Curators
Peter Sutton (his original idea), Guido Jansen*, Eric Zafran, Lynn Federle Orr*, Jonathan Bikker, Arie Wallert, Ger Luijten*.
From the museum website
Michael Sweerts is certainly one of the most creative, enigmatic and recognisable artists of the 17th century. He was a painter, a dealer, an intermediary, a teacher and a deeply devout believer and yet he is frequently described as an outsider as he seems not to have associated himself with his fellow Netherlandish artists in Rome nor had much to do with the official art institutions of his day.
The Rijksmuseum will unlock the mystery and reveal a well-kept secret in the retrospective The Painted Secrets of Michael Sweerts. This exhibition, with nearly 60 paintings and etchings, is the first since 1958 to be devoted to this much-travelled and impressionable artist. It includes outstanding loans from private and public collections such as the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (The Inn Parlour) and the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe (The Wrestling Match). After Amsterdam it will travel to the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. This will also be the first monographic exhibition on this artist to be seen in the United States.
Catalogue
Guido Jansen and Peter Sutton, Michael Sweerts (1624-1664), with contributions from Jonathan Bikker and Duncan Bull,
San Francisco (Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco), Hartford
(Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art), Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) and Zwolle (Waanders) 2002. ISBN 90-400-8676-1 (Waanders) paperbound.
Other venues
San Francisco, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (15 June-25 Augustus 2002)
Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (19 September-1 December 2002).