Eighteen Artworks by Rembrandt and the Only Privately Held Vermeer Arrive in Amsterdam to Mark the City’s 750th Anniversary - H’ART Museum

To celebrate Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary, H’ART Museum today opened From Rembrandt to Vermeer — Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection, a landmark exhibition of seventy-five paintings from one of the world’s most important and largest private collections of seventeenth-century Dutch art. The exhibition is on view through August 24, 2025.

The exhibition focuses on the daily life and character of Dutch citizens in seventeenth-century Amsterdam as well as other urban centers in The Netherlands. Organized thematically, From Rembrandt to Vermeer draws from The Leiden Collection’s unique strength, namely the depiction of humanity in all its facets. The show comprises both formal portraits of wealthy sitters and character studies depicting a range of social classes — including a captivating group of artists’ self-portraits. It also displays engaging paintings that depict the preparing and marketing of foods, men playing cards, youths reading, and women writing letters or playing music. The spiritual aspects of seventeenth-century family life are also represented, as alluded to in scenes of prayer or in the biblical and mythological subjects of paintings that hung in the home.

Appearing throughout the exhibition are The Leiden Collection’s eighteen Rembrandts, on view together for the very first time. Spanning the entirety of the master’s career, these exceptional works as assembled reveal powerful evolutions in Rembrandt’s style, technique, and subject matter. From Rembrandt to Vermeer also presents the sole painting by Johannes Vermeer still in private hands, as well as exquisite works by twenty-five other prominent seventeenth-century Dutch artists, including Gerrit Dou, Jan Lievens, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Frans van Mieris, and Gerard ter Borch, among others.

Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan said: “There is simply nothing more gratifying than sharing The Leiden Collection and its treasures with the world. To bring these masterpieces to this particular city, Amsterdam, where Rembrandt and so many of his contemporaries came into maturity, is especially meaningful. In a very real and most poetic sense, these artworks have returned home. It is an incredible honor to have been a part in making that happen.”

Co-curated by H’ART Museum curator Birgit Boelens and The Leiden Collection curator Elizabeth Nogrady, From Rembrandt to Vermeer enriches the dynamic partnership first established between the two institutions in 2023, with the highly successful show Rembrandt and His Contemporaries. To celebrate this significant milestone for the city of Amsterdam, the collectors have lent extraordinary works to this grand-scale exhibition — presenting audiences with new and complementary themes found within The Leiden Collection’s vast and deep holdings. Visitors are invited to experience the emotional resonance and technical prowess that characterize seventeenth-century paintings, while connecting to the everyday activities and character traits of the era’s Dutch citizens.

Highlights include Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes, 1634, which shows the young painter gazing at the viewer through the shadow cast by his artist’s beret; finely painted panels by Dou that provide a window into the lives of Dutch townspeople, including Herring Seller and Boy, ca. 1644, and Cat Crouching on an Artist’s Atelier, 1657; and Vermeer’s Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, ca. 1670–75, which was delicately conserved in 2024 to expose in even greater detail the artist’s incomparable use of light and color.

Accompanying the exhibiton is a fully illustrated, 150-page, bilingual catalogue entitled Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and with entries on each painting, it features introductory essays by Wheelock and Kaplan, as well as texts describing rich and varied aspects of seventeenth-century life by a multi-disciplinary group of scholars. Els de Baan explores aspects of women’s dress in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic; Han Bakker presents an overview of literary culture and the intellectual climate in the Netherlands, particularly Amsterdam; Wouter van Elburg, offers readers a tour of various canal houses built in the seventeenth century; Janny van der Heijden describes food markets in the Netherlands of the 1600s; Weixuan Li investigates the rooms within Dutch homes; and Leonore van Sloten illuminates the role of music in paintings from The Leiden Collection.

For more information, please visit hartmuseum.nl.

H’ART Museum (formerly known as Hermitage Amsterdam) is an art museum where iconic works and captivating stories from across the globe come together in one-of-a-kind exhibitions. As a global cultural hub, the museum collaborates with esteemed partners such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, the British Museum in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. H’ART Museum is housed in a historic, centuries-old landmark building, situated in the heart of the city’s cultural heritage. The museum features a serene courtyard garden and a vibrant Grand Café. Beyond its rotating exhibitions, H’ART Museum serves as a dynamic cultural center, hosting a wide array of events, from concerts and lectures to movie nights and educational programs for children and young adults. 

The Leiden Collection, founded in 2003 by Franco-American collectors Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan and his wife Daphne Recanati Kaplan, comprises some 220 paintings and drawings and represents one of the largest and most important assemblages of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings in private hands. The Collection is named after Rembrandt’s native city in honor of the master’s transcendence and focuses on the works of Rembrandt and his followers, illuminating the personalities and themes that shaped the Golden Age over five generations. The Collection is the most comprehensive representation of the Leiden artists known as fijnschilders (“fine manner painters”), who concentrated on painting portraits, tronies (character studies), genre scenes, and history paintings. To learn more, please visit theleidencollection.com — home to an extensive online catalogue and scholarly resource that features detailed entries on each painting, biographies of artists, and essays by leading scholars.

Download the press images here. Please keep in mind the credits when publishing images.

Download the digital press kit here. It includes an essay from the exhibition catalogue ‘Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time’ written by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (senior advisor, The Leiden Collection), more information about The Leiden Collection and about dr. Thomas S. Kaplan and factual information about this exhibtion.

Madeline van Vliet & Stella Küçüksen
Press and Marketing Communications Department
+31 (0)20 530 87 55 | pressoffice@hartmuseum.nl

Alison Buchbinder / Ariana Heffner
alison.buchbinder@finnpartners.com / ariana.heffner@finnpartners.com
+1 646 688 7826 / +1 212 583 2745