Dutch museums. Introduction

It has the highest density of museums and galleries in the world. Despite being a small country, the number of high-quality art centers makes the Netherlands a huge entertainment and educational destination with museums presenting art in all its aspects. Any tourist will not miss the opportunity to get off the beaten path of the city and visit the most famous ones, with a taste for art, heritage, design, fashion, music or photography. , and many other cities in Holland are filled with museums and waiting to be explored.

Top 12 most interesting museums in Holland

There are more than 400 museums in this country. There are about 60 of them in Amsterdam alone, from the world famous to the recently opened Mikropia. Many of these institutions are over 100 years old, during which time they have protected the country's national treasures. We offer tourists a list of the best museums in Holland that will help you choose the exhibitions you like and plan your visit:

1. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This museum stores more than 1 million exhibits and is recognized as the main museum in Holland. Its collections include many priceless works of art, such as Jan Vermeer's The Milkmaid, several revered paintings by Van Gogh and, of course, Rembrandt's magnum opus The Night Watch. The Rijksmuseum building itself is a true masterpiece and harks back to the heights of Dutch neoclassicism.
2. , The Hague. In 1822, the Royal Painting Cabinet was moved to Den Haag, where it remains today. Over the years, many important paintings were added to the already impressive catalog of works from the Dutch Golden Age, including Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. Today, the Mauritshuis ranks among the top art museums and heritage sites in Holland and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.


3. , Rotterdam. This one of the largest and most extensive collections houses works of art from the Middle Ages to the most modern of the 21st century. Here you can see works by Dutch artists such as Rembrandt and Bosch, surrealists Magritte and Dali, and minimalist sculptures by Robert Morris.


4. , Amsterdam. Don't miss the chance to see where Anne Frank wrote her now world-famous diary, which tells the story of how a young Jewish woman escaped the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam with her family during World War II.


5. , Leiden. The museum is named after the legendary university teacher Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738), who made the university of Leiden one of the most famous not only in the Netherlands, but also in Europe. It is located in the former St. Cecilia Hospital, which is a museum in itself. There are collections here that represent the 5-century history of natural and medical sciences. The Anatomical Museum is impressive with exhibits of human and animal skeletons.


6. Cats cabinet, Amsterdam. The Cat Cabinet is a small museum located in an old patrician house in Herengracht in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in the city's business district, entirely dedicated to paintings and other objets d'art depicting cats. It was founded in 1990 by William Meyer, a wealthy Dutchman, who thus wanted to preserve the memory of his cat. An aura of special sensual humor is present not only in the theme of this museum, but also in the way this museum was presented to the visitor. Sculptures, paintings, posters and books about cats are displayed so professionally and seriously that they cannot but bring a smile to the face of visitors.


7. , Netherlands, Amsterdam. German collector Helene Kröller-Müller was one of the first to recognize the value of Vincent van Gogh's works and amassed a huge collection of his paintings during his lifetime. In 1934, she parted with her entire collection and founded a museum in honor of the artist to give his work to the Dutch people. This institute now bears her name and has since acquired many other priceless works of art.


8. , Amsterdam. As soon as visitors step inside, it becomes immediately clear that this Dutch Sex Museum is trying to combine its rich collection of artifacts with elements of an amusement park. In each of the tiny halls of the museum, dedicated to such famous personalities as Mata Hari, Marquis de Sade, Rudolph Valentino, Oscar Wilde, Marquise Pompadour, visitors are accompanied by different muffled noises. For example, in the room of the Marquis de Sade, the repeated sounds of a steam engine are heard from a speaker on the ceiling, mixed with women's screams of joy.


9. , Leiden, Holland. The museum is 29 m high with its 7 floors and is hard to miss. This is the last remaining mill of 19 that once stood on the ramparts of Leiden. Below you can see the only surviving miller's house in the Netherlands.


10. , Amsterdam. From famous musicians to movie stars, from fashion models to world leaders, you'll meet them all at Madame Tussauds in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Sing with Adele, pose with Madonna and drink coffee with George Clooney!


11. , Leiden. This museum in Holland offers a journey through the human body, during which the visitor can see, feel and hear how the human body works, the role of healthy food, an active lifestyle and exercise. The Corpus Museum in the Netherlands offers not only information and education, but also an entertainment program and exhibitions.


12. Vincent van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. For the past 40 years, this museum in Amsterdam has housed the largest collection of Van Gogh paintings not only in Holland, but in the world. This unrivaled exhibition covers all stages of the artist's work, from his early days in the Netherlands to his untimely death in the north of France. In addition to these priceless works of art, the museum houses thousands of paintings created by world masters of painting associated with Post-Impressionism, such as Monet, Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec.

The Museum Card (Museumkaart) is an annual pass that gives unlimited entry to nearly 400 museums in Holland, including 35 in Amsterdam. This map is aimed at locals rather than tourists. However, anyone can buy it.

How much does a museum card cost?

• Museum card for adults – €64.90 for 1 year
• Museum card for children under 18 years old – €32.45 for 1 year

Attention! Early 2016 the rules for selling cards have changed. Now, when you purchase a card at the museum, they give you a temporary paper card. It is valid for 31 days. You can use it immediately after purchase. But before the 31-day period expires, you need to register it online and they will send you a permanent plastic card. They send them away only to a Dutch postal address. If the card is not registered online, it will be lost.

And attention again! On March 10, 2018, the rules changed again. Now the temporary card is valid for 31 days and gives the right to visit a maximum of five museums .

In the photo: museum map of the old model (in the foreground) and the new one

What museums can you visit with this card?

• Complete list of museums in Amsterdam(including Anne Frank House, Nemo Museum, Van Gogh Museum, Rijksmuseum, Stedelijk Museum)
• Complete list of museums throughout Holland, a total of about 400. The list on the website is sorted by province.

Where can I buy a museum card?

You can buy the card at many museums participating in this program, including the Rijksmuseum, Stedelijk Museum, Hermitage, Neue and .

How to use the museum card?

Once you purchase a card at the museum, you can use it immediately. Then, within 31 days, the card must be registered online: indicate your name, surname, gender, date of birth, and upload a passport photo. Thus, the permanent museum will be personal, and only the owner himself can use it.

At the museum you just need to show the card at the entrance (usually to the employee at the ticket office, and at the Rijksmuseum to the security guard at the entrance). There they will scan your card and either give you a paper ticket or simply let you into the museum.

Does the museum card give you skip-the-line entry?

Yes, in, and the Hermitage. To get skip-the-line entry into the Van Gogh Museum, you'll need to book a time slot online (it's free).

At the Anne Frank House, which is famous for the longest queues in Amsterdam, museum card holders can also use a trick. To do this, you need to go to the museum's website and book a visit for a specific time. You will need to pay €0.50 for the online booking itself, and show your card at the entrance - and skip the line and go free.

How many times can I visit museums with this card?

You can visit museums unlimited number of times within a year.

Is it worth buying a museum card?

For those who live in the Netherlands or often come to visit, you don’t even have to think about the purchase - and take it right away! And for travelers, the arithmetic is simple: the price of admission to the main museums - Stedelijk, Hermitage, NEMO - 16.50 euros or more. It turns out that your purchase will pay off after visiting four museums.

Alternatively, you may consider purchasing:

• maps I amsterdam, it gives you the right to enter many museums in Amsterdam and Haarlem + free travel + canal cruise + many discounts)
• , which operates in many cities in Holland, gives you the right to enter many museums + many discounts (full list of opportunities -). When you buy a Holland Pass online, you can also buy a day train pass for a very good price (19 euros).
• combi tickets to museums, which are cheaper than individual tickets.

Have a great holiday in Amsterdam!

The information in the article is current as of January 15, 2018. The above prices are subject to change.

Introduction

Holland is a small country with enormous artistic riches.

Today it is a country of highly developed industry and intensive agriculture. The wings of windmills, familiar to us from countless paintings by old masters, are motionless. The mills have become a picturesque feature of the flat landscape flanking the modern highway. The Dutch are characterized by a desire not only to preserve antiquity, but also to use it. Here they know how to live in modern comfort in a 17th-century house, and there are many of them. Some cities (for example, Haarlem, Leiden, Delft) could be turned into museums of old architecture, but this does not happen. They are protected, valued, supported and continue to live in them. The past is not lost in the ghostly distance of centuries, but serves as part of modern practical life. The country's government offices are located in the medieval residence of the Dutch counts in The Hague, converted for this purpose three hundred years ago. The Amsterdam Royal Palace for ceremonial receptions is the city hall building, built in the mid-17th century by the famous architect van Kampen.

In the minds of foreigners, Holland is a country of canals, tulips and Rembrandt. Rembrandt's work is an exceptional phenomenon, in many ways opposed to the flow of works by his Dutch contemporaries. And yet it constitutes the peak, the crest of an unusually wide wave. Perhaps nowhere and never has painting become as widespread as in Holland in the 17th century. In all the museums in the world dedicated to Western European art, the Dutch section is one of the richest. This small country has poured tens of thousands of paintings onto the world art market, but there are still a great many of them at home. To this day, Amsterdam is one of the international centers of antiques trade. For three and a half centuries, sales of enormous art treasures took place here, and magnificent collections were created and disintegrated again. However, Dutch museums with their remarkable collections arose only in the 19th century. The reasons for this should be sought in the history of the country and in the peculiar “everyday” attitude towards antiquity and art. If in other European countries paintings were primarily the property of a royal or princely palace, then in 17th-century Holland, the finest, highly professional paintings found their way into the homes of not only wealthy burghers, but also artisans and even peasants. They served as part of everyday life and a way to invest capital; the owner died, and the heirs sold them.

Constantly being in Dutch houses, the paintings educated people's eyes and tastes and shaped their attitude towards art.

Watching museum visitors in The Hague or Rotterdam, you soon notice that a group of brightly dressed elderly American women always listen to the guide; French or Italians, casting absent-minded glances around, are deeply convinced in their souls that there is nothing in the world better than their own French or Italian art. Serious young German students have studied scientific literature in advance and are now looking for illustrations to their knowledge. But a Dutchman approaches the picture, leading a boy of about ten years old by the hand; They stand silently for a long time in front of Willem Heda’s silvery still life and then quietly leave. They don't need a tour guide. They don’t need words at all; they are used to not hearing about painting, but seeing painting. Perhaps this skill is more widespread in Holland than in other countries. Here it constitutes a cultural feature associated with the characteristics of the national character.

There is no doubt that there is a deep interdependence between artistic perception and the traditional Dutch understanding of the poetry of domestic life, the imperceptible beauty of simple things. Both are a product of the history of the Dutch people with its peculiar interweaving of heroism and burgher narrow-mindedness. Its stages determine both the path of artistic collecting and the formation of public art collections - museums.

The Dutch revolution at the end of the 16th century was a turning point in the history of the country. About a century and a half earlier, the Dukes of Burgundy, belonging to a junior branch of the French royal house of Valois, united feudal principalities under their rule in the territory of modern Holland and Belgium. This entire area was known as the Low Countries (Netherlands). The Dutch principalities, located at the crossroads of European trade routes, already had a lot in common with each other. After the unification, the features of a national culture begin to take shape here, with the southern part of the country being the leading one both economically and culturally. At the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century, as a result of dynastic marriages, the Netherlands came under the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs. Powerful uprisings against economic and political oppression preceded the war of national liberation that broke out in 1566. This war was called “eighty years” by Dutch historians, since peace with Spain was finally concluded only in 1648, but its main results were clear by the beginning of the 17th century.

The national demands of the rebels were intertwined with socio-economic and religious ones. The struggle against Spanish rule soon turned into the first bourgeois revolution in world history. Brutally suppressed in the Southern Netherlands, the revolution in the North led to the creation of a new independent state - the Republic of the Seven United Provinces. Among these provinces (North Brabant, Utrecht, Groningen, etc.), Holland stands out for its economic development, its naval power, and therefore its political significance. It is not for nothing that we are accustomed to extending the name of this province to the entire country, using it on a par with the modern official name “Kingdom of the Netherlands”. The merchant bourgeoisie of Holland began to play a leading role in the new state. Its wealth and power were built on the brutal exploitation of the masses, and yet it was the patriotism of the people that more than once saved the country’s independence during endless wars with Spain, and later with England. Dutch merchants had a powerful navy; they not only conducted extensive international trade, but also seized colonies in Asia, Africa, and South America, robbing and destroying the local population.

Peter Aertsen, Adoration of the Shepherds, fragment

The seventeenth century was the "golden age" of Holland. The advanced small country briefly became one of the most powerful powers in the world. Science and art, especially painting, reached a brilliant flourishing.

Among the states of absolutist Europe of that time, the bourgeois Republic of the United Provinces stood out for the comparative democracy of its socio-political life and culture. In the fight against the stronghold of Catholicism - Spain - the Dutch proclaimed Protestantism as the state religion, but about half of the population remained Catholic. Tolerance did not mean equality: Catholics were prohibited from holding public worship. The churches were converted into Protestant temples. Protestantism prohibits praying to religious images, so the paintings on the walls were covered with whitewash, paintings and sculptures were either removed from the church or destroyed.

The troops of the republic were led by stadtholders. By tradition, this position became hereditary in the family of the Princes of Orange-Nassau. The stadtholders from the House of Orange fought for power with the top burghers. They either managed to expand their influence in the state, or had to retreat into the background.

In 1795, French troops occupied Holland. The stadtholders fled. Napoleon later proclaimed the country a kingdom and placed his brother Louis on the throne. The death of the Napoleonic Empire brought to the throne the returning dynasty of Orange, which has survived to this day.

This historical outline allows us to understand much in the development of art and collecting.

In the Middle Ages, here, as in the rest of Europe, churches and monasteries had collections of all kinds of rarities and valuables, which were used to decorate the altar on major holidays. Many such objects were wonderful works of art - most often applied. Only a small fraction of this wealth has survived to this day; in Holland even less of it has been preserved than in other European countries. Let us remember that at the turn of the 16th–17th centuries, Protestantism destroyed the relics of Catholic churches here. To the people of that time, the creations of medieval art seemed rude and ugly; having lost the significance of religious relics, they generally lost all value and perished.

This was the first time that a work of art - albeit only in fragments - was saved from destruction precisely because of interest in its artistic qualities. However, this was not about an ancient, but about a modern work. In 1566, a wave of uprisings swept across the country, taking the form of iconoclasm; The rebels destroyed religious images in Catholic churches. In Amsterdam, altar paintings, most recently executed by the artist Peter Aertsen and arousing the admiration of his contemporaries, were lost. Only a fragment of one of them, “The Adoration of the Shepherds,” which amazed with its unusually convincing image of a bull, was cut out of the wooden board on which the picture was painted and transferred to the town hall. It is now located in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

In Holland, the first major works to become public property were group portraits. Since the Middle Ages, the defense of cities was the responsibility of citizens. The city militia consisted of rifle guilds, which, like other guilds, had their own building. From the beginning of the 16th century, members of the Dutch shooting guilds began to commission group portraits of themselves. The largest number of such portraits were painted in Amsterdam and are located in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. The earliest of them were painted by local artist Cornelis Antonissen (Tönissen). Usually the surface of his paintings is densely filled with half-figures of shooters. They are arranged in rows, rising one above the other, instead of being located one after another, in accordance with the rules of perspective. However, the dull helplessness of the overall composition is more than compensated by the specificity of the individuals. The Amsterdam burghers are depicted here with genuine authenticity; their faces are rough, sometimes ugly, but full of energy, will, and confidence. Neither the artist nor the clients strive for idealization, and they are quite right in believing that - such as they are - they are able to stand up for themselves and inspire respect from others. These group portraits are one of the manifestations of the persistent, energetic self-affirmation of the Dutch burghers.

Every year, the shooting guilds replaced officers and held a banquet in honor of those who had served their time (later, in the 17th century, this happened every three years). Already in 1533, Cornelis Theunissen tried to make such a feast the main motif of a group portrait. Subsequently, this theme will become the core of Frans Hals's paintings, full of casual fun. Cornelis Theunissen's hands are depicted in sedentary poses; they look at the viewer, not paying attention to the set table. The artist does not yet know how to unite them, subordinating them to the general plot action, the general high spirits, as Hals would do almost a hundred years later. And yet, in the early painting, there is some kind of internal kinship between the people depicted, thanks to which they seem to be a single team. Several decades will pass, and this corporate spirit of the Dutch burghers, the ability to jointly fight for common interests, will play a role in the turbulent events of the revolution.

The shooters ordered their portraits at their own expense and paid for them together. This was the case in the 16th and 17th centuries. Documentary evidence has been preserved that the customers of the group portrait of the rifle company of Captain Frans Banning Cock (the famous “Night Watch”) paid Rembrandt approximately one hundred gold pieces in 1642 - some a little less, others a little more, depending on the place they were allocated in the picture . The completed painting was hung in the hall of the shooting guild building, and it became the property of the guild.

Subsequently, with the development of military technology, rifle societies give way to hired professional soldiers.

Already in the 17th century, these societies did not play a significant role in military operations and turned into a kind of clubs for joint entertainment of the burghers. They were abolished in the 18th century. Their property, including group portraits, became the property of the city magistrates and remains so to this day. Thus, Rembrandt’s group portraits “The Night Watch” and “The Syndics of the Drapers’ Workshop” are formally the property of the city of Amsterdam and were transferred to the Rijksmuseum (a museum owned by the state, not the city) only for temporary use.

Cornelis Theunissen. Banquet of seventeen members of the shooting guild. 1533

From shooting corporations, the custom of ordering group portraits was adopted by other public associations - trade, industry, and charity. Portraits of guild foremen, trustees of charitable institutions, doctors, etc. began to appear. They were intended to decorate the buildings of guilds and corporations, almshouses and shelters, and later became the property of cities and ended up in museums.

Corporate portraits are a characteristic product of Republican Holland. Such an order was the most honorable and responsible task that a Dutch artist of the 17th century could receive. These are the largest art monuments that form the basis of the national artistic heritage. Fortunately, due to the conditions of their origin, they became public property; they usually remained in the city for whose inhabitants they were written, and only in rare cases did they leave the country. These portraits are a purely Dutch source of replenishment of public art collections, almost unknown in other countries.

But here there were no other sources of large-scale art collecting, characteristic of the absolutist countries of Europe, there was no royal court and powerful aristocracy, for whom the accumulation of artistic values ​​served as one of the ways to assert their prestige. Let us remember that this is how the richest museums of France (the Louvre), Austria (the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna) and even Tsarist Russia (the Hermitage) arose. In Catholic countries, the largest artistic commissions often came from the church. Having become an object of cult, a painting or sculpture was carefully preserved even when artistic taste changed and “secular” interest in them as works of art disappeared.

In Holland there was neither royal collecting nor church patronage. Very significant private collections sometimes arose here, but, as already mentioned, they disintegrated with the death of the collector. Typically, only family portraits were preserved in burgher houses from generation to generation. Sometimes they were works of great artists and, finally, in the 19th or 20th centuries, the next owner, with the consent of relatives, donated them to the museum.

The only large collection that was constantly replenished and passed from generation to generation in Republican Holland was the collection of stadtholders. In the 17th century, it consisted mainly of family portraits and decorative paintings that served to decorate palaces. In the 18th century, the stadtholders William IV and especially William V bought paintings by Dutch masters of the previous century, guided by their artistic merits. Following the example of burgher collectors, they create what, from the end of the 16th century, was called in the Netherlands a “cabinet of arts” (Kunstkabinet).

In 1795, French troops entered Holland. Paintings from the Hague “cabinet” of William V were sent to Paris, like art treasures from neighboring Flanders, Italy, etc. The part of the collection that was not sent was sold out. However, there are still many paintings left in other palaces of Orange. During these years of great change and war devastation, paintings could often be bought for pennies. The idea arose to create a public museum in the Batavian Republic (as Holland was then called), similar to the Louvre in Paris. And so, in 1800, the National Art Gallery opened in Huis ten Bosch (“House in the Forest” - the former summer residence of the Orange family), and a year later its first short catalog was published.

In 1808, King Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte decided to move from the traditional residence of Orange to The Hague to Amsterdam. Here he had at his disposal a magnificent palace - the majestic town hall building. City officials were hastily expelled from it, but there was nowhere to put the paintings located in one of the halls on the second floor. These were old group portraits led by the Night Watch. And the king graciously agreed to live under the same roof with a huge Rembrandt canvas.

By order of Louis Napoleon, the Royal Museum is created in the palace, to which the city of Amsterdam transfers eight large group portraits belonging to him. Paintings from the former National Art Gallery are also transported there. The director of the museum, Cornelis Apostol, acquires works for him from private collections. In 1809, the Apostle published a catalog describing 459 paintings.

In 1810, King Louis renounced the throne at the request of his powerful brother, and the Netherlands was incorporated into France. The government of Emperor Napoleon, naturally, is not interested in the Amsterdam museum; there are no more funds for acquisitions. The paintings continue to hang peacefully in their places. There they are found by the son of the once exiled Stadtholder William V of Orange who returned to Amsterdam in 1813. Soon he becomes king of the Netherlands under the name of William I. The new king does not want to tolerate a museum under his roof. The museum will be housed in Trippenhuis, a mansion built in 1660–1662 by architects F. and J. Vingbons for the Tripp brothers, iron merchants. The building was remodeled inside, adapting it for a new purpose, and in 1817 the Rijksmuseum (State Museum) opened in it.

In the meantime, it was possible to achieve the return from France of most (but not all) of the artistic values ​​exported in the previous two decades. These were mainly paintings from the “cabinet of arts” of William V. They formed the core of the new museum, opened in January 1822 in The Hague. It is housed in the elegant and majestic Mauritshuis (“Maurits House”), built in 1633–1644 according to plans by van Kampen for Prince Maurits (Moritz), one of the members of the Orange family. The name of the building was also transferred to the museum. Its official name still retains the words “royal cabinet of paintings”, despite the fact that it is the property of the Dutch state and not the royal family.

At the beginning of the 19th century, a resident of Utrecht, a certain Mr. Boijmans, collected an extensive collection of paintings. There were rumors that he often bought things of low quality, and even supplied them with fake signatures of famous artists. Therefore, the Utrecht burgomaster did not heed the proposal of Boijmans, who wished to sell his collection to the city. The collector was offended, and when he died in 1847, it turned out that he bequeathed his collection not to Utrecht, but to the city of Rotterdam, on the condition that a museum named after him would be created there. This is how the Boijmans Museum arose in Rotterdam. Of the 1,193 paintings he bequeathed, only 239 were considered worthy of museum display. In 1864, there was a fire in the museum building; much was burned, but part of the original collection has survived to this day.

Following the example of big cities, he decided to found a museum and magistrate in Harlem. This was not difficult: the city had long owned a large number of paintings, mainly group portraits, including a series of brilliant works by Frans Hals. They formed the core of the meeting and determined its character. In 1862 the museum was opened.

Unlike the Rijksmuseum and Mauritshuis, the museums in Rotterdam and Haarlem are owned not by the state, but by the city. They are subordinate not to the government, but to the city magistrate, and this noticeably affects the conditions of their existence and the nature of their meetings. The Rotterdam Museum is an exception among city museums in terms of the diversity of its collections and the scope of its exhibition activities. In Harlem, the works of artists who worked in this city predominate. Here the visitor can get an idea of ​​the development of a local - and not a national, as in the Rijksmuseum - art school. This composition of collections is typical of many museums existing today in Dutch cities. Most often, they contain materials on the history of the city and paintings, and the latter are also partly of historical rather than artistic interest. But in almost each of these museums there is a number of works that have not local, but national and even global artistic significance. Thus, in the Leiden City Museum there is one of the largest works of Dutch painting of the 16th century - the famous altar triptych of Luke of Leiden depicting the Last Judgment.

Dutch museums were created in the 19th and early 20th centuries on the initiative of the local intelligentsia. In essence, this also applies to the Rijksmuseum and Mauritshuis, despite the fact that their emergence was once secured by the decrees of Kings Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and William I of Orange. The current state of both collections differs sharply from the original both in terms of volume and quality of works. Over the past hundred years, intensive enrichment of Dutch museum collections has occurred through private donations. Sometimes paintings are donated, sometimes money is used to purchase them. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Rembrandt Society was founded - an organization to raise funds for museum purchases. Most major acquisitions now take place with its help.

After the Second World War, the so-called State Service for the Distribution of Works of Art arose. The Dutch government took care of the return of art treasures taken to Germany, belonging to both museums and private individuals. Some of the returned collections did not find their owners who died during the war. These collections have formed a state fund, which transfers works for the use of museums.

The museum collections that emerged in the 19th century consisted almost exclusively of works by masters of the 17th century - the “golden age” of Dutch painting. In the 1880-1890s, major scientists who laid the foundations for the modern study of Dutch art, Obreen, Bredius, and somewhat later Schmidt-Degener, became the head of the museums. A scientifically based expansion of collections begins in the direction that is most justified for a given museum.

Works of not only the largest, but also especially rare, interesting masters of the “golden age” are acquired, and sections of Dutch art of the 15th–16th and 18th–19th centuries are formed. Works by foreign masters appear - however, in relatively small quantities: old Italians, new Frenchmen. New museums dedicated to the art of the 19th and 20th centuries are springing up in Amsterdam and The Hague. Outstanding collections of engravings and drawings are emerging. Archaeological excavations are underway, primarily in the southeastern part of the country, which flourished during the era of Roman rule and the early Middle Ages. The ancient center of this area, the city of Nijmegen, has a collection of interesting ancient and medieval antiquities. Finally, there is no doubt the highly artistic significance of the remarkable ethnographic collections of the museum at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam.

Without the opportunity to dwell on all these museum collections, we will limit ourselves to four of them. These are the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem and the Boijmans-van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.