Girl with a Pearl Earring

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675, Delft), Girl with a Pearl Earring, ca. 1665, oil on canvas, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague. All images courtesy of the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. 

The de Young Museum, San Francisco, is the first North American venue to present Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis, a selection of paintings from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague. The museum hosts 35 paintings highlighting the artistic achievements of the Dutch Golden Age, spanning the 17th century, including Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer and works by Rembrandt van Rijn. Sometimes called "the Dutch Mona Lisa," Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of only 36 known paintings by Vermeer and rarely travels outside the Netherlands. 

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669, Leiden), Portrait of Rembrandt with a Gorget, ca. 1629, oil on panel, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. 

During the Dutch Golden Age, a significant shift occurred in the technique of painting and in subject matter. Secular subjects replaced religious themes. Portraiture focused on ordinary people, had a more relaxed approach and lacked the formality of traditional portraiture. Similarly, genre scenes depicted everyday life in the Netherlands. 

Artists established a penchant for careful study and naturalistic rendering, in opposition to the idealized beauty of classicism. In the entrepreneurial culture of the Dutch Republic, they painted more often for the open market than for patrons and sought out works of art on the market as objects of study. Amsterdam supported a lively art and luxury goods market. 

Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750, Amsterdam), Vase of Flowers, 1700, oil on canvas, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. 

Nearly all Dutch artists of the time (excluding Rembrandt's art, which had an exceptional range) specialized, some narrowly. A painter of still life might concentrate on a particular class of objects, as evident in the works of Rachel Ruysch, an artist who specialized in still life paintings of flowers, less three-dimensional and more decorative. She served as court painter to the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm in Dusseldorf. 

Willem Heda (1590-1680, Haarlem), Still Life with a Roemer and Watch, 1629, oil on panel, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis. 

Willem Heda's still life composed of a fish, capers, lemon, bread roll, hazelnuts, wineglasses, silver tazza, and timepiece features neutral grey and brown hues. Monochrome still lifes flourished in Haarlem from the 1620s onward. Heda was one of the leading practitioners. He excelled at painting richly nuanced works describing a variety of textures and light reflections on shiny surfaces.

Types of paintings in the exhibition are strongly associated with Dutch art of the Golden Age: Landscape, genre, still life, portraiture, and history painting. A body of work original in approach and varied in subject matter. The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, which has not lent a large selection of works from its holdings in nearly thirty years, is undergoing an extensive renovation that makes this opportunity possible. On view through June 2 at the de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco.