Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt presents outstanding examples of 17th-century Dutch painting from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibition features many of the subjects for which the Dutch are well known, including landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and scenes of everyday life—or genre scenes as they are now commonly known.
Seventeenth-century Dutch artists lived in a period of far-reaching change—political, religious, social, economic, demographic, and even geographic. The Protestant self-ruling Dutch Republic, which gained independence from Spanish Habsburg rule in the course of the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648), quickly rose to international prominence. An expansive worldwide presence transformed the Dutch into leaders in global trade and established a vigorous merchant class at home.
Many of the paintings in Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt bear witness to overseas travel, trade, and territorial expansion. Other works bring the people of the young republic to life, while yet others evoke the physical world they lived in—city and country—all year round.
The exhibition celebrates two remarkable gifts to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and from Susan and Matthew Weatherbie. Included are paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, and other celebrated 17th-century Dutch artists.
Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and presented in St. Louis by the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation. The St. Louis presentation is curated by Judith W. Mann, curator of European art to 1800; Elizabeth Wyckoff, curator of prints, drawings, and photographs; and Heather Hughes, senior research assistant in prints, drawings, and photographs.