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t’s high summer in Amsterdam and the canal-lined city is enjoying a brief heatwave. Tourists
flock to canal cruises, shedding their clothes as they go; locals throw open the doors of their
street-front houses, ushering in the sweet scented breeze and the curious gaze of passers-by;
while locals and tourists alike stay out well past any hour resembling bedtime, indulging in the
bright twilight that seems to stretch on endlessly. Yet what appears to be just another European
city decadently kicking up its heels is actually much more.
It is there in the single peony I am given on arrival at the Sofitel Legend The Grand, rich with
layered pink tones, while an accompanying note detailing the inspiration flowers gave artists of the
Dutch Golden Age invites me to seek out the very peony Jan Davidsz. de Heem used in Still Life with
Flowers in a Glass Vase, his prized late-1660s painting in the nearby Rijksmuseum. It’s there in the
miniature works of art hotel guests receive daily in their bedrooms, an homage to some of the great
Dutch painters rendered, astonishingly, in confectionery. One day it’s Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a
Pearl Earring, a single edible ‘pearl’ created by pastry chef Martin Baux with an iridescent edible
glaze and gold leaf detail; the next it’s Vincent van Gogh’s Bulb Fields, rows and rows of delicately
cut and coloured sugar-dusted jubes personifying the artist’s meticulously rendered tulip beds.
Even the taxi drivers are eager to share the latest news of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. The
undisputed master of the Golden Age may have been dead more than three centuries, but two of his
greatest portraits have been making headlines internationally upon word that his portraits of Marten
Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit would soon be returning to the public for the first time in a century.
Here is a nation with a deep pride in its artists. And now for the first time a number of treasures
from these artists the Dutch hold so dear will travel to the Art Gallery of New South WalesI
The Dutch Golden Age of the
17th century produced some of
the world’s most beloved
masterpieces. Jane Albert
visits their birthplace.Strokes
of genius
Self-portrait as the Apostle Paul (1661)
by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.
Opposite: Still life with Golden Goblet
(1650–60) by Pieter de Ring.→→VOGUE CULTURE
ART→