Art in NYC: Dutch Masterpieces at The Met

While the Metropolitan Museum of Art has temporarily closed, you can visit it online from anywhere

A magnificent exhibition of works by the 17th-century Dutch masters titled “In Praise of Painting” can be viewed online

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer by Rembrandt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York — Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn), Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, 1653. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Met Museum collection of Dutch paintings is highly praised by scholars and extremely popular with the visitors. The “In Praise of Painting ” exhibition, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Met Museum founding, uses the occasion to showcase the treasures by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and others thematically and to highlight various aspects of the 17th-century Dutch society in all its complexity. The selection comes from the Benjamin Altman’s bequest, the Robert Lehman collection, and the Jack and Belle Linsky Collection. Thoughtfully organized by the curators around nine themes from portraiture to landscape and domestic scenes, the exhibition unites prominent works and allows for striking comparisons and keen amplification of the historical details.

The viewers are invited in for a closer look at people, their homes, land and the pastime when the Netherland was experiencing rapid changes brought in by the technological advancements and economic growth after the end of the Thirty Years war. The works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Steen and the rest of their famous contemporaries bring us closer to people living in the distant fast-changing times not that much dissimilar to our own. Societal mores, etiquette and hierarchy were turning in response to industrial progress and diversification at the time of the Dutch Golden Age. Luckily for us, it gave the world great artworks of unprecedented depth and potency. Savor the art in all its greatness.

In Praise of Painting: Dutch Masterpieces can be explored by taking an online visit. Online Visit

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February – May 2017 Art Event in NYC: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers at the Met Museum

Hercules Segers, Mountain Valley with Fenced Fields, c. 1615-1630, etching, ink

The mystery of a faraway land, the beauty of new space, the expectation of secrets, the passing of time…. All of it is on full view at the Met exhibition of Hercules Segers, 17th century Dutch Golden Age master known for his prints, etchings and oil paintings. This is the first exhibition for Segers in the USA. Not many details of the artist’s life is known to us now but from what we do know he was well regarded by his contemporaries. He brought in pioneering techniques to printmaking by mixing colors, mediums and textures. At his time in the first half of 17^th century his methods were fresh and groundbreaking like the impressionism at its time. Add to it an assumption that the artists had never traveled farther than between Haarlem, where he was born, and Amsterdam in the Low Countries but filled his work with mountainous views, and the mystery surrounding the master persists. The New York Times calls the exhibition mesmerizing and the New York Review of Books notes that “an air of unreality hangs over” Segers’s paintings.

Tag: Dutch Golden Age