From the museum website, 26 February 2009
This exhibition is one facet of the Museum’s three-part festival of Dutch art that includes the loan exhibitions Van Gogh: Face to Face (July 2–September 24, 2000) and Van Gogh to Mondrian: Dutch Works on Paper (July 25–November 5, 2000). Based on the Museum’s permanent collection with significant loans from Boston area private collections, this exhibition of watercolors, drawings, prints and illustrated books by a wide spectrum of artists celebrates the Dutch invention of modern realism in the “Golden” age of the seventeenth century and the “Silver” age of the eighteenth century.
Landscapes, scenes of everyday life, portraits, and botanical studies, as well as biblical and mythological subjects demonstrate the Dutch artist’s pleasure in the visible world. Works by Rembrandt, Esaias van de Velde, Jacques de Gheyn, Hercules Seghers and a host of others display that special combination of observation and imagination that is Dutch art.