15NOV2024 - Rijksmuseum, and a great surprise
Today was a slow start, again with some confusing cycling riffraff but anyway - the Rijksmuseum.
The Rijksmuseum (which means "National museum") is the national museum of the Netherlands, dedicated to 800 years of Dutch arts and history. The museum itself has been opened for 200 years, and has quite the history of its own!
Interestingly when the Rijksmuseum first opened 31 May 1800 it wasn't in Amsterdam but in Huis Ten Bosch, in The Hague. I guess it wasn't technically "Rijksmuseum" yet either - it was first the National Art Gallery. It was intended to inspire patriotism, and brought together many paintings and historical objects, from both the stadtholders’ (replacement for the role of a duke/count during the Burgundian and Habsburg periods around 16/17 centuries) collections and national institutions such as the Dutch East India Company.
In 1808 the Kingdom of Holland was ruled by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (AKA Napoleon III, who was the nephew of the famous on-a-reared-horse-with-a-sword-raised-tally-ho Napoleon Bonaparte/ Napoleon I), who moved the Rijksmuseum collections to the Royal Palace on Dam Square in Amsterdam, the new capital of the Netherlands. The moving-around of the collections continued for a bit before it finally settled into the purpose-built building where it is today, a museum built "of and for everyone".
The Rikjsmuseum was really big and grand, and has a arterial fietspad (bicycle lane) running through it, which I thought was brilliant to make it "for everyone". The space where the cyclists whizz through also had good acoustics, great for various buskers to perform to visitors and passers-by.
The atrium also felt really nice with the high ceiling, sky lights, and open plan design. There were red brick walls all the way to the top, and cool white Portuguese stone tiling the floor - the glass ceiling let daylight in to be reflected off the floor, illuminating the space.
I started off with "The Collections" part of the museum, which was really quite extensive. There were very many, very old, very elaborate, very intricate navy models, old guns, messaging systems, china, jewelry, navigational instruments, diaphanoramas (3d scenes painted on glass), musical instruments, furniture, and even some spicy 17th century lingerie.
There were also many very beautiful, and some quite famous, paintings in the other parts of the museum. I don't know if that sentence grammared I am quite the needed Grammarly.
The following will be a pick of my favourite things in the Rijksmuseum, and my thoughts of it, and then the actual blurb.
Young Italian Woman, with 'Puck' the Dog
I was quite captured by the linen-ness of the subject's dress, how Therese managed to render the texture, perhaps how the rough strokes on the sleeves make the cloth have a slightly shabby look. The hands were also very detailed and the posture of the woman was really natural and relaxed, including her playful glance at the dog.
Known as Fortunata, this woman was one of the many professional Italian models working in Paris in the late 19th century. Schwartze started this painting while sojourning there in 1884 and exhibited it a year later in Amsterdam, having added the dog in the meanwhile. For a young female artist at the time, studying in Paris was as unconventional as pursuing a career as an artist. However, Schwartze pressed on and became a highly successful portraitist
A Windmill on a Polder Waterway, Known as ‘In the Month of July’ - Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriël
A Windmill on a Polder Waterway
I liked this one because it was a really nice windmill on a really nice day, reflected in a really nice canal. It is also partially because many of the drawings beforehand were of grey days in swampy Netherlands, which made this quite stand out. I was actually quite inspired by the grey pictures though - the detail put into the scenes of a grey marshy landscape shows how many artists were undeterred to take such scenes in their entirety captive, either appreciative of it as is, or just raw determination as a study.
Our country is saturated with colour. ... I repeat, our country is not grey, not even in grey weather, nor are the dunes grey’, wrote Constant Gabriël in a letter. Unlike many Hague School painters, he actually enjoyed depicting a beautiful summer day. There are even two of them in this painting: the image of the grass, sky and mill, and their reflection in the water.
The Threatened Swan
I like the feathers - the light through the wings, and the fluffy neck and front of a grizzly swan, wired by the threat of a swimming dog to its nest. It is such a dynamic picture, and the tension and aggression really jumps out, doesn't it? This was the first purchase of the Rijksmuseum. I also thought it was funny that the info sheet pointed out that the swan "did a fresh poop".
A swan fiercely defends its nest against a dog. In later centuries this scuffle was interpreted as a political allegory: the white swan was thought to symbolize the Dutch statesman Johan de Witt (assassinated in 1672) protecting the country from its enemies. This was the meaning attached to the painting when it became the very first acquisition to enter the Nationale Kunstgalerij (the forerunner of the Rijksmuseum) in 1800.
There were so many good things on display, I went for another visit with Samuel and Miriam and Moses later.
I left the Rijksmuseum for IJburg, taking the route through the Rijksmuseum, and found that there were some Christmas markets, along with a temporary ice skating rink in the Museumplein. As I stood around watching the kids play ice hockey, I suddenly see some familiar faces jump in front of me! I was so shook, literally, in a way.
Such a wonderful surprise