Rijksmuseum – Visiting the Golden Age of Dutch Art Including Van Gogh Museum, Stedelijk Museum


Rijksmuseum:

The Rijksmuseum is a museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The most extensive collection of art in the Netherlands houses works from artists like Rembrandt and Franz Hals, who lived and worked in the Dutch Republic during the 17th century. It also has significant works from other Dutch Golden Age painters such as Jan Vermeer and Jacob van Ruisdael. The museum’s current director is Joanna Dondelinger.

Van Gogh Museum:

It is a public museum located at Museum Square in Amsterdam’s Museumplein, close to the Van Gogh Museum. The museum is also close to the Royal Palace of Amsterdam. It is also easy to take both Van Gogh Museum Tickets, the Rijksmuseum tour, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw.

The Rijksmuseum was founded in The Hague in 1800 as an initiative of wealthy Amsterdam merchant Anton Reinhard Falck. The paintings he acquired, through his agents Jacob Campo Weyerman and Frans Langhemans, were added to the collection of the Teylers Museum in Haarlem.

In 1815 it became a national museum and was renamed Rijksmuseum: “Rijks,” meaning “national” or “belonging to the state.” The museum’s present name was given in 1890.

On 11 December 1993, the museum opened a second location in Noord and on 25 May 2017, this location closed its doors permanently. The collections at both locations are now merged, and since 23 May 2017, the Rijksmuseum is once again located in Museum Square. The building located in Museum Square was designed by Pierre Cuypers, a noted architect of the neoclassical style. You can book your Rijksmuseum Tour in advance.

History of Rijksmuseum:

The Rijksmuseum building faces Museumplein, located in the oldest active part of Amsterdam and was constructed to reflect the style and architecture of the 17th century. The façade was inspired by Italian palaces of the 1480s and comes in three tiers, each side with five windows. The building’s grandiose interior avenue was designed to give viewers a sense of entering a palace. These can be mainly seen on the staircases.

The museum is also noteworthy for its lavish interiors and costly art. It has the world’s most extensive collection of 17th-century paintings, as well as numerous Rembrandts and other valuable artworks, including “The Night Watch” by Rembrandt, three paintings by Vermeer, and portraits by Jan van Eyck and Hans Holbein the Younger.

The museum houses an extensive collection of pre-impressionist art. The collection includes paintings from Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

The Rijksmuseum offers many products in the museum shop, ranging from books to souvenirs and art prints. In addition, the museum organises a wide variety of educational activities, including lectures and guided tours. The museum is located in Amsterdam’s Museumplein in the borough of Amsterdam South.

The neighbourhood surrounding the museum is known as “Museumkwartier,” which has become quite a trendy district in Amsterdam with a number of art galleries, restaurants and cafés.

Two Nearby Stations Serve the Rijksmuseum:

Several train stops and metro stations are also within walking distance of the museum. Tubes are operated by GVB.

The Rijksmuseum is a member of the European Association of Museums (EAM), an organisation that aims to promote museums and museum services outside their home country.

Stedelijk Museum:

An exhibition dedicated to the contribution of art to science and medicine has been held at the Rijksmuseum since 1953. The show was previously held at the Stedelijk Museum (no longer active) and opened there in 1969. Until 2017, it was called “Medicine Art,” This name was retained when the show moved on 4 November 2017 to new premises at Amsterdam’s Leidseplein.

The first aim of the exhibition was to demonstrate that art has a direct connection to science and medicine but with a limited practical application. The show’s themes have been about the history of medicine and its collections, including such things as microscopes and paintings.

The leading exhibitions since 2007 have been on painters from the Dutch Golden Age who painted scenes from Netherlandish history. They were made to complement Amsterdam’s other main tourist attraction, the city’s historical centre.

In 2017, a study published in the science journal “Cell” showed that Rembrandt’s painting “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” is not as dark as previously thought. It used hyperspectral imaging technology to discover that sunshine and candlelight caused different chemical reactions on various pigments in the painting, causing it to change colour depending on the time of day and lighting conditions. This was the first time a painting was studied with hyperspectral imaging technology.

The Rijksmuseum is the only Dutch museum with more than 1.000 paintings on display (the second has more than 500), more than all the other museums combined in Amsterdam have on display. The museum owns over 600 paintings; 400 of them are on display. The museum also includes an extensive collection of drawings and about 150,000 prints, mostly copper plates.

The paintings include various genres, and the national collection is well known for its works by Dutch painters; Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens. From the 17th century onwards, the collection from the Italian High Renaissance is especially strong but also includes a rich collection of French works. The final rooms in this wing feature some of the museum’s best-known paintings dating from nineteenth-century Holland: works by Anton Mauve and Vincent van Gogh.

The museum’s collection focuses on Dutch pieces of art, yet the scope of the collection is also international. The museum holds paintings by Anthony van Dyck, Rubens, Poussin and Caravaggio from its Italian holdings. In addition to Flemish Baroque paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Steen and Jacob Jordaens are also present from other parts of Europe.

Impressionist paintings by Monet and van Gogh are also on display in this museum wing. The museum also has an extensive collection of French impressionism, including works by Degas and Monet. The museum’s Dutch holdings include the work of Vermeer, van Gogh and Frans Hals. Many contemporary Dutch painters are represented by works at the Rijksmuseum, including Joost Schmidt and Marius van der Wel.

The museum also holds a significant collection of sculptures from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century.

 

Ref: https://www.bladnews.com/rijksmuseum-visiting-the-golden-age-of-dutch-art-including-van-gogh-museum-stedelijk-museum/