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Dutch and Flemish painting form a fundamental part of the Norton Simon Museum’s Old Master collection. In scope and breadth it highlights one man’s taste during a distinct, thirty year period of collecting from the 1950s to the 1980s. Fifteenth and sixteenth-century Netherlandish art includes fine examples by Dieric Bouts, Maarten van Heemskerck and Cornelis van Haarlem. The Dutch Golden Age is illustrated by the portraits, landscapes, genre and still-lifes of Gabriel Metsu, Rembrandt, Jacob Ruisdael, Rachel Ruysch, and Jan Steen while paintings by Karel du Jardin, Nicholaes Berchem, Matthias Stom and Jan van Bijlert represent the Dutch Italianate aesthetic and Utrecht Caravaggism respectively. Flemish painting in the seventeenth century is peppered with masterworks by Jan Brueghel the Younger, Peter Paul Rubens and Frans Snijders. The collection of works on paper includes more than one hundred and fifty etchings by Rembrandt, and a fine seventeenth- century Tulpenboek, executed in gouache, watercolor and pencil.
Gloria Williams, Curator (November 2019)