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A slight delay in arrival meant I only had two full days in Amsterdam, so I focused on art. Still I had to be selective, and chose as my first stop the grand old Rijksmuseum which I’d heard about since my first art classes 45 years ago. It was a fascinating surprise to discover the huge building has a street running through it! The ceiling of the spanning passage is a wonderful array of arches. I got my ticket, stowed my backpack in a locker and began making my way through the fecund history of the Netherlands. The Rijksmuseum focuses mainly on the last 400 years, with all manner of cultural objects, from goblets and glass (for which they were early innovators, to ship models to jewelry, coins and weaponry. Their boats and optical technology, advanced their international trade and financial industry, paving the way to global power.
Before they became a state, several decades of wars between crowns and nobility and the Catholic church vying for control eventually led to the separation of the former royal region into Catholic Belgium in the south, and the Protestant Netherlands (north lands). Even this wasn’t entirely secure for a few generations, as governance shifted via violent disputes. Still, many acknowledge 17th c. Netherlands as birthing the first middle-class society in modern western culture.
This new group gained a status above peasantry, which then enabled them to own a few nice things beyond what was practical and essential. In particular this spurred the market for paintings, because for the first time successful “average” folks (that is, not just nobility, royalty or churches) could afford to own art. It radically changed everything because suddenly the content of what was depicted could include “common folk” and their interests. To this day “regular people” in our culture hang paintings in our homes. It was during this evolution, the Golden Age of Dutch Painting, that Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Fran Hals were born.
I’ve learned to not try to look at everything in museums, and especially given a tight time-frame, instead give full attention to a few things. There were many highlights for me in this vast archive of objects. Since painting is my own discipline, I aimed there.
It’s a rare delight to find three Vermeers in one small gallery. His paintings of figures in interiors get most of the attention, deservedly, as they’re as appealing as any paintings I’ve seen. However, a lesser known street scene by him captivated me just as much. As with all his works, there’s something haunting in the stillness. In this one I felt a subtle tension between the static, rooted buildings and the floating clouds and then, allowing more time to take it in, the people going about their daily tasks.
There’s nothing “dramatic” depicted here, but I felt the soft drama of daily life. It’s as if time itself is one of the themes: the extreme detail in the worn brick and weather-beaten paint and rooftop, human creations vying to stay fresh, upright, and solid against age; the sky and the conspicuous fleeting ever-shifting nature of clouds and weather suggesting both renewing rains, impermanence and cycles. More cycles in the few women working, quietly, naturally resolute in their humble chores as as if there were no other possible thing they might be doing; the kids playing, similarly engaged in a way that feels utterly unforced. It’s a simple snapshot yet somehow it holds me as if an image of unspoken universal truths, at once holding up the solidity of our physical experience and the ephemeral reality of being alive.
I came upon two portraits of Rembrandt, one by his close companion Jan Lievens and the other a self-portrait. Each revealed different aspects of the future master. The gifted duo had only a few years before left their hometown of Leiden as young men and struck out to the bustling metropolis of Amsterdam to make it big in their brave new art world. They were both ambitious, driven, and they were beginning to gain a foothold. Lievens utilized some of his buddy’s devices: adding a lively head-turn and emulating some of his painting techniques adding to the illusion of texture by physically scratching into the painted surface.
But more notably, I sense in the image a determined passion in the young Rembrandt. His piercing glance catches me off-guard. There’s a sort of “aha” in the slight rise Rembrandt’s left eyebrow, as if he’s just had an insight, likely a familiar expression to someone who knew him well. To Jan’s credit, he also depicted a hint of softness behind that strong gaze. Even early on Rembrandt had a profound sensitivity to and compassion for others, something that must have been palpable to Jan, one of his closest friends.
In the wonderful shadowy self-portrait, young Rembrandt is already pushing the boundaries on what he can do in this exciting new medium. He’s playing with painting the illusion of textures and adding his trademark scratching of real textures— essentially telling me he’s self-aware that making images is a tool, not to be confused with reality. Again he adds a slight sense of the head turning toward us, a subtle bit of movement that makes adds so much to this little (10” x 7”) image.
He’s probably copying some of what he’s seen in prints and other’s painted copies of Caravaggio’s work in Italy, and to a degree his more nearby hero, Rubens. He’s playing with dramatic lighting and the way it affects or evokes emotions, like an actor practicing gestures in rehearsal. Using these tools or elements was crucial to the story-making in his commissioned and popular history paintings, etchings, and later contributed to his revolutionary methods for adding vitality to formal portraits. He’s also learning how to engage viewers, and how to evoke curiosity to mystery. Leaving just enough visible to draw us in, he entices us to look harder to see the face of this “man in the shadows..” And his painted expression carries just a bit of surprise, as if by looking in the mirror even he’s sharing our own response to the painting of his own familiar face, saying “Oh wow, it’s just you!”
Before they became a state, several decades of wars between crowns and nobility and the Catholic church vying for control eventually led to the separation of the former royal region into Catholic Belgium in the south, and the Protestant Netherlands (north lands). Even this wasn’t entirely secure for a few generations, as governance shifted via violent disputes. Still, many acknowledge 17th c. Netherlands as birthing the first middle-class society in modern western culture.
This new group gained a status above peasantry, which then enabled them to own a few nice things beyond what was practical and essential. In particular this spurred the market for paintings, because for the first time successful “average” folks (that is, not just nobility, royalty or churches) could afford to own art. It radically changed everything because suddenly the content of what was depicted could include “common folk” and their interests. To this day “regular people” in our culture hang paintings in our homes. It was during this evolution, the Golden Age of Dutch Painting, that Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Fran Hals were born.
I’ve learned to not try to look at everything in museums, and especially given a tight time-frame, instead give full attention to a few things. There were many highlights for me in this vast archive of objects. Since painting is my own discipline, I aimed there.
It’s a rare delight to find three Vermeers in one small gallery. His paintings of figures in interiors get most of the attention, deservedly, as they’re as appealing as any paintings I’ve seen. However, a lesser known street scene by him captivated me just as much. As with all his works, there’s something haunting in the stillness. In this one I felt a subtle tension between the static, rooted buildings and the floating clouds and then, allowing more time to take it in, the people going about their daily tasks.
There’s nothing “dramatic” depicted here, but I felt the soft drama of daily life. It’s as if time itself is one of the themes: the extreme detail in the worn brick and weather-beaten paint and rooftop, human creations vying to stay fresh, upright, and solid against age; the sky and the conspicuous fleeting ever-shifting nature of clouds and weather suggesting both renewing rains, impermanence and cycles. More cycles in the few women working, quietly, naturally resolute in their humble chores as as if there were no other possible thing they might be doing; the kids playing, similarly engaged in a way that feels utterly unforced. It’s a simple snapshot yet somehow it holds me as if an image of unspoken universal truths, at once holding up the solidity of our physical experience and the ephemeral reality of being alive.
I came upon two portraits of Rembrandt, one by his close companion Jan Lievens and the other a self-portrait. Each revealed different aspects of the future master. The gifted duo had only a few years before left their hometown of Leiden as young men and struck out to the bustling metropolis of Amsterdam to make it big in their brave new art world. They were both ambitious, driven, and they were beginning to gain a foothold. Lievens utilized some of his buddy’s devices: adding a lively head-turn and emulating some of his painting techniques adding to the illusion of texture by physically scratching into the painted surface.
But more notably, I sense in the image a determined passion in the young Rembrandt. His piercing glance catches me off-guard. There’s a sort of “aha” in the slight rise Rembrandt’s left eyebrow, as if he’s just had an insight, likely a familiar expression to someone who knew him well. To Jan’s credit, he also depicted a hint of softness behind that strong gaze. Even early on Rembrandt had a profound sensitivity to and compassion for others, something that must have been palpable to Jan, one of his closest friends.
In the wonderful shadowy self-portrait, young Rembrandt is already pushing the boundaries on what he can do in this exciting new medium. He’s playing with painting the illusion of textures and adding his trademark scratching of real textures— essentially telling me he’s self-aware that making images is a tool, not to be confused with reality. Again he adds a slight sense of the head turning toward us, a subtle bit of movement that makes adds so much to this little (10” x 7”) image.
He’s probably copying some of what he’s seen in prints and other’s painted copies of Caravaggio’s work in Italy, and to a degree his more nearby hero, Rubens. He’s playing with dramatic lighting and the way it affects or evokes emotions, like an actor practicing gestures in rehearsal. Using these tools or elements was crucial to the story-making in his commissioned and popular history paintings, etchings, and later contributed to his revolutionary methods for adding vitality to formal portraits. He’s also learning how to engage viewers, and how to evoke curiosity to mystery. Leaving just enough visible to draw us in, he entices us to look harder to see the face of this “man in the shadows..” And his painted expression carries just a bit of surprise, as if by looking in the mirror even he’s sharing our own response to the painting of his own familiar face, saying “Oh wow, it’s just you!”
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