Dutch and Flemish Paintings

On View: West Building, Main Floor

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110 artworks on view.

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Beyond several craggy boulders that loom in the lower left corner of this horizontal painting, three sailing ships pitch wildly in crashing waves beneath towering clouds. At the center, a large ship tips sharply to our right with billowing ivory sails and two red, white, and blue striped flags whipping in the wind. White spray kicks up against the side of the boat and in the waves surrounding it. The sails of the second ship, to our right, are furled except for one that crashes down onto the deck. Tiny people scurry around inside the ship, which tilts steeply up on a high wave. The third ship floats beyond this, its sails also tied up. The top of a tall wooden mast along with a broken wooden pole poke up from emerald-green waves in the lower right corner, near a barrel and two bundles wrapped in cloth and tied with rope that bob nearby. One of the brown, jagged rocks to our left nearly spans the height of the painting while others jut from the water like crooked teeth. A bank of billowing, slate-gray clouds at the center of the sky separates a fog-gray sky and puffy clouds to our right from a patch of golden sunlight to our left, in the upper corner of the canvas. The artist signed and dated the work as if written on a rock at the bottom center of the canvas, “LBackh 1667.”

Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast

Ludolf Backhuysen

1667

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1985.29.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M49
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Woman with a Pearl Necklace

Cornelis Bisschop

1650s

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  2025.11.2

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M51
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A man with pale skin, wearing a gold-embroidered amber-yellow jacket and tomato-red pants, stands in front of a rocky outcropping with a distant view beyond in this vertical portrait painting. At the center of the composition and taking up most of it, the man stands with his body facing us, but he turns his head slightly to our left and looks off in that direction with slate-blue eyes under curving brows. His smooth cheeks are lightly flushed in his oval face. His full pink lips are closed and are framed by a mustache and small, pointed goatee under his lower lip. His wavy brown hair falls in bangs across his forehead and down to his shoulders. One longer lock has been braided and tied with a yellow and red bow, which rests on the front of his left shoulder, to our right. A wide, lace collar extends from his neck to drape over his shoulders, overlapping a piece of metal armor around the neck, called a gorget. His yellow jacket, a doublet, is embroidered with gold along the hems and where it hangs open down the front to show a white shirt beneath. The silver sleeve we can see is cut with a long slit along the forearm to also show the white linen beneath, and both cuffs have layers of lace at the wrists. A crimson-red coat or cape hangs over his left arm, on our right. His red pants are covered all over with gold stitching above ivory-white, calf-high boots. He holds a wide-brimmed, black hat adorned with plumes of red, white, and marigold-orange feathers in his right hand, on our left. An armored breastplate rests at his feet. He stands on a dirt ground with a tall boulder immediately behind him to our right. The landscape in the distance to our left has a sky filled with steel-gray clouds above trees and hills.

Henri II de Lorraine

Sir Anthony van Dyck

c. 1634

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1947.14.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M42
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Water laps at a curving shoreline in front of a steep sandy dune carpeted in grass, shrubs, and trees in this horizontal landscape painting. The dune takes up the lower right quadrant of the composition. A few broken tree trunks are overgrown with vines and plants across the top and down the sloping side of the dune facing us. A red brick wall cuts through the vegetation up the side of the dune and disappears into the shrubbery at the top. The twisting branches and canopies of three large trees reach into the upper right quadrant of the composition. The vegetation stops abruptly along the sheer edge of the dune where it faces the water. The land curves like a backward capital letter C so it almost reaches the left edge of the painting along the horizon, which comes a quarter of the way up the composition. A cow and three more animals, perhaps sheep or more cows, graze or lie on a grassy mound in the distance, and sailboats line the horizon in the deep distance. White ripples swirl in the steel-blue water. The artist signed and dated the lower center, “J Ruisdael . 1648.”

Dunes by the Sea

Jacob van Ruisdael

1648

Oil on panel  Accession ID  2017.55.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M47
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Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned man wearing armor stands with his body facing our left in profile but he turns his head to look up and over our right shoulder in front of a distant, gray landscape in this vertical portrait painting. He looks into the distance with brown eyes under dark, arched eyebrows. Chestnut-brown hair flows around his ears and to the back of his neck. His straight nose is slightly hooked at the end, and his pink lips are closed under a wispy mustache. He has plump, lightly flushed cheeks, and sagging jowls lead to a double chin. Light from our left glints off the suit of armor that covers his arms and round belly. He stands with his left hand, closer to us, resting on the hilt of a sword hanging at his side so his elbow points toward us. His other hand rests on the top of a cane. A leather strap crosses his chest, and a thin layer of lace encircles his neck. A ruby-red sash is tied around his upper left arm in a bow and billows around and behind him. The landscape beyond has a dark blue sky with charcoal-gray clouds above a low, sunlit horizon. The painting is inscribed with dark capital letters in the upper right corner: “MDV RAPHAEL RACIVS. H REIP. TRIREMIVM PRAEFE.”

The Prefect Raffaele Raggi

Sir Anthony van Dyck

c. 1625

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1942.9.90

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M42
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Shown from the chest up, a man with peach-colored skin sits in profile facing our left with downcast eyes in this vertical painting. He has a chestnut-brown beard and hair, brown eyes under thick brows, a slightly bumped nose, and pale, coral-pink lips. His nose and cheeks are tinged with pink. His robe is vibrant rose pink over the shoulders and scarlet red over his arms. The two colors are separated by a band of gold fringe. A bright, zigzagging line along the neckline could be a necklace or the edge of a white collar. He holds a lidded vessel near his left shoulder, closer to us. One hand tips the lid off the rounded bowl held in his other hand, which is cut off by the bottom edge of the canvas. The cup and lid are embellished with a row of bulging bosses around their edges. Inside the vessel is a glimpse of rounded, dark brown objects. The man is lit from the upper left, and the background is a mottled olive green and ginger brown.

Head of One of the Three Kings: Melchior, The Assyrian King

Sir Peter Paul Rubens

c. 1618

Oil on panel transferred to canvas  Accession ID  1943.7.9

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M45
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Eight cows bathed in warm sunlight stand and lie on a riverbank carpeted in mossy green in this horizontal painting. The cows are amber, ginger, or tawny brown, bone white, or black, and all have short, curving horns. Seven are clustered closely together, at the bottom center of the painting. There, one tawny red cow with a white face looks at or toward us as it lies at the middle of the grouping, legs tucked under her big body. The eighth cow is black with a white face, and lies just to our left of the group. Behind the cows, to our right, a hill rises about halfway up the right side of the composition. Three men meet at the top. One man is on horseback with his back to us, while the other two stand to the right holding tall staffs. They are dressed in sage-green, tan, or peanut-brown tunics and knee-length pants, and they all wear hats. Beyond the cows, the silvery-blue river extends back to a row of low trees in the deep distance on the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. A few sailboats with white sails navigate the waterway. The sky, which takes up about three-quarters of the composition, is filled with puffy white, pale gray, and shell-pink clouds. A shaft of sunlight breaks through the clouds near the top center of the composition and falls toward the men on the hill. Birds flying in a loose band are painted with a few swipes of brown, tiny in the distance. The artist signed the lower right, “A:Cuijp.”

River Landscape with Cows

Aelbert Cuyp

1645/1650

Oil on panel  Accession ID  1986.70.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M47
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Two roosters, a rabbit, and three small birds hang from the top of this vertical still life painting, so the heads of one white rooster and the rabbit come to rest on a dark stone ledge, about a third of the way up the composition. To our left, the tawny-brown rabbit’s nose faces us as the head rests on an azure-blue purse with silver lining. A pair of scissors is tucked behind the strap, which falls down over the ledge. To our right, the head of the rooster curves away with its red coxcomb coming toward us. A black fly rests on the rooster’s comb. The black tail feathers of another rooster arc out behind it, near the upper right corner of the painting. In front of the rabbit's bound, hind legs is a small bird with puffed, silvery-gray feathers, and one black leg tied up with a dark cord. To our left are two more small birds, one with gray, cream, and tan feathers, the other with cream, golden orange, and lapis blue. These two are secured with their beaks pointing upward. Two white and scarlet-red caps, falcon’s hoods, are strung up by white ribbon near the pair of birds. Below the ledge is a carved scene with nude or nearly nude people, but this area is mostly in shadow. Behind the animals is a dark, nearly black wall.

Still Life with Dead Game

Willem van Aelst

1661

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1982.36.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M50
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A nude man and woman, both with pale, luminous skin, recline together under an apple tree in front of a deep landscape in this horizontal painting. Their bodies entwined, Adam and Eve gaze into each other’s eyes. To our left, Adam’s muscular torso faces us as his slightly bent knees, resting along the ground, come toward us. He braces his upper body on his elbow, which rests on a low, mossy rock, and he holds a small green fruit in that hand. A sprig of rounded leaves covers his genitals. He has short, tousled, copper-brown hair, dark eyes, a straight nose, and his parted lips curl in a slight smile. A wispy, ginger-brown beard lines his jaw. He looks at Eve in profile as she leans against his chest. Her torso faces away from us, and her legs are tucked under her body, so their feet nearly touch. She lightly touches his chest with the fingertips of her left hand, and she holds up a small green and red apple in her other hand. A bite has been taken from the apple. Eve’s honey-brown hair is gathered at the back of her head, and she has dark eyes, a delicate nose, rosy, rounded cheeks, and full, coral-pink lips. In the lower left corner of the painting, a brown and white cat sits near Adam’s hip and looks out at us with gold-colored eyes. A tree rises behind the pair, along the left edge of the composition, and branches with oblong, sage-green leaves and red fruit frame the couple. Upon closer inspection, a snake winds around the trunk. The snake’s body is mustard yellow and dark teal, and it has a human face with flushed cheeks and blond hair. The snake’s face looms just above Eve’s head, and it looks at or toward us. To our right of Adam and Eve, the scene opens up onto a landscape with a grassy expanse leading back to rocky mountains in the distance. Closer to us and near the right edge of the painting, a goat with almond-colored fur stands facing away from us as it turns its head back to look at the people, munching a tuft of vegetation. The head of a black goat peeks in from the right edge, also looking toward the center of the painting. Tiny in scale, an elephant, two camels, and several other animals move through the landscape near the base of the mountain. A streak of ruby red appears in the otherwise hazy blue sky, near the snake’s head. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he had inscribed the rock on which Adam rests his elbow: “HG AE 1616,” with the HG conjoined to make a monogram.

The Fall of Man

Hendrick Goltzius

1616

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  1996.34.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M45
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Warm light coming from the left illuminates four men standing in pairs on either side of a dirt road that winds between rocky, tree-studded hills and a misty river in this almost square landscape painting. The trees have tall, gnarled, brown trunks with high canopies of sage, olive, and forest green while others have golden yellow leaves. The road curves in a C-shape along the foot of the hills that rise up the right side of the composition, their craggy faces painted in warm tones of sand, fawn, and caramel brown. Closest to us is rocky terrain covered with scrubby plants and two moss-covered trees growing next to a broken tree trunk that separates us from the men. The trees are just right of center and divide the scene vertically. The two men to the right of the tree rest among boulders next to the road. One sits and the other stands, and each holds a tall staff. A light-gray, bearded goat lies to the right of the men and closer inspection reveals another grazing nearby. On the left, one man sitting astride a donkey turns his head away from us to look at the man standing just behind him. The men are all simply dressed in knee-length breeches, shirts, and sleeveless coats in shades of brick red, ivory, and tan, or ginger brown, and wear tall, wide brimmed hats. A man driving cattle approaches them from farther back along the road. Beyond the tall trees near the center, the hills slope down to a winding river fringed with trees. The river flows into the distance, past headlands jutting into the water, and ends at a tall mountain rising from the low horizon. A thin wash of butter yellow creates a hazy glow over the river, headlands, and distant mountain. A pale robin's egg-blue sky scattered with petal-pink and dusty rose-colored clouds fills the top of the scene.

An Italianate Evening Landscape

Jan Both

c. 1650

Oil on canvas  Accession ID  2000.91.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M47
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In almost complete darkness, we look across reeds and grasses lining a river spanned by narrow, arched, stone bridge ahead of us in this moonlit, horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the painting, just over the footbridge, and the sky is filled with clouds that glow blush pink, flint gray, and lavender purple. The small, porcelain-white moon casts an opalescent gleam on the water under the arch of the bridge. Barely visible in the gloom, a walking path lined by a fence in the lower right corner leads to a copse of tall trees to our right. Closer inspection reveals a man wearing crimson red and a woman wearing pine green standing together near the gate of a walled enclosure beyond the trees. Moonlight glints on their white collars and cuffs, and on the gold buttons and embroidery on their clothing. Spires and buildings with stepped rooflines along the riverbank are outlined against the illuminated sky, though most of the details of the structures are swallowed in shadow.

Moonlit Landscape with Bridge

Aert van der Neer

probably 1648/1650

Oil on panel  Accession ID  1990.6.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M49
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This painting shows a man from the thighs up. He has a fair complexion, curly brown hair, a beard, and a mustache. His brown eyes look out at the viewer. He is wearing an elaborate white doublet with a high ruffled collar, a dark cloak, and a blue ribbon with a colorful medallion around his neck. He also wears a gold belt over white trousers. He is holding the golden hilt of a sword in one hand and has his other hand on his hip. The background is light blue.

Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex

Anonymous Artist

1596/1601

Oil on wood  Accession ID  1947.18.1

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M42
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