After the Night Watch, I thought the rest of the Gallery of Honour would be a breeze. The Night Watch hangs in its own room at the far end of the gallery, …
Museums & Art
- Amsterdam
Van Gogh in Bloom: Blossoms and Flowers at the Van Gogh Museum
by Bubblyby Bubbly 6 min readAlmond Blossom is my favourite Van Gogh. I came home with it on a magnet and a coaster, because of what it stands for. Almond trees flower early in spring, and for …
Most people come to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for one painting. I did too. On May 2nd I finally stood in front of the Sunflowers, and my first thought was …
I went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for the paintings and came out thinking about a family. Vincent van Gogh sold very little in his lifetime and died believing he …
I have written about the Moco Museum in Amsterdam more than any other building. The Banksys, the Basquiat room, the immersive floors, the garden. What I had never written about is the …
I went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for the self-portraits and found a room I had not expected at all. Five people round a table in a dark cottage, eating …
There is only one surviving portrait photograph of Vincent van Gogh. It was taken in January 1873, when he was nineteen, before he had painted anything at all. A second photograph, long …
- Amsterdam
Four Van Goghs at the Rijksmuseum: The Wing Everybody Walks Past
by Bubblyby Bubbly 10 min readI was at the Rijksmuseum for the Night Watch, like almost everybody who books a ticket. That hangs at the far end of the Gallery of Honour, upstairs, and it is where …
- Amsterdam
The Van Gogh Museum: Two Afternoons and What I Went Back For
by Bubblyby Bubbly 12 min readA few days earlier I had stood in front of the Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum and admitted that I had never understood it. I knew it was a Rembrandt. That was …
I had seen this painting perhaps four hundred times before I ever saw it. On fridge magnets, on tea towels, on postcards in every souvenir shop between Centraal and the Bloemenmarkt in …
I studied history. That is most of the explanation for this blog, and it is the whole explanation for why I will happily give an hour to one room in the Rijksmuseum …
People call the Rijksmuseum the Louvre of Amsterdam, and I understand why. Both are national collections in enormous nineteenth-century buildings, both are built around one painting everybody has come to see, and …