Arthur Ross Gallery
220 South 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104
(Between Walnut and Spruce Streets)
Housed in the Fisher Fine Arts Library building
An Inner World: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting features exceptional paintings by Dutch artists working in or near the city of Leiden, including nine paintings from The Leiden Collection (New York) and one painting from the Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, MA). Rare seventeenth-century books drawn from the collection of Penn’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts expand the intellectual and cultural contexts of the show. Paintings by Gerrit Dou, Gabriel Metsu, Domenicus van Tol, Willem van Mieris, and Jacob Toorenvliet demonstrate how these artists pursued a sustained interest in an inner world — depicting figures in interior spaces, and in moments of contemplation or quiet exchange, achieved through the meticulous technique of fine painting.
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- Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), Old Woman at a Window with a Candle, 1671 The Leiden Collection, New York
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- Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667), Woman Reading a Book by a Window, ca. 1653–54 The Leiden Collection, New York
An Inner World is co-curated by Dr. Lara Yeager-Crasselt of The Leiden Collection and Heather Gibson Moqtaderi, Assistant Director and Curator of the Arthur Ross Gallery. This is an expanded version of an exhibition first organized by the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, curated by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, in 2017. A catalogue will be published in conjunction with this exhibition, with new essays by Dr. Lara Yeager-Crasselt (The Leiden Collection), Dr. Shira Brisman (University of Pennsylvania) and Dr. Eric Jorink (University of Leiden).
Exhibition sponsorship for An Inner World is provided by the David J. Evans Exhibition Fund with additional support provided by the J&AR Foundation; Bill and Kathie Hohns; and the Patron’s Circle. Support from the Netherland-America Foundation and the David J. Evans Exhibition Fund made the catalogue possible.
The catalogue for this project has received funding through a grant from the Netherland-America Foundation. For more information about this exhibition, see the museum website.