Prins Willem V Galerij

Housed right next to the Gevangenpoort is the Prins Willem V Galerij.  William V was an avid collector of art and plants and things like that.  Originally, his art collection was housed in his residence but it got too large and he purchased the building right next to the prison and set up the gallery.  He then opened up the gallery to the public, one afternoon a week, and created the first public art gallery in the Netherlands.

When they reopened the Gallery, they decided to make it as similar to the way it would have looked when it was created as possible, besides using, almost exclusively, the paintings that were actually part of William V's own collection.  It makes for quite an impression, which, I imagine, was the intention.  Instead of having lots of wall space, with prominently displayed individual pieces of art, the art is hung with an eye to fitting as many pieces on the wall as possible.  There would be one really large painting in the center of a grouping and then there would be smaller frames grouped around it in geometrically pleasing organizations.  The frames were all different sizes and shapes and colors and the painting themselves were not grouped according to theme, or colors, or artists, or school.  No photographs were allowed inside, of course, but this picture below shows what the walls looked like, approximately.  I am the contemplative gray figure.  Fortunately, they had pretty good catalogs available in English so you could see what the paintings were of, and by whom, along with some historical background and interesting information.

If you go to this site, you can see the English language version of the Gallery's website and one of the pictures there shows one of the (less cluttered) walls.  (There is also a little historical background on William V and the Gallery.)  You can click on the pictures on the right of the screen and it will show you the full painting.  One of my favorite paintings in the whole gallery was the one on the lower right, Cows Reflected in the Water, by Paulus Potter.  William V also liked this artist because he had a couple of his other works as well.  Potter was known for his landscapes with animals in them and they are all pretty and pastoral.  I just can't get over the reflection of that cow, though.  If you want to see more of Potter's paintings, you can go here, where Wikipedia has a collection of pictures of about half of the paintings he did.  I think that William V had pretty good taste and a nice collection--there was a Reubens, a few Steens, a couple of Vermeers.  It was a fun gallery.

In addition, there was a video presentation on the two museums (the Gevangenpoort and the Gallery are run as a pair, kind of) which was pretty interesting and pretty well done.  It was in Dutch but had English subtitles.   They argued that the reason that William V put the Gallery right next to the prison was because it illustrated two aspects of his authority--on the one hand, the King as holder of the sword and on the other hand, the King as supporter and uplifter of his people.  I don't know about that, maybe the King just need some pretty things to look at after he had spent the morning overseeing punishments.  But it was a pretty interesting video and an appealing argument.