Dutch and Flemish Paintings

On View: West Building, Main Floor

166 artworks on view.

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

Woman with a Pearl Necklace

Cornelis Bisschop

1650s

Oil on canvas Accession ID 2025.11.2

On View: West Building Main Floor, Gallery M51

Gathered in a round glass vase, a tall bouquet of flowers in shades of light and deep pink, sunshine yellow, and white with pine-green leaves nearly fills this vertical still life painting. Shown against an gray background, the vase sits on a narrow ledge, perhaps made of wood. A label with looping, cursive French text painted in gold against a baby blue background is affixed to the front of the ledge, along the bottom edge of the composition. The text reads, “C'est l'Angelicq main du grad Peinctre de Flore AMBROISE, renommé jusqu' au Rivage Moré.” A few of the flowers draw the eye, including a tulip and iris at the top of the bouquet. To our left, the tulip is mauve pink with cream-colored streaks, and one petal folds down to reveal the stamen inside. Next to it, a damselfly, an insect like a delicate dragonfly, rests on the vibrant yellow iris. The petals curling down from the iris are veined in muted burgundy red. Flowers filling in the bouquet below include a shell-pink cyclamen, a white gardenia, a closed blue and white striped columbine, a slate-blue grape hyacinth, lily of the valley, pale blue forget-me-nots, and a pink peony interspersed with leaves and greenery. The round glass vase has a narrow opening. A sprig of viola rests to our left of the vase on the ledge, and an orange, black, white, and brown butterfly perches on the stem of a pink cyclamen laying to our right of the vase. The artist signed the painting with a monogram and dated it in dark paint to our right on the face of the ledge: “AB 1621.”

Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass Vase

Ambrosius Bosschaert

1621

Oil on copper Accession ID 1996.35.1

Not on view

We look across a sunny waterway to the opposite bank, where a line of tall, leafy trees along the canal is backed by a row of red brick buildings and rowhouses with white stone trim in this horizontal landscape painting. The far bank angles from the lower left corner into the distance to our right, where it meets the horizon line near the right edge of the panel, about a fifth of the way up the composition. The water in front of us ripples gently, reflecting the white clouds, pale blue sky, low barges or boats tied up along the edge of both sides of the canal, and the moss green of the trees. Tiny in scale, a few people walk and work under the trees along the far bank. The building closest to us, to our left, has a stepped roofline and a lantern-shaped cupola. The gray spire of a church rises above the trees farther down the canal, and more red brick buildings are visible in the gaps between the tree trunks. People and a horse cross a low, arched bridge spanning the canal in the distance to our right. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed his initials as a monogram on the boat closest to us to our right, “IVH.”

View Down a Dutch Canal

Jan van der Heyden

c. 1670

Oil on panel Accession ID 2012.73.2

Not on view

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

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

A basket overflowing with flowers sits on a table alongside fruit, berries, and seashells in this horizontal still life painting. The wide, low straw-colored basket has a woven base and more open, rib-like sides. The bouquet is made up of white and pink roses, a sky-blue iris and another with pale yellow and lavender-purple leaves. There are also a carnation striped with red and white, flame-orange poppies, and at least three tulips, including one that is scarlet red, a white tulip veined with red, and one with red petals streaked with yellow. Other flowers and dark green stems and leaves fill out the arrangement. The basket sits on a slate-gray tabletop that extends off both sides of the painting. Four shells sit to our left of the basket. These include a woodcock murex shell with a spiraling head with spikes and a long, spiny tail; an elongated, smooth conch shell with an ivory-white and brown calico surface; and light blue snail shell. Finally, closest to us, the largest, spiraling triton shell is occupied by a hermit crab. A sprig of glowing red berries sits at the front center of the composition. To our right, a cluster of fruit includes purple and green grapes on the vines, red cherries, a red plum, and two pieces of yellow and blush-pink fruit. The scene is lit from our left against a darkened background, so a dragonfly in the upper right corner is nearly lost in shadow. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner, “B.vander.ast.”

Basket of Flowers

Balthasar van der Ast

c. 1622

Oil on panel Accession ID 1992.51.2

Not on view

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

Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned man wears a tall, black hat, wide white ruffs at the neck and cuffs, and a voluminous black garment in this vertical portrait painting. The dark costume nearly blends into the brown background in some places, so details are difficult to make out. The man sits in a chair so his body and knees are angled to our left. His face is also turned in that direction, but he looks at us from the corners of his brown eyes under dark, heavy brows. He has a thin face with a long, bumped nose. His brown mustache flicks up at the outer ends, and a thin line of hair down his chin creates his beard. His black hat has a high, rounded top and is draped with black fabric and a rosette. The ruffs at his neck and cuffs are pleated into tall, narrow figure eights. His black garment appears to puff widely at the shoulders and fold back over his lap. He wears a ring on the pinky finger of his left hand, which holds a piece of paper. The other hand hangs limp from where his arm rests on the chair, which appears to be upholstered in dark maroon-red fabric and is topped at the back with gold finials. A square window pierces the brown wall behind the man in the top left quadrant of the canvas. A few gold lines glint on the fringed brown curtain pulled up over the window, which opens onto a dark, perhaps nighttime landscape. A coat of arms hangs on the wall behind the chair, to our right of the man’s head. A shield is vertically striped with white to either side of a red stripe with a bird of prey silhouetted in black beneath a gold crown. Gold lettering on the wall below reads, “IO: VINSS: IMPS. ANN: SAL: 1626 AET: SVAE: 44.”

Giovanni Vincenzo Imperiale

Sir Anthony van Dyck

1626

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1942.9.89

Not on view

From our place on a dirt road, a row of buildings and houses extends from the right edge of this painting, into the distance and to our left in this vertical composition. People, all with light skin, come and go through doorways and hatches, work unloading goods next to a horse, and gather under a tattered awning down the road. Most of the people wear hats and dark clothing in tones of brown, black, and golden yellow, with a few touches of brick red. A jumble of objects, including a barrel, a wooden trap, and a ceramic vessel, and some chickens are gathered in the lower right corner of the panel, closest to us. A boy holding a long-necked vessel stands at an open hatch leading to an underground level of the structure nearby. That building has a large, steeply pitched, thatched dormer on a red tile roof. Green vines grow over parts of the peanut-brown stone and brick façade. A white stork with long legs and a long beak stands at a nest built on top of the chimney. A sign hangs above an open door, through which a person leans, and a birdcage hangs below the sign. In front of the open door, two men, one wearing a golden yellow vest and one wearing teal blue, unload large wooden barrels from a horse-drawn sled. The brown horse lifts one back foot off the ground, and the side of his hide is marked, perhaps with a sore. A tall tree with dark green leaves separates the building closest to us from its neighbor. A group of people and children are gathered under an awning there. One boy in the group pets a white, long-haired dog. Nearby, a man using crutches makes his way down the road toward us. A pair of dogs, one black and one brown and white, tussle over something in the lower left corner. The row of buildings extends in a line into the distance with steeply pitched, pointed rooflines. A tower, perhaps for a church, appears in the hazy distance to our left, near the left edge of the panel. Clouds with pale peach tops and lilac-gray undersides sweep across the sky above, parting to reveal on a couple slivers of blue sky beyond. The artist signed and dated the panel with black paint in the lower right corner: “Isack van Ostade 1645.”

Workmen before an Inn

Isack van Ostade

1645

Oil on panel Accession ID 1991.64.1

Not on view

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

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