawn and perhaps painted at an initial sitting or two. The typical number of further sittings is unclear - between zero (for a Rembrandt full-length) and 50 appear documented. The clothes were left at the studio and might well be painted by assistants, or a brought-in specialist master, although, or because, they were regarded as a very important part of the painting. Married and never-married women can be distinguished by their dress, highlighting how few single women were painted, except in family groups. As elsewhere, the accuracy of the clothes shown is variable - striped and patterned clothes were worn, but artists rarely show them, understandably avoiding the extra work. Lace and ruff collars were unavoidable, and presented a formidable challenge to painters intent on realism. Rembrandt evolved a more effective way of painting patterned lace, laying in broad white stokes, and then painting lightly in black to show the pattern. Another way of doing this was to paint in white over a black layer, and scratch off the white with the end of the brush to show the pattern.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: At the end of the century there was a fashion for showing sitters in a semi-fancy dress, begun in England by van Dyck in the 1630s, known as "picturesque" or "Roman" dress. Aristocratic, and militia, sitters allowed themselves more freedom in bright dress and expansive settings than burghers, and religious affiliations probably affected many depictions. By the end of the century aristocratic, or French, values were spreading among the burghers, and depictions were allowed more freedom and display.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: A distinctive type of painting, combining elements of the portrait, history, and genre painting was the tronie. This was usually a half-length of a single figure which concentrated on capturing an unusual mood or expression. The actual identity of the model was not supposed to be important, but they might represent a historical figure and be in exotic or historic costume. Jan Lievens and Rembrandt, many of whose self-portraits are also tronies (especially his etched ones), were among those who developed the genre.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Family portraits tended, as in Flanders, to be set outdoors in gardens, but without an extensive view as later in England, and to be relatively informal in dress and mood. Group portraits, largely a Dutch invention, were popular among the large numbers of civic associations that were a notable part of Dutch life, such as the officers of a city's schutterij or militia guards, boards of trustees and regents of guilds and charitable foundations and the like. Especially in the first half of the century, portraits were very formal and stiff in composition. Groups were often seated around a table, each person looking at the viewer. Much attention was paid to fine details in clothing, and where applicable, to furniture and other signs of a person's position in society. Later in the century groups became livelier and colours brighter. Rembrandt's "Syndics of the Drapers' Guild" is a subtle treatment of a group round a table.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Scientists often posed with instruments and objects of their study around them. Physicians sometimes posed together around a cadaver, a so-called 'Anatomical Lesson', the most famous one being Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" (1632, Mauritshuis, The Hague). Boards of trustees in their "regentenstuk" portraits preferred an image of austerity and humility, posing in dark clothing (which by its refinement testified to their prominent standing in society), often seated around a table, with solemn expressions on their faces.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Most militia group portraits were commissioned in Haarlem and Amsterdam, and were much more flamboyant and relaxed or even boisterous than other types of portraits, as well as much larger. Early examples showed them dining, but later groups showed most figures standing for a more dynamic composition. Rembrandt's famous "The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq" better known as the "Night Watch" (1642), was an ambitious and not entirely successful attempt to show a group in action, setting out for a patrol or parade, also innovative in avoiding the typical very wide format of such works.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The cost of group portraits was usually shared by the subjects, often not equally. The amount paid might determine each person's place in the picture, either head to toe in full regalia in the foreground or face only in the back of the group. Sometimes all group members paid an equal sum, which was likely to lead to quarrels when some members gained a more prominent place in the picture than others. In Amsterdam most of these paintings would ultimately end up in the possession of the city council, and many are now on display in the Amsterdams Historisch Museum; there are no significant examples outside the Netherlands.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Scenes of everyday life, now called genre paintings, prominently feature figures to whom no specific identity can be attached – they are not portraits or intended as historical figures, but rather snapshots of quotidian life. Together with landscape painting, the development and enormous popularity of genre painting is the most distinctive feature of Dutch painting in this period, although in this case they were also very popular in Flemish painting. Many are single figures, such as Vermeer's "The Milkmaid"; others may show large groups at some social occasion, or crowds.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: "Seventeenth-century Holland produced more and better artists dedicated to genre painting with and without messages than any other nation." There were a large number of sub-types within the genre: single figures, peasant families, tavern scenes, "merry company" parties, women at work about the house, scenes of village or town festivities (though these were still more common in Flemish painting), market scenes, barracks scenes, scenes with horses or farm animals, in snow, by moonlight, and many more. In fact most of these had specific terms in Dutch, but there was no overall Dutch term equivalent to "genre painting" – until the late 18th century the English often called them "drolleries". Some artists worked mostly within one of these sub-types, especially after about 1625. Over the course of the century, genre paintings tended to reduce in size.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Though genre paintings provide many insights into the daily life of 17th-century citizens of all classes, their accuracy cannot always be taken for granted. Typically they show what art historians term a "reality effect" rather than an actual realist depiction; the degree to which this is the case varies between artists. Many paintings which seem only to depict everyday scenes actually illustrated Dutch proverbs and sayings or conveyed a moralistic message – the meaning of which may now need to be deciphered by art historians, though some are clear enough. Many artists, and no doubt purchasers, certainly tried to have things both ways, enjoying the depiction of disorderly households or brothel scenes, while providing a moral interpretation – the works of Jan Steen, whose other profession was as an innkeeper, are an example. The balance between these elements is still debated by art historians today.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The titles given later to paintings often distinguish between "taverns" or "inns" and "brothels", but in practice these were very often the same establishments, as many taverns had rooms above or behind set aside for sexual purposes: "Inn in front; brothel behind" was a Dutch proverb.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The Steen above is very clearly an "exemplum", and though each of the individual components of it is realistically depicted, the overall scene is not a plausible depiction of a real moment; typically of genre painting, it is a situation that is depicted, and satirized.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The Renaissance tradition of recondite emblem books had, in the hands of the 17th-century Dutch – almost universally literate in the vernacular, but mostly without education in the classics – turned into the popularist and highly moralistic works of Jacob Cats, Roemer Visscher, and others, often based in popular proverbs. The illustrations to these are often quoted directly in paintings, and since the start of the 20th century art historians have attached proverbs, sayings and mottoes to a great number of genre works. Another popular source of meaning is visual puns using the great number of Dutch slang terms in the sexual area: the vagina could be represented by a lute ("luit") or stocking ("kous"), and sex by a bird ("vogelen"), among many other options, and purely visual symbols such as shoes, spouts, and jugs and flagons on their side.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The same painters often painted works in a very different spirit of housewives or other women at rest in the home or at work – they massively outnumber similar treatments of men. In fact, working-class men going about their jobs are notably absent from Dutch Golden Age art, with landscapes populated by travellers and idlers but rarely tillers of the soil. Despite the Dutch Republic being the most important nation in international trade in Europe, and the abundance of marine paintings, scenes of dock workers and other commercial activities are very rare. This group of subjects was a Dutch invention, reflecting the cultural preoccupations of the age, and was to be adopted by artists from other countries, especially France, in the two centuries following.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The tradition developed from the realism and detailed background activity of Early Netherlandish painting, which Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder were among the first to turn into their principal subjects, also making use of proverbs. The Haarlem painters Willem Pieterszoon Buytewech, Frans Hals and Esaias van de Velde were important painters early in the period. Buytewech painted "merry companies" of finely dressed young people, with moralistic significance lurking in the detail.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Van de Velde was also important as a landscapist, whose scenes included unglamorous figures very different from those in his genre paintings, which were typically set at garden parties in country houses. Hals was principally a portraitist, but also painted genre figures of a portrait size early in his career.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: A stay in Haarlem by the Flemish master of peasant tavern scenes Adriaen Brouwer, from 1625 or 1626, gave Adriaen van Ostade his lifelong subject, though he often took a more sentimental approach. Before Brouwer, peasants had normally been depicted outdoors; he usually shows them in a plain and dim interior, though van Ostade's sometimes occupy ostentatiously decrepit farmhouses of enormous size.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Van Ostade was as likely to paint a single figure as a group, as were the Utrecht Caravaggisti in their genre works, and the single figure, or small groups of two or three became increasingly common, especially those including women and children. The most notable woman artist of the period, Judith Leyster (1609–1660), specialized in these, before her husband, Jan Miense Molenaer, prevailed on her to give up painting. The Leiden school of "fijnschilder" ("fine painters") were renowned for small and highly finished paintings, many of this type. Leading artists included Gerard Dou, Gabriel Metsu, Frans van Mieris the Elder, and later his son Willem van Mieris, Godfried Schalcken, and Adriaen van der Werff.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: This later generation, whose work now seems over-refined compared to their predecessors, also painted portraits and histories, and were the most highly regarded and rewarded Dutch painters by the end of the period, whose works were sought after all over Europe. Genre paintings reflected the increasing prosperity of Dutch society, and settings grew steadily more comfortable, opulent and carefully depicted as the century progressed. Artists not part of the Leiden group whose common subjects also were more intimate genre groups included Nicolaes Maes, Gerard ter Borch and Pieter de Hooch, whose interest in light in interior scenes was shared with Jan Vermeer, long a very obscure figure, but now the most highly regarded genre painter of all.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Landscape painting was a major genre in the 17th century. Flemish landscapes (particularly from Antwerp) of the 16th century first served as an example. These had been not particularly realistic, having been painted mostly in the studio, partly from imagination, and often still using the semi-aerial view from above typical of earlier Netherlandish landscape painting in the "world landscape" tradition of Joachim Patinir, Herri met de Bles and the early Pieter Bruegel the Elder. A more realistic Dutch landscape style developed, seen from ground level, often based on drawings made outdoors, with lower horizons which made it possible to emphasize the often impressive cloud formations that were (and are) so typical in the climate of the region, and which cast a particular light. Favourite subjects were the dunes along the western sea coast, rivers with their broad adjoining meadows where cattle grazed, often with the silhouette of a city in the distance. Winter landscapes with frozen canals and creeks also abounded. The sea was a favourite topic as well since the Low Countries depended on it for trade, battled with it for new land, and battled on it with competing nations.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Important early figures in the move to realism were Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630) and Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634), both also mentioned above as genre painters – in Avercamp's case the same paintings deserve mention in each category. From the late 1620s the "tonal phase" of landscape painting started, as artists softened or blurred their outlines, and concentrated on an atmospheric effect, with great prominence given to the sky, and human figures usually either absent or small and distant. Compositions based on a diagonal across the picture space became popular, and water often featured. The leading artists were Jan van Goyen (1596–1656), Salomon van Ruysdael (1602–1670), Pieter de Molyn (1595–1661), and in marine painting Simon de Vlieger (1601–1653), with a host of minor figures – a recent study lists over 75 artists who worked in van Goyen's manner for at least a period, including Cuyp.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: From the 1650s the "classical phase" began, retaining the atmospheric quality, but with more expressive compositions and stronger contrasts of light and colour. Compositions are often anchored by a single "heroic tree", windmill or tower, or ship in marine works. The leading artist was Jacob van Ruisdael (1628–1682), who produced a great quantity and variety of work, using every typical Dutch subject except the Italianate landscape (below); instead he produced "Nordic" landscapes of dark and dramatic mountain pine forests with rushing torrents and waterfalls.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: His pupil was Meindert Hobbema (1638–1709), best known for his atypical "Avenue at Middelharnis" (1689, London), a departure from his usual scenes of watermills and roads through woods. Two other artists with more personal styles, whose best work included larger pictures (up to a metre or more across), were Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691) and Philips Koninck (1619–1688). Cuyp took golden Italian light and used it in evening scenes with a group of figures in the foreground and behind them a river and wide landscape. Koninck's best works are panoramic views, as from a hill, over wide flat farmlands, with a huge sky.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: A different type of landscape, produced throughout the tonal and classical phases, was the romantic Italianate landscape, typically in more mountainous settings than are found in the Netherlands, with golden light, and sometimes picturesque Mediterranean staffage and ruins. Not all the artists who specialized in these had visited Italy. Jan Both (d. 1652), who had been to Rome and worked with Claude Lorrain, was a leading developer of the subgenre, which influenced the work of many painters of landscapes with Dutch settings, such as Aelbert Cuyp. Other artists who consistently worked in the style were Nicolaes Berchem (1620–1683) and Adam Pijnacker. Italianate landscapes were popular as prints, and more paintings by Berchem were reproduced in engravings during the period itself than those of any other artist.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: A number of other artists do not fit in any of these groups, above all Rembrandt, whose relatively few painted landscapes show various influences, including some from Hercules Seghers (c. 1589–c. 1638); his very rare large mountain valley landscapes were a very personal development of 16th-century styles. Aert van der Neer (d. 1677) painted very small scenes of rivers at night or under ice and snow.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Landscapes with animals in the foreground were a distinct sub-type, and were painted by Cuyp, Paulus Potter (1625–1654), Albert Jansz. Klomp (1625-1688), Adriaen van de Velde (1636–1672) and Karel Dujardin (1626–1678, farm animals), with Philips Wouwerman painting horses and riders in various settings. The cow was a symbol of prosperity to the Dutch, hitherto overlooked in art, and apart from the horse by far the most commonly shown animal; goats were used to indicate Italy. Potter's "The Young Bull" is an enormous and famous portrait which Napoleon took to Paris (it later returned) though livestock analysts have noted from the depiction of the various parts of the anatomy that it appears to be a composite of studies of six different animals of widely different ages.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Architecture also fascinated the Dutch, churches in particular. At the start of the period the main tradition was of fanciful palaces and city views of invented Northern Mannerist architecture, which Flemish painting continued to develop, and in Holland was represented by Dirck van Delen. A greater realism began to appear and the exteriors and interiors of actual buildings were reproduced, though not always faithfully. During the century understanding of the proper rendering of perspective grew and were enthusiastically applied. Several artists specialized in church interiors.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Pieter Jansz Saenredam, whose father Jan Saenredam engraved sensuous nude Mannerist goddesses, painted unpeopled views of now whitewashed Gothic city churches. His emphasis on even light and geometry, with little depiction of surface textures, is brought out by comparing his works with those of Emanuel de Witte, who left in the people, uneven floors, contrasts of light and such clutter of church furniture as remained in Calvinist churches, all usually ignored by Saenredam. Gerard Houckgeest, followed by van Witte and Hendrick van Vliet, had supplemented the traditional view along a main axis of the church with diagonal views that added drama and interest.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Gerrit Berckheyde specialized in lightly populated views of main city streets, squares, and major public buildings; Jan van der Heyden preferred more intimate scenes of quieter Amsterdam streets, often with trees and canals. These were real views, but he did not hesitate to adjust them for compositional effect.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The Dutch Republic relied on trade by sea for its exceptional wealth, had naval wars with Britain and other nations during the period, and was criss-crossed by rivers and canals. It is therefore no surprise that the genre of maritime painting was enormously popular, and taken to new heights in the period by Dutch artists; as with landscapes, the move from the artificial elevated view typical of earlier marine painting was a crucial step. Pictures of sea battles told the stories of a Dutch navy at the peak of its glory, though today it is usually the more tranquil scenes that are highly estimated. Ships are normally at sea, and dock scenes surprisingly absent.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: More often than not, even small ships fly the Dutch tricolour, and many vessels can be identified as naval or one of the many other government ships. Many pictures included some land, with a beach or harbour viewpoint, or a view across an estuary. Other artists specialized in river scenes, from the small pictures of Salomon van Ruysdael with little boats and reed-banks to the large Italianate landscapes of Aelbert Cuyp, where the sun is usually setting over a wide river. The genre naturally shares much with landscape painting, and in developing the depiction of the sky the two went together; many landscape artists also painted beach and river scenes. Artists included Jan Porcellis, Simon de Vlieger, Jan van de Cappelle, Hendrick Dubbels and Abraham Storck. Willem van de Velde the Elder and his son are the leading masters of the later decades, tending, as at the beginning of the century, to make the ship the subject, whereas in tonal works of earlier decades the emphasis had been on the sea and the weather. They left for London in 1672, leaving the master of heavy seas, the German-born Ludolf Bakhuizen, as the leading artist.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Still lifes were a great opportunity to display skill in painting textures and surfaces in great detail and with realistic light effects. Food of all kinds laid out on a table, silver cutlery, intricate patterns and subtle folds in tablecloths and flowers all challenged painters. Dutch painters produced still lifes in great numbers, revealing the Dutch "love of domestic culture". The English term "derives from the Dutch word "stilleven"", which came into use about 1650.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Several types of subject were recognised: "banketje" were "banquet pieces", "ontbijtjes" simpler "breakfast pieces". Virtually all still lifes had a moralistic message, usually concerning the brevity of life – this is known as the vanitas theme – implicit even in the absence of an obvious symbol like a skull, or less obvious one such as a half-peeled lemon (like life, sweet in appearance but bitter to taste). Flowers wilt and food decays, and silver is of no use to the soul. Nevertheless, the force of this message seems less powerful in the more elaborate pieces of the second half of the century.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Initially the objects shown were nearly always mundane. However, from the mid-century "pronkstillevens" ("ostentatious still lifes"), which depicted expensive and exotic objects and had been developed as a subgenre in the 1640s in Antwerp by Flemish artists such as Frans Snyders and Adriaen van Utrecht, became more popular. The early realist, tonal and classical phases of landscape painting had counterparts in still life painting. Willem Claeszoon Heda (1595–c. 1680) and Willem Kalf (1619–1693) led the change to the "pronkstilleven", while Pieter Claesz (d. 1660) preferred to paint simpler "ontbijt" ("breakfast pieces"), or explicit "vanitas" pieces.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: In all these painters, colours are often very muted, with browns dominating, especially in the middle of the century. This is less true of the works of Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606–1684), an important figure who spent much of his career based over the border in Antwerp. Here his displays began to sprawl sideways to form wide oblong pictures, unusual in the north, although Heda sometimes painted taller vertical compositions. Still life painters were especially prone to form dynasties, it seems: there were many de Heems and Bosschaerts, Heda's son continued in his father's style, and Claesz was the father of Nicholaes Berchem.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Flower paintings formed a sub-group with its own specialists, and were occasionally the speciality of the few women artists, such as Maria van Oosterwyck and Rachel Ruysch. The Dutch also led the world in botanical and other scientific drawings, prints and book illustrations. Despite the intense realism of individual flowers, paintings were composed from individual studies or even book illustrations, and blooms from very different seasons were routinely included in the same composition, and the same flowers reappear in different works, just as pieces of tableware do. There was also a fundamental unreality in that bouquets of flowers in vases were not in fact at all common in houses at the time – even the very rich displayed flowers one by one in delftware tulip-holders.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The Dutch tradition was largely begun by Ambrosius Bosschaert (1573–1621), a Flemish-born flower painter who had settled in the north by the beginning of the period, and founded a dynasty. His brother-in-law Balthasar van der Ast (d. 1657) pioneered still lifes of shells, as well as painting flowers. These early works were relatively brightly lit, with the bouquets of flowers arranged in a relatively simple way. From the mid-century arrangements that can fairly be called Baroque, usually against a dark background, became more popular, exemplified by the works of Willem van Aelst (1627–1683). Painters from Leiden, The Hague, and Amsterdam particularly excelled in the genre.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Dead game, and birds painted live but studied from the dead, were another subgenre, as were dead fish, a staple of the Dutch diet – Abraham van Beijeren did many of these. The Dutch were less given to the Flemish style of combining large still life elements with other types of painting – they would have been considered prideful in portraits – and the Flemish habit of specialist painters collaborating on the different elements in the same work. But this sometimes did happen – Philips Wouwerman was occasionally used to add men and horses to turn a landscape into a hunting or skirmish scene, Berchem or Adriaen van de Velde to add people or farm animals.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: For Dutch artists, Karel van Mander's "Schilderboeck" was meant not only as a list of biographies, but also a source of advice for young artists. It quickly became a classic standard work for generations of young Dutch and Flemish artists in the 17th century. The book advised artists to travel and see the sights of Florence and Rome, and after 1604 many did so. However, it is noticeable that the most important Dutch artists in all fields, figures such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Steen, Jacob van Ruisdael, and others, had not made the voyage.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Many Dutch (and Flemish) painters worked abroad or exported their work; printmaking was also an important export market, by which Rembrandt became known across Europe. The Dutch Gift to Charles II of England was a diplomatic gift which included four contemporary Dutch paintings. English painting was heavily reliant on Dutch painters, with Sir Peter Lely followed by Sir Godfrey Kneller, developing the English portrait style established by the Flemish Anthony van Dyck before the English Civil War. The marine painters van der Velde, father and son, were among several artists who left Holland at the French invasion of 1672, which brought a collapse in the art market. They also moved to London, and the beginnings of English landscape painting were established by several less distinguished Dutch painters, such as Hendrick Danckerts.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The Bamboccianti were a colony of Dutch artists who introduced the genre scene to Italy. Jan Weenix and Melchior d'Hondecoeter specialized in game and birds, dead or alive, and were in demand for country house and shooting-lodge overdoors across Northern Europe.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Although the Dutch control of the northeast sugar-producing region of Dutch Brazil turned out to be brief (1630-54), Governor Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen invited Dutch artists to paint scenes which are valuable in showing the seventeenth-century landscape and peoples of the region. The two most well known of these artists were Frans Post, a landscapist, and a still life painter, Albert Eckhout, who produced ethnographic paintings of Brazil's population. These were originally displayed in the Great Hall of the Vrijburg Palace in Recife. There was a market in Amsterdam for such paintings, and Post continued to produce Brazilian scenes for years after his return to the Netherlands. The Dutch East Indies were covered much less well artistically.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: The enormous success of 17th-century Dutch painting overpowered the work of subsequent generations, and no Dutch painter of the 18th century—nor, arguably, a 19th-century one before Van Gogh—is well known outside the Netherlands. Already by the end of the period artists were complaining that buyers were more interested in dead than living artists.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: If only because of the enormous quantities produced, Dutch Golden Age painting has always formed a significant part of collections of Old Master paintings, itself a term invented in the 18th century to describe Dutch Golden Age artists. Taking only Wouwerman paintings in old royal collections, there are more than 60 in Dresden and over 50 in the Hermitage. But the reputation of the period has shown many changes and shifts of emphasis. One nearly constant factor has been admiration for Rembrandt, especially since the Romantic period. Other artists have shown drastic shifts in critical fortune and market price; at the end of the period some of the active Leiden fijnschilders had enormous reputations, but since the mid-19th century realist works in various genres have been far more appreciated.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Vermeer was rescued from near-total obscurity in the 19th century, by which time several of his works had been re-attributed to others. However the fact that so many of his works were already in major collections, often attributed to other artists, demonstrates that the quality of individual paintings was recognised even if his collective oeuvre was unknown. Other artists have continued to be rescued from the mass of little-known painters: the late and very simple still lifes of Adriaen Coorte in the 1950s, and the landscapists Jacobus Mancaden and Frans Post earlier in the century.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: Genre paintings were long popular, but little-regarded. In 1780 Horace Walpole disapproved that they "invite laughter to divert itself with the nastiest indelicacy of boors". Sir Joshua Reynolds, the English leader of 18th-century academic art, made several revealing comments on Dutch art. He was impressed by the quality of Vermeer's "Milkmaid" (illustrated at the start of this article), and the liveliness of Hals' portraits, regretting he lacked the "patience" to finish them properly, and lamented that Steen had not been born in Italy and formed by the High Renaissance, so that his talent could have been put to better use. By Reynolds' time the moralist aspect of genre painting was no longer understood, even in the Netherlands; the famous example is the so-called "Paternal Admonition", as it was then known, by Gerard ter Borch. This was praised by Goethe and others for the delicacy of its depiction of a father reprimanding his daughter. In fact, in the view of most (but not all) modern scholars it is a proposition scene in a brothel – there are two versions (Berlin & Amsterdam) and it is unclear whether a "tell-tale coin" in the man's hand has been removed or overpainted in either.


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: In the second half of the 18th century, the down-to-earth realism of Dutch painting was a "Whig taste" in England, and in France associated with Enlightenment rationalism and aspirations for political reform. In the 19th century, with a near-universal respect for realism, and the final decline of the hierarchy of genres, contemporary painters began to borrow from genre painters both their realism and their use of objects for narrative purposes, and paint similar subjects themselves, with all the genres the Dutch had pioneered appearing on far larger canvases (still lifes excepted).


title: Dutch Golden Age painting

text: In landscape painting, the Italianate artists were the most influential and highly regarded in the 18th century, but John Constable was among those Romantics who denounced them for artificiality, preferring the tonal and classical artists. In fact, both groups remained influential and popular in the 19th century.


title: Cubic metre

text: The cubic metre (in Commonwealth English and international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or cubic meter (in American English) is the unit of volume in the International System of Units (SI). Its symbol is m. It is the volume of a cube with edges one metre in length. An alternative name, which allowed a different usage with metric prefixes, was the stère, still sometimes used for dry measure (for instance, in reference to wood). Another alternative name, no longer widely used, was the kilolitre.


title: Cubic metre

text: A cubic metre of pure water at the temperature of maximum density (3.98 °C) and standard atmospheric pressure (101.325 kPa) has a mass of , or one tonne. At 0 °C, the freezing point of water, a cubic metre of water has slightly less mass, 999.972 kilograms.


title: Cubic metre

text: A cubic metre is sometimes abbreviated to ', ', ', ', ', ', when superscript characters or markup cannot be used (e.g. in some typewritten documents and postings in Usenet newsgroups). The "cubic metre" symbol is encoded by Unicode at code point .


title: Snapdeal

text: Snapdeal is an Indian e-commerce company, based in New Delhi, India. It was founded in February 2010 by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.


title: Snapdeal

text: Snapdeal was one of the largest online marketplaces in India. Snapdeal targets the value e-commerce segment, which Bahl estimated to be three times larger than the branded goods market.


title: Snapdeal

text: Fashion, home and general merchandise account for a majority of the products sold by over 500,000 sellers on Snapdeal. Buyers from more than 3,700 towns in India shop on Snapdeal.


title: Snapdeal

text: Snapdeal was founded on 4 February 2010 as a daily deals platform, before expanding to become an online marketplace in October 2011.


title: Snapdeal

text: Reports emerged in Q2 2016 that SoftBank Group planned to engineer a merger between Snapdeal and Flipkart. Discussions took place for months, but concluded in July 2017 after the deal fell through due to lack of consensus among Snapdeal's board members. Disagreements over valuation and proposed special payouts to early investors—Nexus Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital—were among the reasons cited.


title: Snapdeal

text: Following the unsuccessful plan to merge with Flipkart, Snapdeal pursued a new strategy it called "Snapdeal 2.0". The initiative saw the sale of non-core businesses—Freecharge and Vulcan Express—to dedicate more resources to Snapdeal's e-commerce marketplace, which is its core business.


title: Snapdeal

text: The strategy yielded strong results. From 2017 to 2021, Snapdeal's revenue grew by 74% at its peak, while losses were cut by nearly 95%. Between the financial years in 2018 and 2020, the number of unique customers on Snapdeal's platform also tripled to 27 million. More than 90% of Snapdeal's orders came from non-metro users.


title: Snapdeal

text: Under "Snapdeal 2.0", the company built an asset-light operating model designed specifically to serve the value e-commerce segment, including decentralised logistics and minimal inventory, keeping operating costs low.


title: Snapdeal

text: Part of the strategy's success is derived from recreating the bustling and diverse experiences of India's bazaars online. To sell products to non-metro buyers, Snapdeal identified a need to engage and entertain, just like in physical bricks-and-mortar settings. In February 2021, Bahl shared in an interview with "KrASIA" that "Snapdeal's engagement with this new and a large part of our existing user base is built on three key themes of video, voice, and vernacular. All these initiatives are built around the central idea of how we can help our users discover and transact better, rather than a traditional approach of how we can sell better."


title: Snapdeal

text: Snapdeal's focus on the value e-commerce segment has led Indian FMCG companies such as Godrej and Himalaya to use its platform to sell their brand products. The companies have made arrangements to sell their products directly on the platform through authorised dealers. Other brands such as The Man Company, Mamaearth, and Ustraa have also partnered with Snapdeal to reach customers from non-metro regions.


title: Snapdeal

text: In March 2015, Snapdeal engaged actor Aamir Khan to promote its website in India with its Diwali campaign, "Dil Ki Deal. The year-long campaign stirred controversy due to comments made by Khan in his personal capacity.


title: Snapdeal

text: In January 2021, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released a 2020 report that identified Snapdeal as a marketplace where counterfeit products are sold (a notorious market), it had been listed by the USTR since 2019. Snapdeal responded that the report "reflected a blinkered and flawed view of the world that not only fails to make a distinction between the respective roles of brands, sellers and platforms, but also wilfully ignores the applicable laws in various jurisdictions, including in India". Snapdeal also sent a notice to the USTR asking for the statements made in the report to be retracted, and for a corrigendum to be issued. It was subsequently dropped from the 2021 USTR notorious markets report, released in 2022. Snapdeal is a member of the International Trademark Association (INTA), which has over 7200 members from 187 countries that pledge to protect intellectual property on online marketplaces.


title: Snapdeal

text: In July 2022, reports emerged that Snapdeal will debut on the government-led Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which would make it the first e-commerce marketplace to do so. Snapdeal will launch on the network under three categories: fashion, home, personal and beauty care.


title: Snapdeal

text: It received its first investment in January 2011, amounting to US$12 million from Nexus Venture Partners and Indo-US Venture Partners. Another round was done in July 2011 for funds amounting to US$45 million, from Bessemer Venture Partners and existing investors. A third round of funding worth US$50 million was completed the same year, from eBay and existing investors.


title: Snapdeal

text: In February 2014, Snapdeal raised US$133 million in a round led by eBay together with Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Saama Capital. The following month, it raised an additional US$105 million from BlackRock, Temasek Holdings, PremjiInvest and others. SoftBank also invested US$647 million in October 2014, making it the largest shareholder in Snapdeal.


title: Snapdeal

text: In August 2015, Alibaba Group, Foxconn and SoftBank invested US$500 million in Snapdeal. In February of the following year, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Brother Fortune Apparel injected US$200 million in funds into Snapdeal at a valuation of US$6.5 billion. The completion of the investment coincided with new appointments to Snapdeal's leadership team, including Anand Chandrasekaran (from Airtel), Jayant Sood (from Airtel), Rajiv Mangla (from Adobe), and more.


title: Snapdeal

text: In December 2021, it was reported that Snapdeal is planning to raise US$250 million in an initial public offering (IPO). Snapdeal also announced that it intends to enter the offline retail space in smaller Indian cities.


title: Snapdeal

text: In June 2010, Snapdeal's holding company Jasper Infotech acquired Bengaluru-based group buying website Grabbon.com for an undisclosed amount.


title: Snapdeal

text: In April 2012, Delhi-based online sports goods retailer eSportsBuy.com was acquired. This was followed by the acquisition of Shopo.in in 2013, which is a customer-to-customer (C2C) e-commerce platform.


title: Snapdeal

text: In 2014, Snapdeal acquired Doozton, a fashion product discovery technology platform, and Wishpicker, a technology platform that uses machine learning to deliver recommendations for gift purchases. Both deals were completed for undisclosed amounts.


title: Snapdeal

text: Snapdeal made multiple acquisitions in 2015, acquiring a stake in product comparison website Smartprix in January, before acquiring a discovery site for luxury fashion products, Exclusively.in. Two months later, it acquired a 20% stake in logistics service company GoJavas as well as e-commerce solution provider Unicommerce, and financial transaction platform RupeePower. In April 2015, mobile payments company Freecharge was acquired by Snapdeal. Programmatic display advertising platform Reduce Data was also acquired in September of the same year.


title: Snapdeal

text: In August 2016, logistics firm Pigeon Express acquired a 51% stake in GoJavas with Snapdeal holding 49% stake in the firm. Snapdeal later exited GoJavas.


title: National Firearms Act

text: The National Firearms Act (NFA), 73rd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, was enacted on June 26, 1934, and currently codified and amended as . The law is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes an excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. The NFA is also referred to as Title II of the federal firearms laws, with the Gun Control Act of 1968 ("GCA") as Title I.


title: National Firearms Act

text: All transfers of ownership of registered NFA firearms must be done through the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (the "NFA registry"). The NFA also requires that the permanent transport of NFA firearms across state lines by the owner must be reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Temporary transports of some items, most notably suppressors (also referred to as silencers), do not need to be reported.


title: National Firearms Act

text: The ostensible impetus for the National Firearms Act of 1934 was the gangland crime of the Prohibition era, such as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, and the attempted assassination of President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Like the current National Firearms Act (NFA), the 1934 Act required NFA firearms to be registered and taxed. The $200 tax was quite prohibitive at the time (). With a few exceptions, the tax amount is unchanged.


title: National Firearms Act

text: Originally, pistols and revolvers were to be regulated as strictly as machine guns; towards that end, cutting down a rifle or shotgun to circumvent the handgun restrictions by making a concealable weapon was taxed as strictly as a machine gun.


title: National Firearms Act

text: Conventional pistols and revolvers were ultimately excluded from the Act before passage, but other concealable weapons were not. Regarding the definition of "firearm", the language of the statute as originally enacted was as follows:


title: National Firearms Act

text: Under the original Act, NFA weapons were machine guns, short-barreled rifles (SBR), short-barreled shotguns (SBS), any other weapons (AOW, i.e., concealable weapons other than pistols or revolvers), and silencers for any type of NFA or non-NFA weapon. Minimum barrel length was soon amended to 16 inches for rimfire rifles and by 1960 had been amended to 16 inches for centerfire rifles as well.


title: National Firearms Act

text: NFA categories have been modified by laws passed by Congress, rulings by the Department of the Treasury, and regulations promulgated by the enforcement agency assigned, known as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or ATF.


title: National Firearms Act

text: The National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) defines a number of categories of regulated firearms. These weapons are collectively known as NFA firearms and include the following:


title: National Firearms Act

text: Firearms meeting the definition of "any other weapon", or AOW, are weapons or devices that can be concealed on the person and from which a shot can be discharged by the energy of an explosive. Many AOWs are disguised devices such as pens, cigarette lighters, knives, cane guns, and umbrella guns. AOWs can be pistols and revolvers with smooth bore barrels (e.g., H&R Handy-Gun, Serbu Super-Shorty) designed or redesigned to fire a fixed shotgun shell. While the above weapons are similar in appearance to weapons made from shotguns, they were originally manufactured in the described configuration rather than modified from existing shotguns. As a result, such weapons do not fit within the definition of shotgun or weapons made from a shotgun.


title: National Firearms Act

text: The AOW definition includes specifically described weapons with combination shotgun and rifle barrels 12 inches or more but less than 18 inches in length from which only a single discharge can be made from either barrel without manual reloading.


title: National Firearms Act

text: The ATF Firearms Technology Branch has issued opinions that when a pistol (such as an AR-type pistol) under 26" in overall length is fitted with a vertical fore-grip, it is no longer "designed, made and intended to fire ... when held in one hand," and therefore no longer meets the definition of a pistol. Such a firearm then falls only within the definition of "any other weapon" under the NFA.


title: National Firearms Act

text: In 1938, Congress recognized that the Marble Game Getter, a short .22/.410 sporting firearm, had "legitimate use" and did not deserve the stigma of a "gangster weapon" and reduced the $200 tax to one dollar for the Game Getter. In 1960 Congress changed the transfer tax for all AOW category firearms to $5. The transfer tax for machine guns, silencers, SBR and SBS remained at $200.


title: National Firearms Act

text: In general, certain components that make up an NFA item are considered as regulated. For example, the components of a silencer are considered as "silencers" by themselves and the replacement parts are regulated. However, the repair of original parts without replacement can be done by the original manufacturer, FFL gunsmith, or by registered owner without being subjected to new registration as long as the serial number and the dimension (caliber) are maintained. The length may be reduced in repair, but cannot be increased. Increasing the length is considered as making a new silencer. "Suppressor" is the term used within the trade/industry literature while the term "silencer" is the commonly used term that appears in the actual wording of the NFA. The terms are often used interchangeably depending on the source quoted.


title: National Firearms Act

text: Suppressors and machine guns are the most heavily regulated. For example, in Ruling 81-4, ATF declared that any AR-15 Drop-in Auto-Sear (DIAS) made after November 1, 1981 is itself a machine gun, and is therefore subject to regulation. While this might seem to mean that pre-1981 sears are legal to possess without registration, ATF closes this loophole in other publications, stating,Regardless of the date of manufacture of a drop in auto sear, possession of such a sear and certain M-16 fire control parts is possession of a machine gun as defined by the NFA. Specifically, these parts are listed as "(a) combination(s) of parts" designed "Solely and exclusively" for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun and are a machine gun as defined in the NFA.ATF machine gun technology letters written between 1980 and 1996 by Edward M. Owen—the then-chief of the ATF technology division defined "solely and exclusively" in all of his published and unpublished machine gun rulings with specific non-ambiguous language.


title: National Firearms Act

text: Owning for the parts needed to assemble other NFA firearms is generally restricted. One individual cannot own or manufacture certain machine gun sear (fire-control) components, unless, he owns a registered machine gun. The M2 carbine trigger pack is such an example of a "combination of parts" that is a machine gun in and of itself. Most of these have been registered as they were pulled from stores of surplus rifles in the early 1960s. In some special cases, exceptions have been determined to these rules by ATF. A semiautomatic firearm which could have a string or shoelace looped around the cocking handle of and then behind and in front of the trigger in such a way as to allow the firearm to be fired automatically is no longer considered a machine gun unless the string is attached in this manner.


title: National Firearms Act

text: Most current fully automatic trigger groups will not fit their semi-automatic firearm look-alike counterparts—the semi-automatic version is specifically constructed to reject the fully automatic trigger group by adding metal in critical places. This addition is required by ATF to prevent easy conversion of Title I firearms into machine guns.


title: National Firearms Act

text: For the civilian possession, all machine guns must have been manufactured and registered with ATF prior to May 19, 1986, to be transferable between citizens. These machine gun prices have drastically escalated in value, especially items like registered sears and conversion-kits. Only a Class-II manufacturer (a FFL holder licensed to manufacture firearms or Type-07 license that has paid a Special Occupational Tax Stamp or SOT) could manufacture machine guns after that date, and they can only be sold to government, law-enforcement, and military entities. Transfer can only be done to other SOT FFL-holders, and such FFL-holders must have a "demonstration letter" from a respective government agency to receive such machine guns. Falsification and/or misuse of the "demo-letter" process can and has resulted in long jail sentences and felony convictions for violators.


title: National Firearms Act

text: Owning both a short barrel and a legal-length rifle could be construed as intent to build an illegal, unregistered SBR. This possibility was contested and won in the U.S. Supreme Court case of "United States v. Thompson-Center Arms Company". ATF lost the case, and was unable to prove that possession of a short barrel for the specific pistol configuration of a Thompson Contender is illegal. ATF later released ruling 2011-4 to clarify the legal status of owning such conversion kits.


title: National Firearms Act

text: Removal of a weapon from classification as an NFA firearm, such as the reclassification of the original Broomhandle Mauser with shoulder stock from "short barrel rifle" (SBR) to a curio or relic handgun, changed its status as a Title II NFA firearm but did not change its status as a Title I Gun Control Act firearm.


title: National Firearms Act

text: Muzzle-loading firearms are exempt from the Act (as they are defined as "antique firearms" and are not considered "firearms" under either the GCA or the NFA). Thus, though common muzzle-loading hunting rifles are available in calibers over 0.50 inch, they are not regulated as destructive devices. Muzzle-loading cannon are similarly exempt since the law makes no distinction about the size of muzzle-loading weapons. Thus it is legal for a civilian to build muzzle-loading rifles, pistols, cannon, and mortars with no paperwork. However, ammunition for these weapons can still be classified as destructive devices themselves, such as explosive shells. While an 'antique firearm' is not considered a 'firearm' under the NFA, some states (such as Oregon) have laws that specifically prohibit anyone that could not otherwise own/obtain an GCA or NFA defined 'firearm' (i.e., felons, recipients of dishonorable discharge from military service, the mentally adjudicated, etc.) from owning/obtaining an 'antique firearm'.