Vermeer, Rembrandt on view at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts

PanARMENIAN.Net - This fall, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, opened Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, the first exhibition to look at 17th-century Dutch paintings through the lens of the social classes, Digital Spy reports.

Including 75 paintings from collections both in the US and abroad, the exhibition—on view from October 11, 2015–January 18, 2016—features major works by artists including Rembrandt and Vermeer as well as Jan Steen, Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Gerrit Dou, among others. Loans from Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Budapest and London—many never before seen in the US—complement those coming from other public and private collections in North America and Europe. Galleries in the exhibition are devoted to the three broad social classes—upper, middle and lower—and the last room includes paintings dedicated to where the classes met. Princes, regents and milkmaids figure in the thematic groupings within the classes, reflecting the social status of people—and the importance their class had —in the new Dutch Republic. The fine detail in the pictures encourages close looking, inspiring the viewer to differentiate between a mistress and a maid or to distinguish a noble from a social-climbing merchant. The exhibition offers the rare opportunity to see works by Vermeer in Boston, in addition to featuring many subjects that are unusual in 17th-century Dutch painted depictions.

To further illustrate the distinctions among the classes, three tables in the final room of the exhibition feature similar decorative art objects that would have been used by each of the classes—distinct in material and decoration—including linens, salt cellars, beakers and mustard pots. On view in the MFA’s Ann and Graham Gund Gallery, this groundbreaking exhibition is accompanied by a publication with essays by exhibition curator Ronni Baer, the MFA’s William and Ann Elfers Senior Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe, as well as other Dutch scholars.

“These carefully selected paintings allow us to glimpse the ways rank and status are expressed pictorially. For example, is the sitter’s dress made of silk or coarse wool? Is the subject serving or being served? Does the figure stand upright or is he stooped? Even the person’s behavior—snoring in a pub or riding a horse—indicates his social class. Details like these encourage us to form a sharper and more nuanced picture of 17th-century Dutch life and society,” said Baer.