Art History News: ‘Dutch Masters from the Hermitage: Treasures of the Tsars’

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

‘Dutch Masters from the Hermitage: Treasures of the Tsars’

Hermitage Amsterdam
7 October 2017 - 27 May 2018

For the first time ever, the Hermitage Amsterdam is to hold an exhibition devoted to one of the crowning glories of the State Hermitage museum in St Petersburg: its collection of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings.

‘Dutch Masters from the Hermitage: Treasures of the Tsars’ (7 October - 27 May 2018) will showcase a selection of 63 paintings by no fewer than 50 different artists, including six by Rembrandt. The vast majority of the works are from the State Hermitage’s collection of Dutch Golden Age paintings – the largest outside of the Netherlands – and most have not been back to the Netherlands since they were originally acquired for the Russian collection.

Grandest ever selection

The exhibition promises to be a feast of old favourites and new discoveries, with virtually all of the Dutch Masters represented, including: Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde, Ferdinand Bol, Gerard ter Borch, Gerard Dou, Govert Flinck, Jan van Goyen, Frans Hals, Pieter Lastman, Gabriël Metsu, Paulus Potter, Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Steen, Joachim Wtewael and many others. The glory days of Dutch Golden Age painting, between 1650 and 1670, will be lavishly represented by 37 works.

In addition to world-famous masterpieces such as

Rembrandt’s Flora

and Young Woman with Earrings,

one of Frans Hals’s renowned male portraits, and Bartholomeus van der Helst’s Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam, the exhibition will showcase lesser-known but still extremely impressive painters such as Willem Drost, Pieter Janssens Elinga, Arent de Gelder and Emanuel de Witte.

Love of the Dutch Masters

The exhibition will highlight the Russian Tsars’ love of Dutch Masters and explore the way individual masterpieces found their way to Russia. Peter the Great was among the earliest collectors of Dutch Masters, acquiring his first Rembrandt when he was just 25. His interest predated the craze that gradually swept across Europe. In the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great amassed a large collection, acquiring a number of private collections from throughout Western
Europe, nineteenth-century Tsars continued to build on her holdings, thereby helping to reinforce the growing international appreciation of Rembrandt and his contemporaries.

Many of the Royal purchases will be on display in Amsterdam, including

Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Scholar,

Portrait of an Old Man in Red,

and Young Woman with Earrings (above).

‘Dutch Masters from the Hermitage: Treasures of the Tsars’ will be on show in the Nieuwe Keizersgracht wing of the Hermitage Amsterdam from 7 October 2017 until 27 May 2018. Online ticket sales begin in July. For more information please visit: www.hermitage.nl