Museums in Amsterdam

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Rijksmuseum



Our hotel was very close to Rijksmuseum – National Gallery of the Holland. I’d wanted to visit this museum for a long time. After getting off the canal cruise, we decided to look round Rijksmuseum.



We showed our Amsterdam Passes at the start of the museum. Having looked at the floor map, we understood that Dutch paintings are displayed on the 1^st and 2^nd floor. We went up to the 2^nd floor. We saw a huge variety of paintings and artworks – blue-and-white porcelain, sculptures, winter landscapes, Rembrandt’s portraits and his masterpieces, amazing still-life paintings. All the paintings and decorative arts had English commentaries. My parents admired massive collections of Rembrandt’s self-portraits and historic paintings with the commentary how he produced colours on the point reflecting of the sunlight in the dark place. It was 1.30 when we finished looking round the 2^nd floor: the collections of Dutch paintings. We had lunch and then looked the 1^st floor. We admired a wealth collections of paintings of historic events, Flemish paintings and 19^th century collections produced by the painters at The Hague School. There were also lots of paintings and portraits by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Vermeer and Jan Steen. We couldn’t see all the exhibitions rooms, but it was worth visiting. The gift shop had a wide variety of souvenirs featuring the Dutch painters’ works.













Van Gogh Museum







I’d been advised to book the time slot to visit Van Gogh Museum on the website. I found that the morning slots were available on 20 June, so I booked the slot for 9.45.







Van Gogh Museum stands in the heart of the Museum District near RijikMuseum. Van Gogh was known to be a very prolific painter, and because of his enormous number of great works, the museum has two buildings: one is used for permanent exhibitions and the other one is used for temporary exhibitions. There was already a long queue when we arrived at 9.15. After 9:30, we joined a queue and entered the museum.







We started looking round the permanent exhibition rooms. The museum housed numerous documents of Gogh and his family, personal belongings, all of which illustrated how Van Gogh lived as a painter. He lived only 37 years. However, he was an extremely dedicated painter – he produced approximately 2,100 artworks and more than 860 oil paintings. As well as very famous ones – ‘Sunflowers’, ‘The Church at Auvers’, ‘Van Gogh’s Chair’, we saw a number of lesser-known works and self-portraits and landscapes and seascapes, still-life painting. He was greatly influenced by Post Impressionist painters like Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, and other contemporary painters in Paris, the Hague School. He was also interested in farmers’ lives, sketched and produced a number of paintings illustrating farmers’ lives. As with his forbear painters like Rembrandt, Vermeer, he was interested in the language of colours and spent a lot of time on working out for appropriate colours, lines and brushes of the objects and landscapes for his works.







He had strong interest in vivid colours used in Japanese prints. After the lunch, we looked round the temporary exhibition rooms ‘Van Gogh Japan’. Van Gogh purchased more than 600 prints from a dealer when he was in Paris and was intrigued in vivid colours and bold lines used in Japanese prints, e.g. Ukiyoe, Hokusai, and produced some works trying to copy the models in the Japanese prints. Gogh’s works include cherry blossoms, lilacs and irises. I always think the colours he used for flowers, branches, and stems are appropriate. He was too inspired by Japanese prints. He was one of the most remarkable painters in the world.















Stedelijk Museum







Next, we went to Stedelijk Museum. Amsterdam Passes let us enter this museum as well. The Netherlands has produced a wealth of talented painters and artists from ancient times to present. This museum housed an amazing collections of modern art and decorative arts – abstract geometrical compositions by Mondrian, photographs by Man Ray, modern and functional pieces of furniture designed by De Stiji, Ludwig Miles van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, works by Picasso, Matisse, Chagal, numerous sculptures made from junk and recycled metal.

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Comments

[Mary Goddard]

Very interesting .
Enjoyed learning about museums in Amsterdam