Displaying items by tag: vermeer

New research in the archives has made it possible to pinpoint the exact location of Johannes Vermeer’s world-famous The Little Street. Frans Grijzenhout, Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam, consulted seventeenth-century records that had never before been used for this purpose and clearly indicate the site of The Little Street in Delft. The discovery of the whereabouts of Vermeer’s The Little Street is the subject of an exhibition running from 19 November 2015 to 13 March 2016 in the Rijksmuseum. It will then transfer to Museum Prinsenhof Delft.

Pieter Roelofs, curator of seventeenth-century paintings at the Rijksmuseum, said: ‘The answer to the question as to the location of Vermeer’s The Little Street is of great significance, both for the way that we look at this one painting by Vermeer and for our image of Vermeer as an artist.’

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has lent one of its great treasures—Johannes Vermeer's Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (c. 1663)—to the National Gallery of Art in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the landmark Johannes Vermeer exhibition, which opened here in November 1995 before traveling to the Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, The Hague, in March 1996.

This luminous masterpiece, recently restored at the Rijksmuseum, will be displayed through December 1, 2016, in the Dutch and Flemish Cabinet Galleries. It will hang with Vermeer paintings from the Gallery's own collection, including Woman Holding a Balance (c. 1664) and Girl with a Red Hat (c. 1665/1666)—the latter newly returned after being featured in Small Treasures, an exhibition shown in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Birmingham, Alabama—as well as Girl with a Flute (1665–1675), attributed to Vermeer.

The two men suspected of masquerading as police officers to rob an art museum of $500 million worth of masterpieces in 1990 are dead, the FBI said.

Two years ago, investigators announced that they knew who stole 13 works — including paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer — from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, but they refused to elaborate, saying only that the investigation was focused on recovering the artwork.

Most of the rooms in the Sainsbury Wing of London's National Gallery remained open despite industrial action on August 4 by some of its staff opposed to the privatization of security staff. But it was a different story behind the Trafalgar Square entrance of the gallery. The wooden doors beneath the portico remained shut and the majority of rooms to the east and north of the Central Hall were behind temporary barriers.

Rooms containing 17th-century paintings, including works by Rembrandt and Vermeer, as well as many works by British artists were shut

A $5 million reward for masterworks stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum a quarter century ago has failed to lead to their recovery, prompting authorities Tuesday to announce a new offer: $100,000 for the return of one of the least valuable items, a bronze eagle finial.

The reward far exceeds the value of the 10-inch-high gilded eagle, which was swiped from the top of a pole supporting a silk Napoleonic flag. It was taken along with 12 other pieces valued at $500 million, including masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Manet, in what remains the world’s largest art heist and one of Boston’s most baffling crime mysteries.

The thieves allegedly behind one of the most brazen art thefts in American history, perpetrated 25 years ago on Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, have been revealed as two members of a local organized crime syndicate. The controversial right-wing website Breitbart News first reported their names Sunday as George Reissfelder, then 49, and Lenny DiMuzio, then 42, citing sources within the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Breitbart story appears to follow-up on a segment produced by WCVB TV of Boston, which states that the FBI has known the suspects’ names for some time, but has not released them publicly.

Both suspects died within a year of their purported March 18, 1990 break-in at the museum, frustrating investigators who have searched in vain for the 13 works since — including drawings and paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, and others, worth some $500 million today.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has announced loans of important paintings by Johannes Vermeer and Rembrandt van Rijn for its upcoming landmark exhibition "Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer" (October 11, 2015–January 18, 2016). Vermeer’s "The Astronomer" (1668) will be on loan from the Musée du Louvre in Paris, while the artist’s "A Lady Writing" (about 1665) will be on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Works by Rembrandt in the exhibition will include "The Shipbuilder and his Wife" (1633) on loan from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the full-length, life-size "Portrait of Andries de Graeff" (1639) from Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel in Germany. They will join the two seated full-length portraits by Rembrandt from the MFA’s collection, "Reverend Johannes Elison" and "Maria Bockenolle" (both 1634).

"A Lady Writing" portrays a privileged woman engaged in the art of letter writing, associated in 17th-century Holland with a certain level of education and wealth. Belonging to the same elite world, "The Astronomer" represents a “gentleman amateur” engaged in scientific inquiry that had relevance to the maritime navigation crucial to the mercantile interests of the young country.

The Birmingham Museum of Art opened a new exhibit Saturday that features works of well-known Dutch and Flemish masters. The exhibition, called "Small Treasures," includes paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer and their contemporaries. These artists are often known for large canvases, but these paintings are small.

"We have two paintings by Rembrandt and two paintings by Vermeer," said Robert Schindler, the museum's curator of European art. "In terms of quality and the level of artistic skill that is on display here, [it] is just extraordinary. It does not get any better than this."

Museums do not usually like surprises, but the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) is planning an entire year’s worth of them. In honor of its centennial, the MIA is unveiling a series of high-profile international loans and public art projects without warning. The first birthday surprise, unveiled today, is "Woman Reading a Letter," around 1663, by Johannes Vermeer, which is on loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam until April 19.

The Frick’s Center for the History of Collecting announces a new book series with the publication of its first volume, "Holland’s Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals." This series, entitled The Frick Collection Studies in the History of Collecting, is co-published with the Pennsylvania State University Press, and will ultimately cover a broad range of art collecting, reflecting the Center's reach well beyond the parameters of the Frick's own scope to include topics on modern and non-western art. Comments Inge Reist, Director of the Center, “We aim to encourage new scholarship in this young field of art history through our annual acclaimed symposia and ongoing fellowship program, much of which leads to new publications. Complementing that activity is this series that enables the Center to make its own contribution to the growing bibliography on the history of collecting in America.” This and future volumes are drawn from papers given at the Center’s symposia. Upcoming books from recent events include "A Market for Merchant Princes: Collecting Italian Renaissance Painting in America" (February 2015), edited by Inge Reist; "Going for Baroque: Americans Collect Italian Paintings of the 17th and 18th Centuries," edited by Edgar Peters Bowron; and "The Americas Revealed: Collecting Colonial and Modern Latin American Art in the United States," edited by Edward Sullivan.

Americans have long had an interest in the art and culture of Holland’s Golden Age. As a result, the United States can boast extraordinary holdings of Dutch paintings. Celebrated masters such as Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, and Frans Hals are exceptionally well represented in museums and private collections, but many fine paintings by their contemporaries can be found here as well.