Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt features outstanding examples of 17th-century Dutch painting from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibition surveys the distinctive period now referred to as the Dutch golden age, featuring all the subjects for which the Dutch are well known, from landscapes to still lifes, portraiture to scenes of everyday life as well as paintings of biblical and ancient subjects.

After gaining independence from Spanish Habsburg rule in the course of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), the Protestant, self-ruling Dutch Republic quickly rose to international prominence. An expansive worldwide presence transformed the Dutch into leaders in global trade and established a vigorous merchant class at home.

Seventeenth-century Dutch artists lived in a period of far-reaching change—political, religious, social, economic, demographic, and even geographic. The works in Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt bear witness to evidence of overseas travel, trade, and territorial expansion in representations of imported luxury goods, distant colonies, and expertly built merchant ships.