Masterpieces from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis

When the Mauritshuis closed on 1 April 2012 for a major two-year renovation, the museum organised a world tour for nearly fifty of its masterpieces, using the loan fees to help finance the building works. Japan was the first destination on the itinerary. The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum hosted the exhibition from June to September 2012, after which it transferred to the Kobe City Museum for its second Japanese leg, running from 29 September 2012 to 6 January 2013. Together the two Japanese venues drew more than 1.1 million visitors.

The selection represented the full breadth of the Mauritshuis collection: works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jan Brueghel the Elder were shown alongside the Vermeer. Carel Fabritius’s The Goldfinch (1654) was among the most closely studied works in the show. The exhibition was organised in close collaboration with NHK and the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper group, who co-produced the tour and contributed substantially to its promotion across Japan.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) was the undisputed centrepiece of the Kobe showing. The Mauritshuis very rarely permits it to travel. After the Japanese run closed, thirty of the touring paintings continued to three venues in the United States in 2013, visiting the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Frick Collection in New York. The Mauritshuis reopened on 27 June 2014 with a doubled floor area and a new underground foyer connecting the historic building with an adjacent wing.