Over my last two days in The Netherlands, I did my Rembrandt tragic thing. I found the Latin School in Leiden he attended before enrolling but not attending university (hey, it was enough to get him drinking rigths, it seems).
The next day I walked over to the Rijksmuseum from my hotel (the main consideration being its location in the museum district). The group of people sitting on the grass were a group of French art history undergraduates, taking it in turns to give their tutorial presentations.
A note on tour guides: follow the French ones. More likely to be an art historian and far more interesting. Of course I wasn’t on that tour as such. I just happened to be looking at Vermeer’s ‘The Milk Maid’ at the same time. And testing out my French listening skills.
This next is the side gate of the Rijksmuseum, in use until the restoration project is complete.
I could have walked out and around to the Van Gogh museum. I didn’t though. I think I was still recovering from the Dutch masters and to have encountered the genius of Van Gogh on the same day would have been too much.
The only word I could use to describe my reaction is ‘swoon’. The Rembrandt portraits are astonishing in their beauty and compassion. Vermeer’s milkmaid is breathtaking in its simplicity and solidity. And the colours! Any reproduction you’ve seen does not do it justice. I was breathless at the luminosity of the yellow and brilliance of the blue.
And as a little taster the museum also had a room looking at three of Miro’s pieces based on some works by Jan Steen.
I’m going back to the Netherlands later in the year for more field work. I’ll take a good look at Van Gogh then.
