Rijksmuseum

When I was in Amsterdam, I also went to the Rijksmuseum--the National Museum of the Netherlands.  I wasn't sure what it would be like since they are in the middle of a massive renovation project and a lot of the museum is shut down as a result.  But, I could use my Museum Card to get in and I figured it was worth a couple of hours.  It was a lot of fun.  I am pretty fond of Dutch painting so I thought that it was a really worthwhile trip.  They also had fairly cheap audio guides on different themes that had a lot of information on them.  I didn't figure out how to work mine until I was about half-way through the museum so I backtracked a bit so that I could get my money's worth out of it.

I looked up the Museum website and, like the Van Gogh Museum, they have a really excellent online presentation.  They have a program where, if you have "Quicktime" on your computer, you can do a virtual tour of some of the different exhibits.  It takes a little while to load (and I always have to give permission for some reason) but it is pretty interesting and you can get a pretty good look at some of the pictures.  You can see it here and can see displays on the Dutch Republic, World Power, Frans Hals, Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer.

If you go to this link, you can see even more detail about certain things.  There are detailed explanations of various paintings, including The Nightwatch which is one of the most famous paintings in the Museum (it has a whole gallery devoted just to it), the fabulous dollhouses which were made to represent and mimic the actual homes of the adult women who commissioned them, some of the really beautiful silver work for which the Netherlands was famous, and even the specifics about some particular Delft tiles that were made for special occaisions.  Most of the information is in English, although there are a few things in Dutch.  It is really simple to look through and it is a lot of fun.  Most of the picture have extra information if you run the cursor across the screen.

If you go here, you can look at paintings by early Dutch painters, organized by artist.  You can zoom in on the pictures but most of the information about them is in Dutch.

There is a new display that has been put up since I went called "Ottomania. The Turkish world through Western eyes."  It looks interesting--it commemorates 400 years of diplomacy between the Netherlands and Turkey--but what is especially interesting is that they have a short video about the exhibit.  (As a word of warning, there is a line drawing of a nursing mother at the beginning.)  What I noticed, though, is that I could barely understand a word of what the presenter was saying (it is given in Dutch, with English subtitles).  Having been spoiled by living in Rotterdam (which is generally considered to have the epitome of precise, dialect-free, accent-less Dutch) I really have a hard time recognizing what is being said.

There is also a display that I saw which is not there now.  A piece of an English ship, captured by the Dutch during the Second Anglo-Dutch war, has been sent (temporarily) to England, to be displayed at the National Maritime Museum in London.  (See the information here.  And you can see a picture of the piece, itself, if you want, on the front page of the museum website or in the 360 degree tour of the "Dutch Republic" room.)  The Dutch hero who captured "the pride of the English fleet" was called Michiel de Ruyter.  The video below (which comes from Wikipedia Commons and the Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid) is from a 1957 reconstruction of de Ruyter's victorious return to Amsterdam.  De Ruyter is so popular that, at least according to Dutch Wikipedia, a new film is being made about him, to be released next year.  

There is a museum extension at Schipol (the Airport in Amsterdam) but it is inside passport control, which means, I assume, that you can only visit the museum if you are flying somewhere.  It is, however, free and it has got to be a way better use of a two hour wait than reading trashy magazines.  They have what sounds like a really interesting exhibit on Dutch Winters right now but it ends a couple of days before Jael gets here, so I can't even commission her to go and check it out for me.  I had never heard of airport museums until the Air and Space Museum moved out to Dulles but I suppose, in an airport, you almost have a guaranteed audience.

One of the best things in the museum was a display about an Arctic expidition that the Dutch sent out in 1596.  Apparently one of the survivors wrote and illustrated his recollections and the museum displayed some of the old pages from those books.  It was a tragic story and involved many, many polar bear attacks (I imagine that none of those folks would have been touched by that picture of a lonely polar bear floating on a chunk of ice).  They were trying to find a passage somewhere (or something like that) and got stuck and wrecked in the ice.  First they stuck around the ship for a while and then there was a polar bear attack (and the story is accompanied by drawings of polar bears crawling all over the wrecked ship and tearing men apart).  Then they went and dug a tiny hole in the ground with a cover on top and they huddled in there all winter.  They dug other holes to trap foxes, for food, but then the polar bears came again.  Some of the guys went to gather wood from the broken-up ship to make a boat in which to escape, and then the polar bears came again.  Eventually, in the spring, a tiny handful of men escaped, being chased to their boat by ravenous polar bears.  It was a very dramatic story and they stopped being worried about finding that passage.

The expedition was led by Willem Barentsz, a famous Dutch explorer, and, if you go here you can see a Wikipedia article on Barentsz which includes some of the illustrations which were on display at the museum.  Apparently it was during this voyage that folks first realized that polar bear liver was toxic.

The Van Gogh Museum

When I was in Amsterdam, I went to the Van Gogh Museum.  Mostly because it was near where I needed to be and because I could get in free with my Museum Card, not because I am a particular fan of Van Gogh.  In fact, I would probably say that I wasn't  a fan of Van Gogh at all.  But (and I kind of hate to admit this) I saw the Doctor Who episode where they meet Van Gogh (and Van Gogh has a Scottish accent) and it was pretty entertaining.  And the museum was free.  Well, to make a three-hour wander through the museum short, Van Gogh may still not be my favorite artist of all time but he has definitely moved a long ways up the scale.

To start with, I thought that the Museum was really well put together.  It is three stories high (plus a basement), with the story of Van Gogh's life and the progression of his art in chronological order as you ascend.  On the first floor, they had a lot of paintings, and some sculptures, by people with whom Van Gogh had worked or by whom he was influenced.

This was my absolute favorite painting in the whole museum. It is by Léon-Augustin L'hermitte, a contemporary of Van Gogh, and is called La Fenaison or The Haymakers.  He represented a school of art which focused on idealized visions of country life and activities, characterized by sweeping open spaces and small, intimate groupings of people, in reaction to the increasingly urbanized and fractured life of the Industrial Age.  It was the same kind of response that made Thoreau's Walden so popular.

The Haymakers, 1908

This picture reminds me a lot of Grandpa.  His equipment was a little newer, but not that much.  And I don't think I can count the number of times I've seen Grandpa sitting there, under the mower, pounding away at the sickle bar, trying to get all of the teeth straight and all of the arms going where they ought to go.  This guy here is thinking, you can just tell, "Why does this thing always have to break just when things get going?  Do I have time to run out to Fleet Farm to get another piece before it closes?  Will I ever get this hay down before the dew comes?"  The only difference is that none of the other folks is trying to run him over with the tractor while he does it.  (I'm talking to you, here, Ben.)

If you click here, you can go to a page about Léon-Augustin L'hermitte, which includes a lot of his pictures.  (Please ignore the really hideous font color and just scroll down to find the pictures.)

In the two basement floors of the museum, they had a display on early photographers, called "Snapshot".  Apparently a lot of painters started using photographs, either as "sketches" to paint from or as art in their own right, in the midst of a lot of controversy over the legitimacy of photography as "art".  They had really old pictures, as well as really old cameras, on display.  One of the cameras was set up so that you could see how the mechanisms worked and another so that you could look through the view finder and see what it would have been like to use (modern cameras are easier).  One interesting aspect to the exhibit was the little glimpse it gave into the commune type living that some of these artists partook in.  There was a surprising number of photos that these fellows (mostly they were guys) were taking of one another's wives in, shall we say, a significant state of undress.  There was no indication, really, if this was a result of the ladies acting as models for everyone or if it was a result of behind-the-scenes shenanigans.  It was peculiar.

The top floor of the museum has an installation on Japanese art.  Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo, with whom he was very close, had made a collection of this kind of art and you can see the influence it had on some of Van Gogh's later work.  The display shows parallels between different aspects of Japanese art and the way in which those things began to change European art.

There was also a display on the restoration of The Bedroom, one of Van Gogh's most memorable paintings.  The paint colors have changed a lot and have been restored at various times and then, apparently, there are aesthetic ethics to worry about as well.  Is part of the "art" the impact of time on the colors and canvas?  Does restoring a painting to the "original" destroy the "art"?  It was interesting if somewhat esoteric.  What was especially interesting is that they were able to use external resources--letters that Van Gogh wrote to his brother about the kinds of paints he was using and the kinds of things he was drawing--to get a better understanding of what the painting ought to look like.

The Bedroom, 1888

Van Gogh was a prolific writer and his most frequent correspondent was his brother Theo.  After Theo's death, his wife kept all of the letters and started a campaign to make Van Gogh's art famous.  If you want to read Van Gogh's correspondence, you can buy a massive 5 volume set of books.  I looked through them in the museum bookshop and they were fascinating but also quite, quite expensive.

There was also a really interesting video about Van Gogh's life and death. (He shot himself in the chest, in the middle of a field, was found and brought home, and died 3 days later.  Not a good plan.)  And, to top it off, the museum has a really excellent website about the artwork in the permanent collection.  If you click here, you can go to the English language site which includes background information about all of Van Gogh's paintings, plus some of the other paintings in the museum, divided by category and by period.  It is really quite good.

My favorite Van Gogh paintings are his landscapes and scenes of peasant life.  I especially like his pen and ink drawings.  Unless otherwise specified, all of the picture are from the Van Gogh museum's online permanent collection list.

Almond Blossom, 1890
This is one of my favorite pictures and was also one of the most popular paintings to decorate coffee mugs, purses, pencils, playing cards, and other purchasable things in the museum bookshop.  It was painted for his little nephew (one of Theo's sons, who was named Vincent), shortly before he died.  Incidentally, it also shows a clear Japanese influence.

Wheat Field with a Lark, 1887
This picture is from a catalog of many of Van Gogh's paintings which are arranged chronologically and which are convenient to browse through.  

Pollard Birches, 1884

Wheatfields under Thunderclouds, 1890
This picture reminds me of the big north field, for some reason.

Rock and Ruins, at Montmajour, 1888
This picture is from Wikipedia Commons.