On 7 October 2017 the fifteenth exhibition will open in the Hermitage-Amsterdam Centre, a large-scale display of “Dutch Masters from the Hermitage”. It comprises 63 works by 50 artists from the State Hermitage’s collection of Dutch paintings. The core of the display consists of masterpieces by artists of Holland's Golden Age. This is the first time that the works of Dutch artists from the Hermitage’s celebrated collection will be presented in such numbers in their homeland.

Nicolaes Berchem
The Annunciation to the Shepherds. 1649
oil on canvas

Willem Kalf
Dessert. 1653–54
oil on canvas

Dirck Jacobsz
Group Portrait of the Amsterdam Shooting Corporation. 1561
oil on panel

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn
Flora. 1634
oil on canvas

Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn
Old Man in Red. 1652–54
oil on canvas

Dirck van Baburen
concert. 1623
oil on canvas

Paulus Potter
Punishment of a Hunter. OK. 1647
oil on panel

Gerard Terborch
Glass of Lemonade a. 1660–70
oil on canvas

Jacob van Ruisdael
March. 1660s
oil on canvas

The Hermitage’s collection of Dutch paintings numbers among the largest in the world and is the most significant outside of the Netherlands. It contains more than 1,500 works with the oeuvres of practically all the famous artists of the 17th century represented. The formation of such a collection on the banks of the Neva is undoubtedly bound up with the special attitude towards the culture of Holland that existed in Russian society. The origins of the collection go back to the time of Peter the Great. Even before the creation of the Hermitage, that Russian monarch gave orders for the purchase of Dutch paintings. It was for Peter that the first Rembrandt that would later adorn the Hermitage was bought – David and Jonathan, painted in 1642. The main corpus of the Hermitage's masterpieces came into being as the result of the many purchases made by Empress Catherine II's agents in Western Europe between 1763 and 1789. On her instructions, both individual works and whole art galleries were acquired. Her expert advisers were people who had a splendid understanding of artistic matters – Denis Diderot, Etienne-Maurice Falconet and Prince Dmitry Golitsyn.

In 1764 the collection assembled by Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky came into Catherine's possession. It contained several works in the present exhibition: Frans Hals’s Portrait of a Man (before 1660), Bartholomeus van der Helst’s Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam (1666) and Dirck van Baburen’s Concert (1623). In 1768 Count Heinrich von Brühl collection was delivered to St Petersburg. It brought in the Portrait of a Scholar (1631) and Portrait of an Old Man in Red (1652–54), both by Rembrandt, and a rare work for a museum collection – the Group Portrait of the Amsterdam Shooting Corporation painted in 1561 by Dirck Jacobsz (c. 1497–1567). In 1772 a sensation was caused in Paris by the purchase of the paintings in the collection of Louis-Antoine Crozat, Baron de Thiers, the finest in France. It contained works of the very highest standard, including such Rembrandt masterpieces as Danaë (1636) and The Holy Family (1645). The same collection was also the source of the earliest work in the exhibition – the triptych The Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho (1531) by the Netherlandish painter and engraver Lucas van Leyden (1489/94–1553). In 1779 the collection assembled by Britain's first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, came into the Hermitage. The next acquisition that enriched the stock of Dutch painting was the art gallery of Count Baudouin, which contributed, for example, Rembrandt’s Young Woman with Earrings (1657). In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the collecting activities continued. One of the most important additions to the museum was the collection of the scholar and geographer Piotr Semenov-Tian-Shansky, who had acquired more than 700 works of the Dutch and Flemish schools.

The 17th-century heyday of Dutch painting is represented in the Hermitage with exhaustive fullness.
The Hermitage's collection of paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), one of the very greatest Dutch artists, is among the museum's chief treasures. The museum presents all periods in his career, from the very earliest works to those produced in the last year of his life. Six of Rembrandt’s paintings, including Flora (1634), Portrait of a Scholar (1631), Young Woman with Earrings (1657) and Old Man in Red (1652–54) are included in the present exhibition in Amsterdam.

Frans Hals (1581–1666) was an outstanding 17th-century Dutch portrait painter. The Hermitage can boast two superb male portraits by him: Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove (c. 1650) and Portrait of a Man (before 1660). The latter, dating from the artist's late period, is on show in Amsterdam.

The display includes works by leading artists in a variety of genres that became common in Dutch 17th-century art.
Pieter Lastman (1583–1633) became head of the Amsterdam school of history painting in the early 1600s. The exhibition includes one of his earliest and best works – Abraham on the Road to Canaan (1614).

Genre painting depicting scenes of everyday life was particularly popular in Holland. The pictures by artists working in this field are of no great size (hence the term “Small Dutch Masters”) and were intended to adorn the rooms in the houses of wealthier burghers.

One of the most striking talents among the Small Dutch Masters is Jan Steen (1625/26–1679). His works are notable for their entertaining quality and anecdotal content. The exhibition includes this artist's Tric-Trac Players (1667). Another major exponent of this tendency, the founder of the “peasant genre”, was Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685), who is represented by the exquisite composition Baker (c. 1650).

The cozy atmosphere of Dutch urban life and the untroubled world of the burghers is reflected in the paintings of Pieter de Hooch (1629 – after 1684) and Pieter Janssens Elinga (1623–1682).

Elegance and refinement are the marks of the works by Gerard Terborch (1617–1681), including one of the artist’s best-known pictures – Glass of Lemonade (1660–70).

The exhibition includes works by some of the foremost masters of landscape painting: Winter Scene near The Hague by Jan van Goyen (1596–1656), Marsh by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/29–1682) and Frozen Lake by Isaak van Ostade (1621 –1649).
The Dutch still life is represented in compositions by Willem Claesz Heda (1594 – between 1680 and 1682) and Willem Kalf (1619–1693).

The Hermitage possesses several paintings by Paulus Potter (1625–1654), one of the greatest animal painters in 17th-century European art. They include Punishment of a Hunter (c. 1647) that appears in the present exhibition.

Specially for the exhibition the Hermitage has restored a canvas by one of the foremost Dutch artists of the second half of the 17th century – Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–1670). His Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam (1666) combines a still life with genre motifs and an urban landscape.

A separate section of the display is made up of seven large grand vases with “picture painting” from the collection of the State Hermitage. These impressively-sized pieces were created at the Imperial Porcelain Factory in St Petersburg in the second quarter of the 19th century. “Picture painting” is a term used to describe polychrome decoration on porcelain reproducing easel paintings by Old Masters, with the Small Dutch Masters being most often chosen for this purpose. The originals chosen were among the best works in the Hermitage picture gallery and also other prominent collections. In the history of Russian porcelain the grand vases decorated with such hand-painted copies represents the peak of the “Nicholas I Empire” style of the late 1820s–1840s. Outstanding among these pieces are the paired vases carrying reproductions of scenes from Paulus Potter's Punishment of a Hunter. This unique porcelain ensemble was presented to Emperor Nicholas I at Christmas 1830. Monumental vases were always allotted places of the greatest honor in the decoration of the apartments in the Winter Palace and other imperial residences, grand ducal palaces and the homes of the high aristocracy.

The exhibition curator of Dutch Masters from the Hermitage is Irina Alexeyevna Sokolova, Doctor of Culturology, chief researcher in the Department of Western European Fine Art, Keeper of Dutch Paintings.

A scholarly illustrated catalog has been produced for the exhibition in Dutch and English (Publisher: Joint Projects Foundation De Nieuwe Kerk - Hermitage Amsterdam, 2017).

The catalog has a foreword by Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage “The Dutchmen who live in the Hermitage” and an introduction by Cathelijne Broers, Director of the Hermitage–Amsterdam Exhibition Centre.

The texts are by Irina Sokolova, Doctor of Culturology, Keeper of Dutch Paintings in the Hermitage (“The Collection of Dutch Paintings in the State Hermitage. A View from the 21st Century”) and Irina Bagdasarova, Candidate of Art Studies, Keeper of Russian Porcelain in the State Hermitage (“Vases with “picture painting” from the Imperial Porcelain Factory in the second quarter of the 19th century”).

dutch painting household genre

The State Hermitage has one of the world's largest collections of Dutch paintings. Its first exhibits appeared on the banks of the Neva in 1716, long before the museum was founded. This year, Osip Solovyov bought one hundred and twenty-one paintings for Peter I in Holland, and after that, Yuri Kologrivov bought another one hundred and seventeen paintings in Brussels and Antwerp. A little later this collection was joined by one hundred and nineteen works sent to the king by the English merchants Zvan and Elseiom. Dutch paintings, along with Flemish ones, prevailed here: according to the biographer of Peter I, Jacob Shtelin, the tsar's favorite artists were Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Steen, Wauwerman, Brueghel, van der Werf and van Ostade, and his favorite subjects were scenes from life " Dutch men and women. This commitment to all things Dutch should not be seen as merely the personal taste of "Skipper Peter", as Peter was called during his stay in Holland. Dutch burgher democratism, which found a vivid expression in national painting, was especially close to the nature of democratic transformations in Russia at that time in the field of culture and life. But, of course, not only artistic interest was awakened in the Russian audience by the paintings of the Dutch painters. The works of such masters as the tsar's favorite seascape painter Adam Silo satisfied, first of all, the cognitive interest of the young Russian nation going out to sea. The Peter's collection of the Dutch already included such masterpieces as Rembrandt's "David and Jonathan" - the first work of a brilliant painter that came to Russia.

In the second half of the 18th century, many significant works of Dutch painting migrated to St. Petersburg. As part of the collection of G. Bruhl, acquired in Dresden (in 1769), the Hermitage received four portraits by Rembrandt, four landscapes by J. Ruisdael, paintings by G. Terborch, F. Miris, A. van Ostade, A. Wauwermann and others. The Crozat collection in Paris, received in 1772, brought to the museum such Rembrandt masterpieces as Danae and The Holy Family.

The collections of Baudouin (Paris), Walpole (England) and the first wife of Napoleon I, Empress Josephine, acquired for the Hermitage in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, further enriched the Hermitage collection of the Dutch. The Hermitage was then able to include in its exposition "The Sacrifice of Abraham", "Descent from the Cross" and a dozen other canvases by Rembrandt, the work of H. Dow, fashionable in the 18th century, three of the best paintings by P. Potter (among them the masterpiece of the master - "The Farm"), " A glass of lemonade” by G. Terborch, “Breakfast” by G. Metsu, two amazingly delicate executions of flower still lifes by J. van Huysum and many other no less significant works.

An entertaining plot, small size and relatively low prices made Dutch paintings accessible to a large circle of Russian collectors. They were acquired not only by members of the royal house and the highest St. Petersburg nobility, but also by representatives of more democratic circles of the population. These collections will subsequently become the main source of replenishment of the Hermitage collection. So, in 1915, the museum received a huge collection of “small Dutchmen” acquired in 1910 by the famous Russian scientist and traveler P.P. Semenov-Tian-Shansky, who collected seven hundred and nineteen paintings by three hundred and forty authors. With this collection, one hundred and ninety new names appeared in the museum's catalogue. Thus, if earlier the Dutch collection of the Hermitage stood out among other museums in the world by the number of masterpieces, now it has taken one of the first places in terms of the number of names represented in it, including the rarest ones.

After the Great October Socialist Revolution, on the basis of this collection, an unprecedented special reserve fund was created for the study of Dutch art. Significantly grown during the first years of Soviet power, when the collections of the nobility who fled abroad were nationalized, this fund is replenished even today through the Hermitage Purchasing Commission. So, only in recent years, the museum has received outstanding works by A. Blumart, J. Both, A. van Ostade, K. Berchem and other less prominent, but interesting for the history of the Dutch school of masters.

The best works from this collection are exhibited in the seven large halls of the New Hermitage (248-254) and the long Petrovsky Gallery (rooms 255-257).

(249) is named so because of the unusual ceiling with caissons, covered with paintings in pastel colors. The hall is filled with genre scenes by Dutch painters of the 17th century: Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Salomon Ruisdael and others.

Painting by Jan Brueghel in the Hermitage

The next room (248) also has beautiful decor. Columns made of artificial marble support the ceiling, decorated with magnificent paintings. The octagonal chandelier resembles miniature organ pipes. Among the many paintings there are several small canvases by Jan Brueghel, the son of the great Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Jan Brueghel loved to paint landscapes and genre scenes.

Paintings by Rubens and Van Dyck in the Hermitage

Paintings by Rubens from his heyday (1610-1620) fill room 247. It houses the Descent from the Cross, a famous altarpiece painted for the Capuchin monastery at Lira near Antwerp. In Rembrandt's version of this story, the reality of human suffering and the use of light dominated, and Rubens emphasizes the contrast between the clothes of people and the deathly pale body of the Savior.
"Bacchus" was written in the last year of the artist's life. The master abandoned the traditional image of the young Bacchus, a participant in feasts, and depicted this ancient Roman god as a cheerful, lazy fat man covered with folds of fat. When Rubens had many orders, he entrusted part of the work to his students, in particular Van Dyck. This young artist brought a completely secular interpretation of the biblical theme to the painting “The Feast at Simon the Pharisee”. Later, Van Dyck became the court painter of the English King Charles I and was knighted by him. At the English court, Van Dyck painted several portraits that are considered the best: a portrait of Thomas Wharton, King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria. All of these canvases are in room 246. There are also earlier works, including a wonderful self-portrait of the artist.

If you pass through room 248, you will find yourself in a corridor (258) where you will see Flemish landscapes and winter scenes. From this corridor depart two enfilades, towering over the Hanging Garden: the Petrovsky Gallery (255-257) and the Romanovskaya Gallery (261-263). The Petrovsky Gallery exhibits Dutch canvases of the 17th century, while the Romanovskaya Gallery displays examples of medieval and early Flemish painting. Look at the painting "Saint Luke painting the Madonna" by Rogier van der Weyden. Two halves of this piece were purchased the Hermitage separately. And only then did the experts realize that these were parts of the same composition. Other gems of the collection are Robert Campin's Trinity and Madonna and Child diptych, The Healing of the Blind Man by Lucas van Leyden, and Dirk Jacobs' magnificent group portrait of the Amsterdam Fusiliers Corporation.

Quarenghi's office in the Hermitage

At the end of the Petrovsky Gallery is Quarenghi's small study (205). The small office still bears the name of the architect who created it in 1806. A. I. Stackenschneider, during the complete restructuring of the pavilion in 1850–1858, made significant changes to the design of the office. The strict and clear harmony of the cabinet gave way to more elegant decoration techniques. This is the only room in which the original original decoration of the 18th century has been preserved. The walls of the hall are bright red, the ceilings are white with gold, and the columns are made of yellow artificial marble.

Dutch painting

Not a single national school of painting knew such a stormy flourishing of the still life. Only the ability of the Dutch master to see a particle of being in the smallest thing raised this genre to the level of the leading ones.

Landscape painters have created a truthful, emotionally rich image of their native country. Any state of nature, time of year or day, sky, sea, dunes and swamps in the image of the Dutch artist keep the thrill of life alive. He is equally subject to the subtle lyrical mood of calm and the dramatic pathos of the wild elements, the contrasts of light and shadow, the color richness of the world.

Expressing the new artistic views of society and serving a wider consumer than before - an ordinary citizen of the first bourgeois republic in Western Europe, the painters of Holland found an intelligible, vivid artistic language.

The achievements of Dutch artists marked a new important stage in the progressive development of realism, significantly enriching and deepening its content and creative method. They had a huge impact on contemporary and future art. All progressive artists of the 18th-19th centuries turned to the best examples of Dutch painting. To this day, the bold achievements of the Dutch school remain in service with realist artists, and its paintings, imbued with a life-affirming feeling, continue to deliver true artistic pleasure to the viewer.

The Dutch school gave humanity a galaxy of outstanding masters, led by Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael and Vermeer of Delft. Their works have forever entered the world treasury of art and, as the greatest manifestations of human genius, are carefully stored in museums and art galleries.

The State Hermitage has one of the world's largest collections of Dutch paintings. Its first exhibits appeared on the banks of the Neva in 1716, long before the museum was founded. This year, Osip Solovyov bought one hundred and twenty-one paintings for Peter I in Holland, and after that, Yuri Kologrivov bought another one hundred and seventeen paintings in Brussels and Antwerp. A little later this collection was joined by one hundred and nineteen works sent to the king by the English merchants Zvan and Elseiom. Dutch paintings, along with Flemish ones, prevailed here: according to the biographer of Peter I, Jacob Shtelin, the favorite artists of the king were Rubens, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Steen, Wauwermann, Brueghel, van der Werf and van Ostade, and his favorite subjects were scenes from life " Dutch men and women. This commitment to all things Dutch should not be seen as merely the personal taste of "Skipper Peter", as Peter was called during his stay in Holland. Dutch burgher democratism, which found a vivid expression in national painting, was especially close to the nature of democratic transformations in Russia at that time in the field of culture and everyday life. But, of course, not only artistic interest was awakened in the Russian audience by the paintings of the Dutch painters. The works of such masters as the tsar's favorite seascape painter Adam Silo satisfied, first of all, the cognitive interest of the young Russian nation going out to sea. The Peter's collection of the Dutch already included such masterpieces as Rembrandt's "David and Jonathan" - the first work of a brilliant painter that came to Russia.

In the second half of the 18th century, many significant works of Dutch painting migrated to St. Petersburg. As part of the collection of G. Bruhl, acquired in Dresden (in 1769), the Hermitage received four portraits by Rembrandt, four landscapes by J. Reissdahl, paintings by G. Terborch, F. Miris, A. van Ostade, A. Wauwermann and others. The Crozat collection in Paris, received in 1772, brought to the museum such Rembrandt masterpieces as Danae and The Holy Family.

The collections of Baudouin (Paris), Walpole (England) and the first wife of Napoleon I, Empress Josephine, acquired for the Hermitage in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, further enriched the Hermitage collection of the Dutch. The Hermitage was then able to include in its exposition "The Sacrifice of Abraham", "Descent from the Cross" and a dozen other canvases by Rembrandt, the work of H. Dow, fashionable in the 18th century, three of the best paintings by P. Potter (among them the masterpiece of the master - "The Farm"), " A glass of lemonade” by G. Terborch, “Breakfast” by G. Metsu, two amazingly delicate executions of flower still lifes by J. van Heysum and many other no less significant works.

An entertaining plot, small size and relatively low prices made Dutch paintings accessible to a large circle of Russian collectors. They were acquired not only by members of the royal house and the highest St. Petersburg nobility, but also by representatives of more democratic circles of the population. These collections will subsequently become the main source of replenishment of the Hermitage collection. So, in 1915, the museum received a huge collection of “small Dutchmen” acquired in 1910 by the famous Russian scientist and traveler P.P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, who collected seven hundred and nineteen paintings by three hundred and forty authors. With this collection, one hundred and ninety new names appeared in the museum's catalogue. Thus, if earlier the Dutch collection of the Hermitage stood out among other museums in the world by the number of masterpieces, now it has taken one of the first places in terms of the number of names represented in it, including the rarest ones.

After the Great October Socialist Revolution, on the basis of this collection, an unprecedented special reserve fund was created for the study of Dutch art. Significantly grown during the first years of Soviet power, when the collections of the nobility who fled abroad were nationalized, this fund is replenished even today through the Hermitage Purchasing Commission. So, only in recent years, the museum has received outstanding works by A. Blumart, J. Both, A. van Ostade, K. Berchem and other less prominent, but interesting for the history of the Dutch school of masters.

The best works from this collection are exhibited in the seven large halls of the New Hermitage (248-254) and the long Petrovsky Gallery (rooms 255-257; see floor plan).

Dutch art of the 17th century is a special time in the whole world of painting. This is the time that is called the Golden Age of Dutch painting. The 17th century is amazing and very rich in names. At this time, the most brilliant painters were born and created, who are still considered the most unsurpassed masters. A special rise in artistic thought, the birth of masterpieces of world significance. can acquaint you with this time in as much detail as possible. The fact is that the Hermitage houses the largest collection of Dutch painting and art of the 17th century. You will not be able to meet such a meeting as here in the center of St. Petersburg anywhere else. Here are the works of such artists as: Nicholas Mas, Kaspar Netscher, Philips Wauwerman, Konstantin Netscher, Salomon Konink, Jan de Bry, Jacob Bakker and many others.

The art of that time was characterized by a variety of genres, ranging from portraits and battle scenes to everyday genre and mythological themes. However, all these canvases are connected by a special vision of the world of the Dutch artist, a special sense of the beauty of painting. In the canvases that you can see in the halls of the Hermitage, absolutely fabulous realism is concentrated, you can’t say otherwise. This is realism, which is so realistic and at the same time fantastic that it seems to be a fairy tale in which the artist existed. Truthful, convincing and vivid images, spirituality, expressiveness, rich and contrasting colors - all these are characteristic features of the great artists of that time.