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David Dimbleby:
The Flatlands are not to everyone's taste;
it's the sort of area of the Fens, and Norfolk and Suffolk and
Cambridge; but particularly the Fens we're interested in because
they were drained by Dutch engineers who came over by invitation in
the sixteenth century. Dutch engineers inevitably settled and brought
Dutch painting. And of course the Flatlands have a landscape very
similar to Holland, with windmills and boats sailing down, that sort
of thing. So lo and behold, what happens? The painters start painting
in the Dutch style, so you have this very close relationship between
Dutch painting and painting in East Anglia, with English painters
really learning to look at their landscape through Dutch eyes.
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