Rembrandt

The Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, located on the Museumplein. The museum is dedicated to arts, crafts, and history. It has a large collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age and a substantial collection of Asian art. It also displays the stern of the HMS Royal... Charles which was captured in the Raid on the Medway, and the Hartog plate. The museum was founded in 1800 in The Hague to exhibit the collections of the Dutch stadtholders. It was inspired by French example. By then it was known as the National Art Gallery . In 1808 the museum moved to Amsterdam on the orders of king Louis Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. The paintings owned by that city, such as The Night Watch by Rembrandt, became part of the collection. In 1863, there was a design contest for a new building for the Rijksmuseum, but none of the submissions was considered to be of sufficient quality. Pierre Cuypers also participated in the contest and his submission reached the second place. In 1876 a new contest was held and this time Pierre Cuypers won.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the world's... largest art galleries. There is also a much smaller second location at "The Cloisters" in Upper Manhattan that features medieval art. Represented in the permanent collection are works of art from classical antiquity and Ancient Egypt, paintings and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met also maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanic, Byzantine, and Islamic art. The museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a group of American citizens.
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The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis is an art museum in The Hague, the Netherlands. Previously the residence of count John Maurice of Nassau, it now has a large art collection, including paintings by Dutch painters such as Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen, Paulus Potter and Frans... Hals and works of the German painter Hans Holbein the Younger. In 1631, army officer John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen , who was a cousin of stadtholder Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, bought a plot bordering the Binnenhof and the adjacent pond named Hofvijver in the The Hague, Holland, Dutch Republic. At that time, The Hague was the political center of the Dutch Republic and the States-General assembled in the Binnenhof. The Mauritshuis was named after Prince John Maurice and was built between 1636 and 1641, the period when he was the governor of Dutch Brazil. The Dutch Classicist building was designed by the Dutch architects Jacob van Campen and Pieter Post. The two-storey building is strictly symmetrical contained four apartments and a great hall.
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The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media and... Sport. Its collection belongs to the public of the United Kingdom and entry to the main collection is free of charge. Unlike comparable art museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein, an insurance broker and patron of the arts, in 1824. After that initial purchase the Gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, notably Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which comprise two thirds of the collection. The resulting collection is small in size, compared with many European national galleries, but encyclopaedic in scope; most major developments in Western painting "from Giotto to Cézanne" are represented with important works.
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The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,... comprise nearly 3 million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since 1990, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky. Out of six buildings of the main museum complex, four, named the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage and New Hermitage, are partially opened to the public. The other two are Hermitage Theatre and the Reserve House.
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The Museo del Prado is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It features one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century to the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection, and unquestionably the best single collection of... Spanish art. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture, it also contains important collections of other types of works. A new, recently opened wing enlarged the display area by about 400 paintings, and it is currently used mainly for temporary expositions. El Prado is one of the most visited sites in the world, and it is considered to be among the greatest museums of art. The large numbers of works by Velázquez and Francisco de Goya , Titian, Rubens and Bosch are among the highlights of the collection. The collection currently comprises around 7,600 paintings, 1,000 sculptures, 4,800 prints and 8,200 drawings, in addition to a large number of works of art and historic documents.
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The Norton Simon Museum is an Art Museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known by the names: the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum. The Norton Simon collections include: European paintings, sculptures, and tapestries; Asian sculptures, paintings,... and woodblock prints; and Sculpture gardens displaying many sculptors' work in a landscape setting around a large pond. The Museum contains the Norton Simon Theater which shows film programs daily, and hosts; lectures, symposia, and dance and musical performances the year-round. The museum is located along the route of the Tournament of Roses's Rose Parade, where its distinctive, brown tile-exterior can be seen in the background on television. After receiving approximately 400 German-Expressionist pieces by collector Galka E. Scheyer in 1953, the Pasadena Art Institute changed its name to the Pasadena Art Museum in 1954 and occupied the Chinoiserie-style “The Grace Nicholson Treasure House of Oriental Art” building on North Los Robles Avenue until 1970.
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The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC. Open to the public, free of charge, the museum was established in 1937 for the people of the United States of America... by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, with funds for construction and a substantial art collection donated by Andrew W. Mellon. Additionally, the core collection has major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Brown Widener, Joseph E. Widener and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile ever created by Alexander Calder. The Gallery's campus includes the original neoclassical West Building designed by John Russell Pope, which is linked underground to the modern East Building designed by I. M. Pei, and the 6.
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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits. LACMA is the largest encyclopedic museum west of Chicago... and attracts nearly one million visitors annually. Its holdings include more than 100,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present. In addition to art exhibits, the museum features film and concert series throughout the year. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. Prior to this, LACMA was part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, founded in 1910 in Exposition Park near the University of Southern California. In 1965, the museum moved to a new Wilshire Boulevard complex as an independent, art-focused institution, the largest new museum to be built in the United States after the National Gallery of Art.
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The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or Fenway Court, as the museum was known during Isabella Stewart Gardner's lifetime, is a museum in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, located within walking distance of the Museum of Fine Arts and near the Back Bay Fens. The museum houses... an art collection of world importance, including significant examples of European, Asian, and American art, from paintings and sculpture to tapestries and decorative arts. It is the only private art collection in which the building, collection, and installations are the creation of one individual. Today, the museum hosts exhibitions of historic and contemporary art, as well as concerts, lectures, family and community programs, and changing courtyard displays. In honor of its founder, the museum offers free admission and occasional special events for anyone named Isabella. And as of January 1, 2009, everyone receives free admission to the museum on his or her birthday. The museum was established in 1903 by Isabella Stewart Gardner , an American art collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts.
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Dulwich Picture Gallery is an art gallery in Dulwich, South London. England's first purpose-built public art gallery, it was designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane and opened to the public in 1817. Soane arranged the exhibition spaces as a series of interlinked rooms illuminated naturally... through skylights – a concept that had an enduring influence on art gallery design. The gallery houses one of the country’s finest collections of Old Masters, especially rich in French, Italian and Spanish Baroque paintings and in British portraits from Tudor times to the 19th century. The Gallery is a registered charity. The Dulwich collection was first put together by Sir Francis Bourgeois , originally from Switzerland, and his business partner, Frenchman Noël Desenfans. The two ran a successful art dealership in London and in 1790 were commissioned by the King of Poland, Stanislaus Augustus, to put together a "royal collection", which the monarch lacked and thought would encourage fine arts in Poland.
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The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center, or the Hammer Museum as it is more commonly known, is an art museum in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California. It is operated by UCLA's School of the Arts and Architecture. The museum was founded by Armand Hammer, the late CEO of the... Occidental Petroleum Corporation, as a venue to exhibit his extensive art collection. Hammer died 15 days after the museum opened to the public in November 1990. Hammer was a Los Angeles County Museum of Art board member for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1968, and during this time had pledged his extensive collection to the museum. To LACMA's surprise, Hammer instead founded his own museum, built adjacent to Occidental's headquarters and designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. The 79,000-square-foot , three-story building was built for $60 million and the original endowment fund was $38 million. Hammer persuaded Occidental to fund the entire cost on the grounds that the museum would improve the company's prestige. Occidental shareholders sued for waste of corporate assets, leading to settlement limiting construction and endowment costs.
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The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H. Laughlin, a banker and co-founder of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company. Among the... artists represented in the collection are Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Gustave Courbet, El Greco, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Klee, Arthur Dove, Winslow Homer, James McNeill Whistler, Jacob Lawrence, Augustus Vincent Tack, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Mark Rothko. Duncan Phillips played a seminal role in introducing America to modern art. Born in Pittsburgh—the grandson of James Laughlin, a banker and co-founder of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company — Phillips and his family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1895. He, along with his mother, established The Phillips Memorial Gallery after the sudden, untimely deaths of his father, Duncan Clinch Phillips , a Pittsburgh window glass millionaire, and brother, James Laughlin Phillips .
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The Alte Pinakothek is an art museum situated in the Kunstareal in Munich, Germany. It is one of the oldest galleries in the world and houses one of the most famous collections of Old Master paintings. The name alludes to the time period covered by the art — the Neue Pinakothek covers 19th... century art and the recently opened Pinakothek der Moderne exhibits modern art, all galleries are part of Munich's "Kunstareal" . The museum is part of the Bavarian State Picture Collection , an organization of the Free state of Bavaria. King Ludwig I of Bavaria ordered Leo von Klenze to erect a new building for the gallery for the Wittelsbach collection in 1826. The museum galleries were designed to display Rubens's "Last Judgment" , one of the largest canvasses ever painted. Very modern in its day, the building became exemplary for museum buildings in Germany and all of Europe after its inauguration in 1836, and thus became a model for new galleries in Rome, St Petersburg, Brussels and Kassel.
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The Baroque is a period of artistic style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music. The style started around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of Europe. The... popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation, that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word baroque is derived from the Portuguese word "barroco", Spanish "barroco", or French "baroque", all of which refer to a "rough or imperfect pearl", though whether it entered those languages via Latin, Arabic, or some other source is uncertain.
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Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of... subjects, depicting them without idealization, and not omitting their sordid aspects which continued the values placed always on the traditions of genre painting. Works may be realist in either of these senses, or both. Use of the two senses can be confusing, but depending on context the second sense is perhaps more common. Realism as a tendency in 19th century art was related to similar movements in the theatre, literature and opera. All emphasized the depiction of everyday subjects, but by no means always discarding classical, Romantic or sentimental approaches to their treatment. The movement began in the 1850s in France. One of Gustave Courbet's most important works is A Burial at Ornans, 1849-1850, a canvas recording an event which he witnessed in September 1848. Courbet's painting of the funeral of his grand uncle became the first grand statement of the Realist style.
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