Image Not Available

Rijksmuseum

Dutch

BiographyIt was a Frenchman, Louis Bonaparte, who established a Royal Museum in 1808. At first it was housed in the royal palace on the Dam; then, with the accession of King William I, it moved to the Trippenhuis before a final move in 1885 to its large, distinctive, red-brick present home designed by P. J. H. Cuijpers (1885). The primary importance of the collection is in the extensive holding of Dutch painting from the 15th to 18th centuries, particularly outstanding in painters of the 17th-century Golden Age. Rembrandt's Nightwatch formed part of the collection from the beginning, joined later by The Syndics and Jewish Bride. Landscape, genre, still life, and portraiture by Dutch artists are without parallel and include Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, Pieter de Hooch, Willem Claesz. Heda, and Vermeer. The remainder of the museum is devoted to a fine collection of sculpture and decorative art, again predominantly with Dutch associations.

Ford-Wille, Clare. "Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum." In The Oxford Companion to Western Art, edited by Hugh Brigstocke. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e57 (accessed May 8, 2012).

Person TypeInstitution