Class Distinctions: Is the sitter's dress made of silk or coarse wool? Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer

Class Distinctions: Is the Sitter's Dress Made of Silk or Coarse Wool? Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer

Winter Scene on a Frozen Canal, Hendrick Avercamp, ca. 1620. Dutch, 1585 -1634, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The elegantly dressed woman of the house surveys the scene from the side. Through the open door can be seen the tower, facades and streets of the city to which the itinerant musicians belong. Through a play of hands, the artist suggests that the maidservant guides the child to take the coin proffered by her mother. It follows that the well-bred little girl will fulfill her duty to give the contribution to the visitors.

The patrician obligation of providing charity to the less privileged and the education of the young to meet these responsibilities is a recurring theme when the classes meet in Dutch painting Hendrick Avercamp's Winter Scene on a Frozen Canal< (about 1620, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) highlights the pleasure the Dutch took from meeting one another on the ice and the leisure activities they pursued in winter. Locals mix with gypsies; the wealthy are transported by fancy sled while the less well-off push makeshift conveyances.

In addition to paintings, this room will feature a selection of decorative arts laid on three tables — one for the upper, one for the middle, and one for the lower class. Three examples of each type of object from pitchers to drinking vessels to eating utensils will all be on view. Glasses (flutes) for example, will include a clear engraved glass on the upper class table, a tall glass with prunts (raised decorations) on the middle class table, and a green glass marked with rings indicating a drinking game on the lower class table. The upper-class candlesticks are of silver and, while the middle and lower class candlesticks have the same form, one is of brass and the other of earthenware. Each table will also feature linen appropriate to that class, as even the lower classes covered their dining tables with linen for meals

Gerrit van Honthorst's A Merry Group behind a Balustrade with a Violin and a Lute Player (c. 1623); on loan from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection

One of the MFA's grandest spaces is the gallery dedicated to Art of the Netherlands in the 17th Century, on the second floor of the Art of Europe galleries. Featuring approximately 30 paintings, this fall the space also includes four major works by Rembrandt, Dou, Gerrit van Honthorst and Aelbert Cuyp on loan from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection. In total, five works by Rembrandt will be on view in the gallery (in addition to four in Class Distinctions). Honthorst's A Merry Group behind a Balustrade with a Violin and a Lute Player (about 1623), displaying his debt to Caravaggio, will be installed in the United States for the first time in late October, juxtaposed with the artist's more courtly and monumental Triumph of the Winter Queen: Allegory of the Just (1636).

The latter canvas, also on loan to the MFA, depicts Frederick V and his beloved wife, Elizabeth Stuart, the King and Queen of Bohemia — known as the "Winter King and Queen" for the brevity of their reign — surrounded by their 13 children. (The couple can also be seen in the exhibition's album of watercolors by Adriaen van de Venne.) Complementing the paintings are decorative art objects, including Dutch furniture, Delft pottery and silver. Smaller-scale Dutch and Flemish paintings are on view in the adjacent Leo and Phyllis Beranek Gallery, which features a 'collector’s cabinet' display of seven works six of which are loans from the Van Otterloo Collection by artists such as Avercamp, Gerrit Berckheyde and Jacob van Ruisdael. These works hang across from three additional paintings on loan from the collectors: a family portrait by Jan Baptist Weenix, flanked by superb still lifes by Willem Heda and Willem Kalf. The renovation of the Art of the Netherlands gallery (2013) was made possible by Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo.

The MFA has a notable collection of 17th-century Dutch paintings. Boston collectors have long acquired works by many of the era's most celebrated artists and have, over the generations, generously donated them to the Museum. Rembrandt's early Artist in his Studio (about 1628) is a highlight of the collection, representing an image of the artist confronted with the enormity of putting ideas into paint on panel. Works on view in the gallery illustrate the full range of art production in the Netherlands.

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Class Distinctions: Is the Sitter's Dress Made of Silk or Coarse Wool? Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer

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