Dutch and Flemish Art Flourish in a Texas Winter
One of the world’s finest private collections of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings, including masterworks by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Gerrit Dou, Jan Steen and others, will conclude a national tour at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection presents over 60 paintings that are exceptional for their quality, condition and historical interest. As exemplars of the Dutch Golden Age, the works are distinguished not only for the glowing quality of light achieved by many of the most talented artists of the time, but also for their role in an unsurpassed period of artistic, cultural, scientific and commercial accomplishment in the Netherlands.
“No other nation matched the Netherlands in the 17th century for quality and quantity of painting,” said Edgar Peters Bowron, the MFAH Audrey Jones Beck curator of European art. “The Van Otterloo collection contains extraordinary works by the leading artists of the age in every genre, from architectural interiors, floral arrangements, still lifes and works based on biblical and classical texts, to land- and seascapes. The level of craftsmanship and specialization is outstanding, and these paintings are rightfully renowned for their careful observation, meticulous rendering and virtuoso.”
“Of special note for local audiences will be the Rembrandt portrait of an older woman from the Van Otterloo collection, which provides a fascinating comparison with a portrait of a young woman, painted by the artist a year earlier, which is in the MFAH collection.”
The tour marks the first time that the Van Otterloo collection has been on view in its entirety. The exhibition opened at the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, Massachusetts, where it was organized, and then traveled to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will be the final venue, with the collection on view until February 12, 2012.
The exquisite paintings in the Van Otterloo collection — portraits, still lifes, landscapes, history paintings, maritime scenes, city views and genre scenes — were created in the 1600s as the Dutch Republic increased in maritime strength and dominated international trade. Elsewhere in Europe, the nobility and the Catholic Church were the principal patrons of the arts, but in the Netherlands, merchants supported artists in unprecedented numbers. All of these works graced domestic spaces in the Netherlands as people began to invest enthusiastically in fine art and welcome it into their homes.
THE EXHIBITION
Great works of art transcend categorization, but to provide context for the vast flowering of Dutch and Flemish art in the Golden Age, the exhibition is organized to reflect the principal themes that artists explored in this period.
Dawn of the Golden Age
Lured by religious freedom and a better economic climate, many artists fled northward from cities such as Antwerp, Brussels and Bruges to escape persecution and the war with Spain in the late 1500s and early 1600s. They introduced sophisticated new painting styles and together with Dutch artists created a climate of artistic excellence in the Dutch Republic.
Artists emphasized the horizon line and changing weather conditions of the Dutch countryside, often populating scenes with engaging details of daily life. From the 1560s to the 1620s, Northern Europe endured an extremely cold period known as the “Little Ice Age.” Inspired by the winter landscapes of Flemish artists who had fled to Amsterdam, Hendrick Avercamp elevated the subject to a new genre in works such as his Winter Landscape Near a Village.
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