Using visual analysis techniques to study and discuss selected works, this course follows the story of Western European art from c.1600 to the early 1800s and considers how politics and religion and institutions shaped artists' work and how local circumstances favoured different genres, such as landscape, narrative 'histories' or portraits. This was the era of Vermeer, Rembrandt and Ruisdael in the Netherlands during the Dutch 'Golden Age'; Poussin and Claude Lorraine in Louis XIII and Louis XIV's France; and Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough and Turner in the early days of the British Royal Academy. Each session includes small group exercises and everyone makes a (very) short end-of-term presentation. While experience is not required, the course builds on 'Looking at Art: Renaissance' offered last year and the ability to clearly see detail in images projected onto a screen is very important.