by Kristen Depken
| One little known fact about the Metropolitan Museum of Art – for those outside the art world, of course – is that it is home to the largest collection of Dutch paintings outside of Europe. The Met houses 228 Dutch works, including 20 by Rembrandt, and they are all on display together for the first time in the Met’s latest special exhibition, “The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art”, running now through January 6 in honor of Rembrandt’s 400th birthday.
Other than Rembrandt and Vermeer, I knew little about the works of the Dutch prior to visiting “The Age of Rembrandt” last weekend, and I was pleased to learn not only about a variety of Dutch artists, but about the history of the museum itself. The exhibit is arranged such that it presents the Dutch works in order of acquisition, detailing the museum’s major purchases and benefactors to provide a glimpse into the social and economic history of both the museum and the country as a whole.
The first portion of the exhibit features the Dutch works that made up a large portion of the 1871 Purchase, the museum’s founding purchase of 174 paintings. Included in this acquisition were Salomon van Ruysdael’s Drawing the Eel and Jan van Goyen’s View of Haarlem and the Haarlemmer Meer, both highly sought after works that established the Met’s position one of the world’s leading art museums. | | After this initial purchase, however, the museum did not add significantly to its collection until nearly a decade later, when the country was finally able to recover from the depression of 1873, one of the worst in the nation’s history. At the turn of the century, when the American economy had picked up again, the Met acquired a number of Dutch works thanks to the contributions of wealthy art patrons and collectors like J.P. Morgan and Henry Marquand. Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Frans Hals, Aelbert Cuyp, and Jacob van Ruisdael had become highly popular among European collectors, and the Met was pleased to acquire such works as Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait, Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, van Ruisdael’s Wheat Fields, Hals’s Merrymakers at Shrovetide, and Cuyp’s Young Herdsmen with Cows during this time.
Through the mid- to late-1900s, more Dutch works were acquired at the bequest of patrons such as William K. Vanderbilt, H.O. Havemeyer, Benjamin Altman, Arabella Huntington, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightman, and Jack and Belle Linsky, whose contributions are noted throughout the exhibit. Altman donated Vermeer’s well-known A Maid Asleep in 1913, Vanderbilt added Rembrandt’s Man in Oriental Costume (“The Noble Slav”) in 1920, the Wrightmans contributed Vermeer’s Study of a Young Woman in 1979, and the Linskys donated Jan Steen’s The Dissolute Household in 1982. Amazingly, the only Rembrandt purchased by the museum is the 1961 acquisition, Aristotle with a Bust of Homer; the other 19 Rembrandts were donated.
Regardless of how they made their way to the Met, however, each and every work in the exhibit showcases the Dutch artists’ skilled brushstrokes, sharp attention to detail, and trademark use of full, rich colors. Their exploration of middle-class themes such as family, nature, and hard work is insightful and thought-provoking, as is their ability to convey scenes that are both simple and full of detail, realistic yet inspirational.
My favorite of the pieces in this exhibit include Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Water Pitcher for its stunning use of light, Rembrandt’s Woman with a Pink for its warm, thoughtful mood, and van Ruisdael’s Wheat Fields for its ability to capture the powerful, at times foreboding air of nature. |  Ruisdael’s Drawing Eel Self-portrait Ruisdael’s Wheat Fields Young Woman with Water Pitcher |
| | But, really, each work displayed in “The Age of Rembrandt” is well worth viewing for its skilled artistry, its adherence to the Dutch ideal, and the glimpse it provides into the museum’s history.
“The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art” is on display now through January 6 in the Special Exhibition Galleries on the 2nd Floor of the Met. Entry is free with museum admission. |
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