The Philadelphia Museum of Art Offers a Glimpse of Holland’s Golden Age

Written by Norman Sanderson Thursday, 01 December 2011 22:59

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.- The Philadelphia Museum of Art is pleased to present "Dutch Treat: A Glimpse of Holland's Golden Age", on view at the museum through January 1st 2012. Continuing the Museum’s season of exhibitions devoted to the art and culture of the Netherlands, Dutch Treat offers visitors the rare opportunity to examine the work of one of the most accomplished painters of the Dutch Golden Age, Gerrit Dou (1613–1675), in depth. In his own time, Dou was viewed as the very paragon of art, and was a great favorite of important and influential patrons. He and his fellow artists from Leiden, called fijnschilders (“fine painters”), captivated generations of collectors and art lovers with their scenes of contemporary life, rendered with painstaking detail and modeled in the subtle and rich chiaroscuro inspired by Rembrandt.

His meticulously executed portraits and scenes of everyday life frequently use niches and windows to extend the space of the painting, heightening the viewer’s sense of reality and intensifying the painting’s illusions. These works also often contain hidden symbolism that encourage the viewer to search behind the mirror-like facade of visible reality. A pupil of Rembrandt’s, Dou looked ahead to Vermeer in his love of domestic subjects, skillful rendering of light and texture, and fine execution. Ten works by Dou will be shown in this exhibition with related highlights from the Museum’s collections, including paintings, decorative arts, and furniture from one of the most celebrated periods in Dutch art.

Rising majestically at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Philadelphia Museum of Art stands as one of the great art institutions of the world. In more than 125 years since its founding, it has grown far beyond the limits originally set for it. Historically, the Museum was a legacy of the great Centennial Exposition of 1876 held in Fairmount Park. In March 1873, an act of the Pennsylvania State Legislature set in motion plans for the construction of Memorial Hall to remain open after the Exposition as a Museum of Art and Industry "for the improvement and enjoyment of the people of the Commonwealth." On May 10, 1877, exactly one year after the inauguration of the Centennial Exposition, Memorial Hall reopened as a permanent museum. The Museum is beginning to move forward to dramatically expand the Neoclassical building overlooking the Parkway. Frank O. Gehry has been selected as architect for this 10-year master plan. The Museum is home to over 225,000 objects, spanning the creative achievements of the Western world since the first century AD and those of Asia since the third millennium BC. The European holdings date from the Medieval era to the present, and the collection of arms and armor is the second largest in the United States. The American collections are among the finest in the country, as are the expanding collections of modern and contemporary art. In addition, the Museum houses encyclopedic holdings of costume and textiles as well as prints, drawings, and photographs that are displayed in rotation for reasons of preservation.

As one of the nation's great artistic and historic resources, the Museum houses more than 225,000 objects highlighting the creative achievements of the Western world since the first century A.D. and those of Asia since the third millennium B.C. Highlights of the Asian collections include paintings and sculpture from China, Japan, and India; furniture and decorative arts, including major collections of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ceramics; a large and distinguished group of Persian and Turkish carpets; and rare and authentic architectural assemblages such as a Chinese palace hall, a Japanese teahouse, and a sixteenth-century Indian temple hall. The European collections, dating from the medieval era to the present, encompass Italian and Flemish early-Renaissance masterworks; strong representations of later European paintings, including French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism; sculpture, with a special concentration in the works of Auguste Rodin; decorative arts; tapestries; furniture; the second-largest collection of arms and armor in the United States; and period rooms and architectural settings ranging from the facade of a medieval church in Burgundy to a superbly decorated English drawing room by Robert Adam. The museum's American collections, surveying three centuries of painting, sculpture, and decorative arts, are among the finest in the United States, with outstanding strengths in 18th- and 19th-century Philadelphia furniture and silver, rural Pennsylvania furniture and ceramics, and the paintings of Thomas Eakins. Modern artwork includes extraordinary concentrations of work by such artists as Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and Constantin Brâncusi, as well as American modernists, making the museum one of the best in the world in which to see modern art. The expanding collection of contemporary art includes major works by Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, and Sol LeWitt, among many others. In addition to these collections, the museum houses encyclopedic holdings of costume and textiles, as well as prints, drawings, and photographs that are displayed in rotation for reasons of preservation. Visit the museum's wesbite at ... http://www.philamuseum.org

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