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National Gallery goes Dutch
27.02.07
Watch and inwardly digest: Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, 1632 - 'an amazing group portrait' - has pride of place in the National Gallery's summer exhibition
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It was one of the finest movements ever in world art. The economic and social "Golden Age" in 17th-century Holland inspired the likes of Rembrandt and Frans Hals to flourish.
The National Gallery's summer exhibition, unveiled today, is the first UK show devoted to the development of Dutch portraiture in the period.
Pride of place in the exhibition, which comprises 60 works by 29 artists painted between 1599 and 1683, is Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp.
On loan from the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague, the 1632 painting, depicting Dr Tulp explaining the musculature of the arm to a group of entranced colleagues, has not been seen in London since 1964.
Quentin Buvelot, co-curator of the exhibition, said: "It's an amazing group portrait. It's so peculiar - you just don't get portraits like this in British historical collections."
There are nine Rembrandts in the exhibition. The Syndics (1662), on loan from Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, has not been in Britain for 15 years.
After independence from Spain in 1581, the Dutch Republic experienced an economic boom. Merchants and entrepreneurs fell over themselves to have marriages, births and professional accomplishments immortalised on canvas. About 10 of the paintings have never been seen in Britain before.
The Queen is lending two historical paintings from the Royal Collection - Jan de Bray's The Banquet of Cleopatra (1652) and Rembrandt's The Shipbuilder and His Wife (1633).
Charles Saumarez Smith, director of the National Gallery, said: "The exhibition shows the huge range of portraiture in the Dutch Golden Age.
"It was a fantastically prosperous period and you see a new invention of portrait styles - civic portraits, double portraits and domestic portraits."
Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals runs from 27 June to 16 September.
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