Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Kimbell Art Museum presents the special exhibition, Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through February 9, 2025. This exhibition brings together paintings by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Gerrit Dou, Jacob van Ruisdael, Maria Schalcken, and other celebrated artists from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s renowned collection. These are joined by six Dutch paintings from the Kimbell’s collection, along with prints, maps, and stunning decorative objects in silver, porcelain, and more, from the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries. Exploring how Dutch dominance in international commerce transformed life in the Netherlands and gave rise to an extraordinary cultural flourishing, the exhibition also benefits from new scholarship that contextualizes 17th-century Dutch art within the complexities of its historical context.

“The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s collection of Dutch and Flemish masterpieces—and its Center for Netherlandish Art for the study and interpretation of the works—is renowned,” said Eric Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “We’re grateful to the Boston museum for its generosity in sharing this collection so that audiences can experience its treasures here in Texas.”

The 17th century in the Netherlands saw unprecedented artistic production due to a Dutch economy fueled by international trade. Many consider the period to be the first age of globalization. Artists painted still lifes to showcase items procured from around the world—porcelains from Asia, spices and silks from India, and sugar and tobacco from North and South America. Lavish bouquets were painted to showcase imported flowers such as the popular tulip from Turkey. Stirring seascapes depicted ships in port and at sea, visual symbols of the maritime-based trade economy. Dutch cityscapes and landscapes were commissioned as the Netherlands became a cosmopolitan world power, reflecting civic and national pride. The extraordinary art of this period continues to be deeply admired today.

Throughout the exhibition, artworks will be presented through the lens of global exchange. The first section, titled The World at Home, opens the exhibition with ostensibly domestic items, many of which have diverse origins. Still-life paintings depict Asian porcelain, American tobacco, Indonesian shells, Turkish tulips, and more. The paintings will be juxtaposed with examples of Chinese porcelain, Dutch Delftware, and silver.

In the second section, titled The World Beyond, grand paintings of ships at sea are complemented by maps, prints, and decorative objects that would have been collected from ports around the world. The next section, Amsterdam as a Cosmopolitan Hub, shows depictions of the capital city as it emerged as Europe’s busiest port and a center for economic and cultural expansion. Next, The World of Faith includes paintings and sacred items that demonstrate how religion and religious tolerance continued to be central to daily life in the Netherlands, even as global trade and colonialism developed. Global Citizens features painted and printed portraits that tell us who the Dutch were in the 17th century—a time when the Netherlands was among the most diverse regions of Europe. Through their dress, their surroundings, and their poses, we learn how the Dutch portrayed individuals from diverse socioeconomic classes, or how they viewed the proper balance between moral ideals and the pursuit and display of material wealth.

Even as they embraced the foreign and the exotic, the Dutch discovered the beauty of their native land, and Celebrating the Familiar includes new types of naturalistic landscapes that took inspiration from the flat and watery terrain of the Netherlands. And finally, Conspicuous Consumption displays largely fictional scenes of everyday life, often showcasing a range of foreign goods that would suggest their subjects’ wealth, interests, or vanities. Decorative arts in this section include paraphernalia for the new rituals of smoking and tea drinking, vessels for storing costly imported sugar, and more.

Throughout the exhibition, in keeping with the theme of a global world, new scholarship will position these magnificent products of Dutch prosperity against its darker side—aspects of which were seldom overtly depicted in the works of art themselves. The harsh realities of poverty, child labor, the exploitative colonization of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and above all the role of the Netherlands in the transatlantic slave trade were depicted in a benign guise, if at all, but these realities fueled the economy that made the works of art possible.

Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston at the Kimbell is supported in part by Frost, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the Fort Worth Tourism Public Improvement District. Promotional support for the Kimbell Art Museum and its exhibitions is provided by American Airlines, PaperCity, and NBC 5. Additional support for the Kimbell Art Museum is provided by Arts Fort Worth and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

For more information on the Kimbell Art Museum, including admission and hours, turn to page 13, or visit kimbellart.org.