Hello Rembrandt — An Elegant Sufficiency

With the luxury of a few days here in the city, we could afford to allow ourselves plenty of time for those things we really wanted to see. In true Thomas style, however, one of them involved a 6.45am alarm.

The Rijksmuseum opens at 9 and of course, we wanted breakfast beforehand! We had heard how busy the galleries get and could well imagine what a honey pot the Night Watch would be, so we decided to do what we could to dodge the crowds by arriving early.

It worked! We were not the first, though.

We had tickets for the Rembrandt-Velasquez exhibition at 10.30 and decided to use the hour and a half till then here in the Gallery of Honour - the Dutch Masters - not least of whom was right there in front of us. Right now, Operation Nightwatch is underway as the museum conservators research the painting in more depth than ever before.

So, an area has been screened off for the work to take place and we stood a while watching the research in process (though perhaps the two women were discussing what they watched on TV last night or other mundane matters? Who knows?)

We could still see all but a small part of the painting and had time to take advantage of all the resources available.

I think we’d both agree that, having seen the painting itself, the next best thing was this film showing in a nearby alcove. Fourteen diverse groups had been asked to discuss The Night Watch and we could watch their conversations as they happened. It was so interesting to see what different groups took from the work; what was important to them and what aspects they completely overlooked. The mother-daughter group shared memories prompted by the painting, the students discussed the artistic principles and theories and the businessmen seemed to imagine themselves in the group. Very amusing - and yes, very clever.

We wandered around this collection of magnificent paintings for an hour or more, really enjoying the calm before the storm. I don’t think we were alone in that respect.

At 10.30am, we made our way to the modern extension to the gallery where the Rembrandt-Velasquez exhibition was showing.

In contrast to the bright and airy original structure, this modern extension was airless, dark and incredibly stuffy. Of course, with timed tickets it was already full of people too and entering the first room came as quite a shock.

I very much liked the premise of the exhibition: take a single subject and find two fine examples of interpretation, one Spanish and one Dutch. So, where still life is concerned, the two pictures hanging side by side illustrate the different approaches.

Good. Except that we chose not to use the audio guides, preferring to rely on the labelling nearby. But thse labels were not nearby…they were sometimes around the corner, and so further frustration crept in as we tried to navigate our way through people more concerned at fiddling with their device and earphones than looking around them, lost in their little audio bubble.

Do you sense that it wasn’t our cup of tea?

We returned swiftly to the permanent exhibition, spotting a few favourites as we worked our way through. This portrait caught my eye, the more so when I read the label: it’s a portrait of Lizzy Ansingh by her Aunt, Therese Schwartze and both aunt and niece were artists and members of a group known as Joffers. Had I heard of them? Not at all, but I had now!

When we’d seen what painting we wanted to see, we went downstairs into the “special collections” and looked at some very fine model ships.

The model provoking most attention was that of the Neptunus, which had been halved and shown in front of a mirror and holographic images of the crew projected to scale on board. So clever! In trying to find a better reproduction of the image I came across this article, which describes it and the surrounding galleries very well indeed.

I was flagging by now. My Hero has had a dreadful cold and unsurprisingly, it appears I have succumbed. But nevertheless, there were cute chintz samples to admire…