Today we ambled down to the Rijksmuseum. After yesterday, Dan had pretty much given up on the buses. So we took a train and a tram.
Rijksmuseum -
The Rijksmuseum is a national art and history museum of the Netherlands. We had to wait about 20 minutes to get in as you can see by the lines below. It was a fairly busy day for the museum.
Dan mostly wanted to see the Dutch Masters, but it would be easy to spend days going through everything in the museum.
Main entrance to the Rijksmuseum. The road is a bike path.
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Jan Adam Kruseman -
"Portrait of WIlliam II, King of the Netherlands"
This is a portrait of King William II in military uniform, but with a decidedly informal air. Accompanied by his hound, he poses casually in the dunes, which in the Romantic era was considered the quintessentially Dutch landscape. |
C. van Schaick - "Sint Nikolaas-vertellingen voor de jeugd (St Nicholas - stories for the young)"
Before he got a helper [Black Peter], Saint Nicholas had to perform all his duties by himself, both the pleasant and the unpleasant tasks. In the story Alexander, or the punishment of discontentedness, the utterly provoked saint gives a rich, spoiled-rotten little boy, who is never satisfied with his gifts, a beating that he will remember for days.
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Vincent van Gogh - "Self Portrait"
Here van Gogh is being a fashionably dressed Parisian. I had no idea he did SO MANY self portraits. I thought he did two, at most three.
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Jacobus van Looey - "Summer Luxuriance"
I liked all the blue flowers. Dan did not like this one as much.
George Hendrik Breitner - "The Singel Bridge at the Paleisstraat in Amsterdam"
Apparently the lady in the forefront was originally depicted as a maid, but Breitner got negative reviews, so he changed her to an elegant lady.
A bit of info before the next painting (feel free to skip this if you don't want to learn more than you have to):
The Hague School
Around 1870 there was a group of painters in The Hague intent on representing typical Dutch themes, such as the daily life of peasants and fishermen, the sea, the beach and the flat polder landscape. Inspired by French landscape painters (the Barbizon School), the Hague artists ventured into the countryside in order to record nature.
Their broadly painted landscapes met with near instant success. Initially the group was called the 'Grey School' because of its preference for muted colors. Later this evolved into 'The Hague School'.
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Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriël -
"A Windmill on a Polder Waterway known as 'In the Month of July'"
'Our country is saturated with color. ...I repeat, our country is not grey, not even in grey weather, nor are the dunes grey', wrote [] Gabriël in a letter. Unlike many Hague School painters, he actually enjoyed depicting a beautiful summer day.
So basically this guy was all F* you Hague School and your dreariness.
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This is one of many stained glass windows in the Rijksmuseum dedicated to their famous Dutch Masters.
This window pays tribute to Rembrandt on the right-hand side.
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These things must have been all the rage in their day. I have seen cabinets like this in Florence (Italy), Bucharest (Romania), Sinaia (Romania), and now here Amsterdam (Netherlands). I guess they were the thing to have in the 1700's.
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Gabriel Metsu - "The Hunter's Present"
A hunter offers a dead bird to a young woman virtuously occupied with her sewing. Is he trying to seduce her? During the 17th century 'vogelen' (literally "to bird") was slang for sexual intercourse. The statuette of Cupid, the god of love, on the cupboard also alludes to this. These kinds of "hunters's scenes" - especially due to their possible double meaning - were a popular subject in painting.
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Erm...so this is a thing, with a fireplace, and....Delftware? maybe?
Anyway, it's a very clever photo of us.
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"I'd like to spend my vacation - AT THE LIBRARY!"
(Gold star to you if you get this reference. If you don't check this.)
This is the research library at the Rijksmuseum.
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I don't have any info on this, but it most likely came of off a British ship.
This is Rembrandt's "The Night Watch." This is as close as I could get to it, as this room was packed with people. I used this painting as a study for my Lighting Design class in college. Now you know.
These are Windmill cups from the mid 1600's.
Bartholomeus van der Helst -
"Banquet at the Crossbowmen's Guild in Celebration of the Treaty of Münster"
Frances Franken II - "Allegory on the Abdication of Emperor Charles V in Brussels"
There are so many fabulous things going on in this painting. Just soak it all in.
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A few places around Amsterdam have these large "I amsterdam" signs. This is the one outside of the Rijksmuseum.
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In the lobby? foyer? hang out area of the Rijksmuseum they had this holographic type Christmas tree thing.
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The Rijksmuseum had an exhibit on wedding dresses. They displayed 15 wedding dresses from the "Modern Age", including a black wedding dress.
This concludes the Rijksmuseum portion of our adventure.
Van Gogh Museum -
Dan said he wasn't hungry, and then he smelled the Big American Hotdog stand.
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The sun setting while we wait to get into
the Van Gogh Museum.
Woo.
The Van Gogh Museum really didn't allow photos. You could take photos of "Photo Opportunity Walls" where you stood against a big wall covered in something Van Gogh related.
I was not that excited about this.
I snagged one photo (below) before I figured I'd get talked to.
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An early self portrait by Van Gogh, before he got extra artsy and impressiony.
This concludes the Van Gogh Museum portion of our adventure.
Amsterdam Light Festival -
This is the third year of the Light Festival. We chose to take a canal tour of it rather than a walking tour. This killed two birds with one stone - see the Light Festival and take a canal tour. I didn't buy a program, so you're getting what I remember about these light sculptures, which isn't much.
Forgive these not great photos. We were in a moving boat and my mini tripod was not big enough to let the camera see out of the windows. I was struggling with finding the best settings to get decent pictures. I'm not happy with most of these, but you can at least get the idea of what was going on with the Light Festival.
While we waited to board our boat, we were serenaded by accordion music. We did not realize that it was being played live until we got around the wall and saw this gentleman playing.
Spheres on the water! They changed color, sometimes as a group and sometimes as individuals.
Boats outlined with lights. These were not part of the Light Festival, I just thought it was neat.
This is a light/shadow, water, and wind sculpture to create a sailing ship. Depending on the wind the sails either move or slacken.
Wavy lights on a bridge! WOOOO!
This is a lighthouse made out of lost shipping containers. It symbolizes Amsterdam's history of being a might seaport.....or something. It changed color. It was nifty.
Amsterdam is a multicultural city. This heart displays the different flags of the people who live and visit here. I happened to catch it showing the Italian flag.
It picks up the home country of passing by cellphones and responds accordingly. Don't ask me how it does this, I do not know.
Giant light up wind spinner doodad. My nephew would be stoked. My parents have a ton of these sculptural wind spinners (smaller of course) in their yard, and my nephew is fascinated by them.
Pretty light reflections off of a bridge. Also not part of the Light Festival.
This is supposed to be representative of a mangrove swamp. So there's that.
Multicolored tulips that change color! One even randomly popped up out of the water. I'm sure if it was supposed to do that or if it was having difficulties.
This concludes the Amsterdam Light Festival Canal Tour portion of our adventure.
We finished the tour (it was mostly a big loop) and wandered back to the train station. No more bus attempts for us.
I will end today with the third verse of our song:
The second one's name was I-I-saac.
The second one's name was I-I-saac.
I, I, saac saac saac.
I, I, saac saac saac.
The second one's name was I-I-saac.
