The Birmingham Museum of Art opens a new exhibit Saturday that features works of well-known Dutch and Flemish masters. The exhibition, called “Small Treasures,” includes paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer and their contemporaries. These artists are often known for large canvases, but these paintings are small.
“We have two paintings by Rembrandt and two paintings by Vermeer,” said Robert Schindler, the museum’s curator of European art. “In terms of quality and the level of artistic skill that is on display here, [it] is just extraordinary. It does not get any better than this.”
Many of the paintings are from private collections that will be on public display for the first time.
Gail Andrews, director of the BMA, says this is the first exhibition at the museum devoted exclusively to small Dutch and Flemish figural painting. Though the paintings are on a small scale, she says they not only convey strong emotions but a sense of what 17th-century life was like.
“We see minute details that really paint the portrait of a time, a culture, and a moment. In so much of art, we look for that moment to become alive again for us,” said Andrews.
Andrews says Rembrandt and Vermeer were not painting self-portraits just for themselves but for their families so the works would be passed down for the next generation.
The exhibition runs January 31 through April 26.