Future Exhibition

Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis

October 22, 2013 to January 19, 2014

The Frick Collection will be the final venue of an American tour of paintings from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague. This prestigious Dutch museum, which has not lent a large body of works from its holdings in nearly thirty years, is undergoing an extensive two-year renovation that makes this opportunity possible. A selection of fifteen masterpieces will be on view at The Frick Collection in New York from October 22, 2013, through January 19, 2014. Among the works going on tour are the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer and The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius, neither of which will have been seen by audiences in the United States in ten years. Emilie Gordenker, Director of the Mauritshuis, comments, “We are delighted to have three excellent museums as partners for our U.S. tour. This agreement allows us to present our collection on both the west and east coasts of the United States, in large as well as more intimate venues.”

The exhibition in New York ― which will be accompanied by a catalogue and a series of public programs and select evening hours ― is coordinated by Margaret Iacono, Assistant Curator at the Frick. The works were selected by Edwin Buijsen, Head of Collections at the Mauritshuis, and Colin B. Bailey, former Frick Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator. Continuing in the Frick’s tradition of presenting masterpieces from acclaimed museums not easily accessible to the New York public, this exhibition follows four acclaimed shows of similar size that drew, respectively, upon works from the Toledo Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Norton Simon Museum, and Dulwich Picture Gallery. At the Frick’s Mauritshuis exhibition, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring will have pride of place as the sole work on view in the Oval Room, with the other fourteen paintings being shown together in the large East Gallery. The loans are primarily by artists collected by founder Henry Clay Frick, such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals, and van Ruisdael. The selection is complementary, however, in its inclusion of work by Steen and Fabritius and, as well as the addition of two fine still lifes, a genre less well represented at the Frick.

The fifteen paintings coming to the Frick, all highlights of the Mauritshuis collection, represent the range of subject matter and technique prevalent in seventeenth-century painting in The Netherlands. They are Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665); four works by Rembrandt van Rijn (Simeon’s Song of Praise, 1631; “Tronie” of a Man with a Feathered Beret, c. 1635; Susanna, 1636, and Portrait of an Elderly Man, 1667); Frans Hals’s pendant portraits Jacob Olycan (1596–1638) and Aletta Hanemans (1606–1653), both painted in 1625; Pieter Claesz’s Vanitas Still Life (1630); Carel Fabritius’s The Goldfinch (1654); Nicholas Maes’s Old Lacemaker (c. 1655); Gerard ter Borch’s Woman Writing a Letter (c. 1655); Jan Steen’s Girl Eating Oysters (c. 1658–60) and 'As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young' (c. 1665); Jacob van Ruisdael’s View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds, (c. 1670–75); and Adriaen Coorte’s Still Life with Five Apricots (1704).

Ticketing Policy

Entrance to the special exhibition is included with paid museum admission. However, timed tickets are required, and purchasing them in advance is strongly advised. Tickets may be purchased at the museum’s admissions desk during regular hours, from Telecharge online, or by calling 212-239-6200. As a benefit of membership, museum members will be given priority access and may view the special exhibition without pre-purchasing timed tickets. For more details about the ticketing policy, click here

Special Friday Evening Hours

Fridays, 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.

The special exhibition will be open to members only on the evenings of November 1, December 6, and January 3. The remaining Friday evenings during the show’s presentation will be open to the public free of charge. Admission to the exhibition will be on a first-come, first-served basis. We are grateful to Agnes Gund for making these free evenings possible. 


Major Funding for the exhibition is provided by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, Assael Inc., John and Constance Birkelund, and Fiduciary Trust Company International.

Additional support is generously provided by Margot and Jerry Bogert, Michael and Jane Horvitz, Walter and Vera Eberstadt, Agnes Gund, Seymour R. Askin, Jean-Marie and Elizabeth Eveillard, Barbara Fleischman, the Netherland-America Foundation, and an anonymous gift in memory of Melvin R. Seiden.

The exhibition is also supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Image: Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), Girl with a Pearl Earring, c. 1665, oil on canvas, 44.5 x 39 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague

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