Masterpieces from the Netherlands

This small group, dated A(nn)o 1500 on the plinth, shows a scene with the Virgin feeding a bowl of gruel to her son Jesus, who is kicking impatiently on the lap of his grandmother, St Anne. The child’s eagerness makes the gruel spill over the edge of the …

Legs wide apart and his right arm akimbo, Croeser sits on the stoop of his house on the Oude Delft canal in Delft. His thirteen-year-old daughter Catharina looks straight out at us. Jan Steen included a narrative element in this portrait: a poor woman and…

In 1792, the merchant Gildemeester converted two large rooms in his house on Amsterdam’s Herengracht into a picture gallery. Here we see that the walls are densely hung with paintings in gilded frames. Gildemeester stands in the middle of the front room, …

The high vantage point of this painting turns it into a sampler of human – and animal – activity during a harsh winter. Hundreds of people are out on the ice, most of them for pleasure, others working out of dire necessity. Avercamp did not shy away from …

This militiaman merrily raises his glass to toast us – who would not wish to join him? The execution is just as free and easy as the sitter himself: the swift, spontaneously applied brushstrokes enhance the portrait’s sense of liveliness and animation. Th…

Portrait of a young woman, three-quarters to the right, a blue hat with large bows.

Inspired by Japanese prints, between 1893 and 1896 Breitner made thirteen paintings of a girl in a kimono. She assumes different poses and the kimono often has a different colour. What catches the eye here is the embroidered, white silk kimono with red-tr…

The painting originally covered the exterior of the wings of a triptych. It acquired its present shape when it was sawn into an octagon in the 19th century. As on the exterior of the Haywain-Triptych in this room, the pedlar wanders through a sinful world…

A swan fiercely defends its nest against a dog. In later centuries this scuffle was interpreted as a political allegory: the white swan was thought to symbolize the Dutch statesman Johan de Witt (assassinated in 1672) protecting the country from its enemi…

Foreigners experience the flat Dutch landscape as having a straight, low horizon extending under a vast sky with billowing cumulus clouds. This is how Ruisdael painted the Haarlem skyline in the distance, recognizable by the high roof of St Bavo’s. Length…

This is an unusual painting in Vermeer’s oeuvre, and remarkable for its time as a portrait of ordinary houses. The composition is as exciting as it is balanced. The old walls with their bricks, whitewash, and cracks are almost tangible. The location is Vl…

Lithografische versie van Van Goghs 'Aardappeleters': een boerengezin rond een tafel, verlicht door een olielamp, aardappels etend van een schaal.

Queen Mary, the wife of Stadtholder William III, commissioned De Grieksche A to make extraordinary ornaments like these flower-holders. Because of their complex design and large size, they were made in four sections: a pedestal, a vase and a two-part lid …