Art in the making

This display is being held to mark the recent gift to the museum of a Rembrandt etching plate by Simon Schama and Virginia Eileen Papaioannou. The donated work is an early Rembrandt etching from 1635, depicting the stoning of Saint Stephen.

16TH CENTURY

Spread across the print cabinets around the Rijksmuseum, the Art in the Making display explores the various phases in the creation of an artwork. The print cabinet of the 16th century, for example, presents several preliminary sketches by Adriaen de Weerdt (c. 1540-1590) that were recently acquired by the Rijksmuseum. They are presented here for the first time alongside his prints, giving us a better understanding of how this rather unsung master printer approached his work.

17TH CENTURY

The Rijksmuseum also recently received the gift of six etching plates by Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685). Together, they form a representative cross-section of the some 50 etchings by Van Ostade. The etching plates are displayed alongside prints from them in the print cabinet of the 17th century. They depict scenes of farming life: on the farm itself, in taverns, and dancing on the village square. The artist specialised in this type of scene.

18TH AND 19TH CENTURY

The print cabinets of the 18th century houses a display of Japanese woodcuts, while the print cabinet of the 19th century presents the development of the first photographs using daguerreotype technology. What these two techniques share is their dramatic evolution over the course of just a few centuries, partly driven by experimentation by large numbers of artists. The changes in woodcuts mostly took place in the areas of colour and theme, while in the case of photography the focus was on the process itself, whose aim was always to achieve a true-to-life image. An early example of success in this area is a microscopic image of two lice, shot in the mid-19th century.