Masterpieces from the Royal Picture Gallery

When the Mauritshuis in The Hague closed for an extensive two-year renovation in 2012, it arranged for its most celebrated works to travel internationally rather than go into storage. The resulting tour brought approximately 35 masterpieces of Dutch and Flemish painting to audiences in Japan and across the United States under the title “Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis.“ After opening in Tokyo and Kobe in the second half of 2012, the exhibition arrived at the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on 26 January 2013, where it remained through 2 June.

The de Young presentation brought together works spanning the full breadth of the Mauritshuis collection, from Rembrandt’s self-portraits and his monumental “Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” to Frans Hals’s “Laughing Boy,” Fabritius’s “The Goldfinch,” and Paulus Potter’s life-sized “The Bull.” Vermeer was represented by “Girl with a Pearl Earring“ (c. 1665), the museum’s most iconic holding. Often called the “Mona Lisa of the North,” the small tronie captivated San Francisco audiences with its direct gaze, luminous collar, and the famous drop of light on the pearl, all rendered in Vermeer’s characteristic layering of lead white, natural ultramarine, and translucent glazes.

The de Young drew enormous crowds during the run, with visitors queuing for extended periods to spend time before the painting. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco mounted complementary programming including lectures and events exploring Dutch Golden Age technique and the Mauritshuis collection’s history. After closing in San Francisco, the exhibition continued to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (summer 2013) and concluded at the Frick Collection in New York (October 2013 to January 2014) before the renovation of the Mauritshuis was completed and the works returned home.