This is the last weekend of the exhibition Amsterdam/New Amsterdam -- the Worlds of Henry Hudson. A visit yesterday showed that this popular exhibition is drawing an interested audience even after 6 months of display.
This is a beautiful exhibition about Amsterdam and the first settlements in Manhattan and surroundings in what was called at the time New Netherland. The Museum of the City of New York has a wealth of original documents, artifacts and paintings on display that provide a glimpse of life in New Netherland and the Netherlands at that time.
Among the documents on display is the Treaty of Breda from 1667 from the National Library of the Netherlands. It is the formal end of the war between the English and the Dutch, and it was made under conditions of uti possidetis, "as you posses". This meant that New Amsterdam would stay in English hands and the Dutch would keep Suriname.
A painting by Jan van Goyen, The Hague from the North-East, was among the original paintings on loan from the Netherlands. Paintings of New Netherland from that time are not available, but recent historically accurate works by Len Tantillo such as Hanover Square, Manhattan give a good view of how the city looked like. The National Library of the Netherlands provided an original copy of A Description of New Netherland by Adriaen van der Donck.
Most of the knowledge we have from that time comes from written documents: "What we know about leisure activities and children's games in New Amsterdam comes from ordinances outlawing them on Sundays".
The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the New Netherland Project in Albany and Scheepvaartsmuseum in Amsterdam. The Scheepvaartsmuseum is the Dutch national Maritime Museum. Its building in Amsterdam is undergoing extensive renovations and the museum has been closed for a number of years.
The celebrations of the Hudson 400 year are not limited to this side of the Atlantic -- there are also many events and museum exhibitions in the Netherlands. One of the highlights is an exhibition in the Westfries Museum in Hoorn, Hollanders aan de Hudson, of works of Len Tantillo.
Mr. Tantillo (Poughkeepsie, 1947) is an artist and historian with a passion for the Hudson River region. An architect by training, he has recreated many historical views of New York, Albany and other places through beautiful paintings and drawings. The Westfries Museum has nearly 60 of his works on display in the exhibition about 'the Dutch at the Hudson'.
The Westfries Museum is a museum for regional history in Hoorn, a city with an extensive history. Hoorn was one of the cities that operated the Dutch East India Company ("VOC"), the trading company that commissioned Henry Hudson to find an easterly passage to Asia. The museum has an extensive collection paintings and objects, including many of the VOC.
The exhibition opened September 5th with Mr. Tantillo and his wife Corliss in attendance. The American Consular General to the Netherlands, Julie Ruterbories, was representing the American Embassy (the new American Ambassador Hartor Levin was in New York to attend the Americans and Dutch will appreciate Manhattan, 1660, a gorgeous reproduction of the 'skyline' of Manhattan 350 years ago. It's interesting to compare this work with the drawing by Johannes Vingboons, made in 1656 with the view of the island Manhattan from the sea which is currently on display in the South Point museum.
The excellent brochure of the museum describes the effort Mr. Tantillo put into creating a realistic sky-line for Manhattan, 1660. "Creating an historic painting from colonial times, without the help of photographic material and using only a few, usually primitive sketches, is a formidable challenge. It takes a lot of time and intensive research. An important source for this painting is the birds-eye map by Jacques Cortelyou which was made around 1660. This map, the 'Castello map', is on display in Florence, Italy". Mr. Tantillo goes on to explain the research he did to verify the accuracy of the map, and what it takes to translate a map into a skyline, using another map from 1890 and even digital models.
Most of the around 60 paintings in the exhibitions are in private hand; a number of them are on loan from the artist himself. One of the paintings in the exhibition, A View of Fort Orange, is on loan from the Fort Orange Club from Albany, NY. Members of the club were making a tour through the Netherlands and were in attendance of the opening of the exhibition.
The Westfries Museum does not own works by Mr. Tantillo yet but according to Ad Geerdink, director of the museum, there are plans for Mr. Tantillo to create a painting with the city of Hoorn in the late Middle Ages as theme.
No word yet if this exhibition will be displayed in the United States. For those of you in the New York area it is worth a visit to the New York State Museum where the 1609 exhibition displays paintings by Mr. Tantillo through March 7, 2010. On October 3rd, 2009 Mr. Tantillo will speak at the Rensselaerswijck Seminar in Albany, NY. His work can also been seen in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
West Fries Museum, Holland aan de Hudson http://www.wfm.nl
through November 29, 2009
Monday morning Jaap, Mieke and I visited Amsterdam. We left Middenmeer at 10.00 am and in the morning we visited The Complete Rembrandt, a very original exhibition consisting of reproductions of all known paintings by Rembrandt.
So, no original paintings in this event in the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, only life size digital copies made from the archives of the Rembrandt Foundation, an organization that researches works by Rembrandt to assess authenticity for museums.
It was extremely interesting to see all these reproductions next to each other. For example, there was a chronological list of 7 self portraits of Rembrandt, from early age until his last known self portrait. It would be absolutely impossible to get these works, which are in collections all over the world, together for an exhibition. This is the great added value of this exhibition: to see these works together and next to each other.
Two reproductions of works that were stolen from a museum in Boston in 1990 were also on display. The Foundation had high resolution photographs made before the theft.
Of special interest is also the largest work that Rembrandt ever made -- a work that was later cut in pieces and only of which only 1, large piece exists. Much larger than the Nachtwacht, this work was meant for the new Stadhuis in Amsterdam but was rejected by the customer. A sketch of the work exists, and the exhibition has a digital reproduction of this sketch on the size of the final result.
Entrance of the Beurs van Berlage. I'd never been inside.
I just discovered through a review in the WSJ that the National Gallery has again a great exhibition of a Dutch 17th century artist, this time about Judith Leyster.
I don't know Judith Leyster's work, but she worked with Frans Hals and was one of the two only women accepted to the Guild of St. Luke in 17th century Haarlem.
The exhibition will run through November 29 and Sasha and will definitely go check it out, probably in September. According to the WSJ: "She deserves attention".
I'm also very excited about "The Complete Rembrandt, Life Size", an show with life-size reprints of all known works by Rembrandt. It's on display in Amsterdam, which I'll visit in about two weeks.
This weekend we made a wonderful trip to Washington DC. On Saturday we arrived in time for lunch at The Boulevard Woodgrill in Arlington, the area where we lived for two years. Lunch there was great, just as we remembered it, and it was a lot of fun to be back in the Courthouse area.
We spent time in Georgetown and in the evening we went out around Dupont Circle, with an excellent late night dinner at Pizza Paradiso. A very small, very friendly place with very good pizza.
Sunday morning we visited "Pride Of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age" in the National Gallery of Art. This exhibition is a corporation between The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in the Netherlands and the National Gallery, and combines works from those museums with many other paintings from all over the world. I first read about it in December when it was showing in the Netherlands.
We spent a long time in the gallery; it was truly wonderful. A highlight of the exhibition for us was "View of Hoorn", by the relatively obscure painter Abraham de Verwer. Together with the two Albert Cuyp paintings this work was a beautiful showcase of 'Dutch light'.
I also liked the 2nd View of Hoorn, by Cornelis Vroom, which had a lot of fine detail and was a beautiful big overview at the same time, and there was a surprising painting by Ruisdael from the top of the newly build city hall in Amsterdam (now the Royal Palace). Vermeer's View of Delft was not there.
There were many maps of the Netherlands, and it's always cool to see Opperdoes, the village Ettie and I were born in, on a map of 500 years old.
One of the maps we having in our living room was the inspiration for a painting by Jan Micker that looked like an aerial view of Amsterdam, with the clouds creating a black and white pattern on the city.
View of Hoorn by De Verwer.
View of Hoorn by Cornelis Vroom.
A map of Amsterdam by Jan Micker, after the original by Cornelis Anthonisz. We have a reproduction of Anthonisz' map in the living room.
Yesterday when we were in the National Gallery of Art, I was wondering where the "View of Haarlem" was that I saw there two years ago.
It turns out that there is a very exiting exhibition now in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, "Pride of place: Dutch cityscapes of the Golden Age". The best news is that the exhibition will be on display in the National Gallery from February 2009. The Jan Lieven exhibition by the way, will move on to the Milwaukee Art Museum, and later in 2009 to the Netherlands.
I'm really looking forward to see the Dutch Cityscapes exhibition. It will even include the famous "View of Delft" by Vermeer, that Sasha and I saw when we visited the Mauritshuis in The Hague four years ago.
Sunday we visited the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The Mauritshuis is a museum with a large collection of old paintings, mainly from Dutch artists.
We were inspired by the movie we saw a few days ago: the painting "Girl with a pearl earring" is in the Mauritshuis. We had a very nice afternoon. There were some paintings by Frans Hals and Jacob van Ruisdael. I saw a picture of "View of Haarlem with bleaching grounds" in a book a few weeks ago, and I really enjoyed seeing it now in real.
I am now waiting for papers to be processed. It will be another four weeks before I know more.
This is the last weekend of the exhibition Amsterdam/New Amsterdam -- the Worlds of Henry Hudson. A visit yesterday showed that this popular exhibition is drawing an interested audience even after 6 months of display.
Mr. Tantillo (Poughkeepsie, 1947) is an artist and historian with a passion for the Hudson River region. An architect by training, he has recreated many historical views of New York, Albany and other places through beautiful paintings and drawings. The Westfries Museum has nearly 60 of his works on display in the exhibition about 'the Dutch at the Hudson'.
Monday morning Jaap, Mieke and I visited Amsterdam. We left Middenmeer at 10.00 am and in the morning we visited 
I just discovered through a review in the WSJ that the National Gallery has again a great exhibition of a Dutch 17th century artist, this time about Judith Leyster.
This weekend we made a wonderful trip to Washington DC. On Saturday we arrived in time for lunch at The Boulevard Woodgrill in Arlington, the area where we lived for two years. Lunch there was great, just as we remembered it, and it was a lot of fun to be back in the Courthouse area. 
I also liked the 2nd View of Hoorn, by Cornelis Vroom, which had a lot of fine detail and was a beautiful big overview at the same time, and there was a surprising painting by Ruisdael from the top of the newly build city hall in Amsterdam (now the Royal Palace). Vermeer's View of Delft was not there.
I'm in the Met; it's great. 
We're in the National Gallery in DC, where there is a special exhibition on Jan Lievens. 
Today we're in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Ilana. 
Sunday we visited the Mauritshuis in The Hague. The Mauritshuis is a museum with a large collection of old paintings, mainly from Dutch artists.