Information from the museum, 26-10-2009
The Ostfriesisches Landesmuseum Emden will show in this exhibition, based on some interesting works in its own holdings, about 60 Dutch paintings of the 17th century from public and private collections focusing on the difference of Illusion and Reality. The fact that Dutch painting, which is so easily admired for its painterly realism, does not simply depict reality may be well known to specialists and has been examined in several studies. Still, the wider public interested in art reacts quite often with skepticism to scholarly interpretation.
Therefore, it remains an important task to show that there is even more than just the concept of Tot lering en vermaak in 17th-century Dutch painting preferably with the use of beautiful remarkable and characteristic examples.
The Ostfriesisches Landesmuseum Emden will devote itself to this task with a didactic display of the paintings grouped together under the most different aspects of Illusion and Reality, from the development of optics ans science back to the impact of the Classic tradition. The actual paintings will be accompanied by devices of optics, for instance a reinstallment of a camera obscura; there will be a genuine peepshow and many other interesting things.
The scholarly catalogue will be complemented by a special publication aimed at children and present diverse aspects of realism.