Between 17th century Holland... - MutualArt

In the first major exhibition of Dutch art in the Gulf region, the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum has recently opened The Golden Age of Dutch Painting, Masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum at the Museum of Islamic Art. Forty-four paintings -- among the best in the Rijksmuseum’s collection -- are being loaned to QMA, providing an expansive view of Dutch art, culture, and lifestyle of the 17th century.

These exceptional artworks are representative of Holland's "Golden Age" of art, marked by an unprecedented scale of artistic output.

MutualArt.com spoke with the curator of the exhibition, QMA Executive Director Roger Mandle,about the parallels between 17th century Holland and 21st century Qatar and how they are reflected in this fascinating exhibition.

What inspired you to plan this particular exhibition at the Museum of Islamic Art?
The idea came from the strong parallels there are in history between the Dutch nation and their golden age of the 17th century and Qatar’s golden age of the 21st century. They are both extremely small countries that exploded in creativity, inventiveness, trade and international recognition; in the case of Holland after they were freed from the Spanish control in the latter part of the 16th century and in the case of Qatar after Britain left the Gulf, and they received their independence and oil and gas were discovered – which unleashed an enormous amount of energy, both practically and philosophically.

How do you think local audiences will respond to the art of seventeenth-century Dutch masters?
I think they will respond very well. Our attendance has been really strong and in addition the parallels of the subject matter are also very interesting to people here. Qatari people dressed in traditional black abayas will see the very conservative dress of the Dutch people in the 17th century... They’ll see the very modest way in which they lived but also the way in which they glorified their homes with beautiful objects. I think they will also be attracted by the beautiful paintings of the landscape, and if they have never been to the Netherlands they will see beautiful scenes of the farms, the cities and interiors that will make them feel close to the period.

Paulus Potter, Two Horses near a Gate in a Meadow, 1649

Is there any particular artist or genre of Dutch seventeenth-century painting that you think will most appeal to the local population? And why?
I can say that there are certain subjects that will. I know that the Arabian horse is a great interest to the people of this region and there are some beautiful portraits of horses in the show. There are wonderful paintings of people dressed in rich and luxurious costumes from the 17th century. There are beautiful still lifes with flowers and fish and so on. There are also portraits of people dressed in clothes from this part of the world. Rembrandt himself is shown in a turban. So there will be people from our part of the world who will feel quite interested and curious about the relationship between the Netherlands of the 17th century and Qatar of the 21st century.

How do you think that the art of 17th century Netherlands fits within the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art?
There are parallels. There are paintings with oriental carpets in them that we have similar types in our collection. There are costumes and jewelry that came from this part of the world. Rembrandt was known to have a very large collection of items from this part of the world that he used in his own paintings. People will find things of great similarity to things in the museum’s collection.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has an astoundingly strong and rich collection of 17th century Dutch paintings. What were the main criteria that guided you in your choice of the 44 works in the exhibition?
Quite simply, quality. Not only the reputation of artists like Rembrandt, Vermeer and Frans Hals but also the quality of the paintings by these artists. First of all, the Rijksmuseum is the nation’s museum for the Netherlands and has great things but even among them we were able to choose some of the very best. I think we both – the Rijksmuseum and Qatar Museums Authority - feel as though we have opened up a wide channel of potential collaboration.

Left: Frans Hals, A Civic Guardsman Holding a Berkenmeier known as The Merry Drinker, c 1628-30
Right: Rembrandt, Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul, 1661

We benefited, even before the exhibition, with a loan of some major paintings for the Ottoman Empire exhibition that was here at the Museum of Islamic Art last fall and that worked so well that it established a certain faith and trust that would allow the Rijksmuseum to lend us some of their most important paintings. We see this relationship expanding as well to include educational opportunities for our staff, joint exhibitions in which we send works of art from our museums to the Rijksmuseum for shows, working together on exhibitions that we can both hold from other parts of the world.

Do you have favorite work in the exhibition?
It’s a hard choice. I had the privilege of choosing all of them but I guess my favorite painting is Vermeer’s Woman Reading the Letter – it’s one of the most intimate, beautifully painted paintings I know by any Dutch artist. It is one of Vermeer’s great works.

Can you talk about your choice to structure the exhibition galleries in a thematic layout, and in particular to choose themes such as ‘Variety and Specialization’, ‘Everyday Reality’ and ‘Elegance and Refinement’?
We decided that rather than hanging the exhibition chronologically, it would be good to organize it according to themes that would help people see the relationships among the artists and the subject matter. For example, in the central gallery we have a group of the horse paintings clustered together. It was a way of trying to organize it to make people who may be less familiar with Dutch art feel comfortable with what they are seeing because they could themselves see some of the relationships among the varied subjects that the artists painted.

Including a work by a contemporary video artist to end an Old Masters exhibition is an original choice. Can you tell us more about the idea behind the video work in the last gallery?
That’s the video work by Nick Ferrando who we engaged to create a short program that would help people make a connection between the Netherlands of the 17th century to the Netherlands of today, particularly because many people from this region have never been to the Netherlands. It was our way of taking them back in time or bringing them from the paintings up to the present moment. Nick Ferrando, who did a similar kind of program for the Ottoman show, was hired to do this.

Adriaen van Utrecht, Still Life, 1644

This is the first major exhibition of Dutch painting in the Gulf region. Do you see this as a one-time event or is it your ambition to bring to Qatar a series of exhibitions of masterpieces from major Western museums?
We definitely do and we are speaking with a number of museums now about the possibility of similar kinds of programs in which they send us an exhibition and we send them one as well. We feel that now that we have established an international platform of comparable quality of museums like the Rijksmuseum, we can have a very good opportunity to benefit internationally from those connections.

You’ve had your career mainly in the West. What are you insights as to the rise of Islamic art, art in the Arab world and emerging markets in recent years?
It’s quite obvious that the Gulf region has become a hotbed of creativity and development not just in the art world but also in the economic realm, in education and science and so on. It’s almost an Arab renaissance that’s been generated in this region. Not just because of phenomenal financial resources that have made this possible but also because of the ingenuity and foresight of the leadership of these Gulf states. Each of them is doing it in their own way but I think that they definitely feel a responsibility to play a role in the vivification of this part of the world, intellectually as well as financially.

Islamic Art is already becoming very popular among audiences all over the world as more and more contemporary artists from this region find their voice, as more and more of them are received well by the art lovers of the world, more artists are inspired to begin their own work.