Vermeer

The golden age of Dutch art never ceases to amaze

21 October 2023 9:00 am

Benjamin Moser reminds us of how freely painters borrowed each other’s subjects – and of how many of the greatest, including Rembrandt, died in poverty

Nationalise the royal collection!

4 June 2022 9:00 am

It is high time we did justice to the treasures of the royal collection, says Jack Wakefield

Every bit as well observed as Rembrandt – and often funnier: Nicolaes Maes reviewed

7 March 2020 9:00 am

Nicolaes Maes (1634–93) relished the simple moments of daily life during the Dutch Golden Age. A woman peeling parsnips over…

The beauties of the universe are revealed in the paintings of Pieter de Hooch

19 October 2019 9:00 am

In the early 1660s, Pieter de Hooch was living in an area of what we would now call urban overspill…

‘The Japanese’ by Hans Makart, 1870–75

Fickle fortune

23 September 2017 9:00 am

Here’s an intriguing thought experiment: could Damien Hirst disappear? By that I mean not the 52-year-old artist himself — that…

‘Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman’ or ‘The Music Lesson’, 1662–5, by Vermeer

Artistic taste is inversely proportional to political nous

28 November 2015 9:00 am

‘Wherever the British settle, wherever they colonize,’ observed the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, ‘they carry and will ever carry trial…

Portrait of a couple as Isaac and Rebecca, known as ‘The Jewish Bride’, c.1665, by Rembrandt

Why everyone loves Rembrandt

27 September 2014 8:00 am

Talking of Rembrandt’s ‘The Jewish Bride’ to a friend, Vincent van Gogh went — characteristically — over the top. ‘I…

‘The Goldfinch’, 1654, by Carel Fabritius

The home of Holland’s celebrity paintings gets a makeover

19 July 2014 9:00 am

Laura Gascoigne on the treasures in the newly reopened Mauritshaus museum in The Hague