Museum information
The first monograpic show devoted to this innovative and often comical Dutch master. This critical reassessment of the Dutch master explores his deft combination of entertaining images and instructive messages, his facility with typical Dutch subjects, and his considerable innovation with religious and allegorical scenes. The significance of Molenaer’s work for later Dutch painters, particularly Jan Steen, is also examined. Drawn from public and private collections in Europe and the U.S., the exhibition features approximately 45 paintings from the late 1620s through the 1660s and includes both Molenaer’s better-known works and many little-known paintings.
The exhibition forms part of a festival entitled Art in the Age of Rubens and Rembrandt, comprising four distinct exhibitions celebrating the glories of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art. In addition to Jan Miense Molenaer: Painter of the Dutch Golden Age,
the festival features the following smaller exhibitions:
Rembrandt’s Etchings of the Bible, 25 etchings on loan from several North American collections.
Dutch Seventeenth Century Biblical Paintings, featuring works drawn largely from the Museum’s collection.
A Seventeenth-Century Flemish Kunstkamer, a period-style art room celebrating both the fine and the decorative arts and including paintings by Peter Paul Rubens from the Museum’s collection.
Catalogue
Dennis Paul Weller, Cynthia von Bogendorf Rupprath and Karen Cochran, Jan Miense Molenaer: painter of the Dutch Golden Age, Raleigh (North Carolina Museum of Art) 2002.
ISBN 0-88259-987-9 (hardbound).
ISBN 0-88259-988-7 (paperbound).
Other venues
Indianapolis, Columbus Gallery of the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Jan 25 – Mar 16, 2003).
Manchester, the Currier Gallery of Art (Apr 6 – Jun 16, 2003).