The Met in Dutch: An Irreverent Photo Essay

Those of you who surf here from WNYC's website this morning will have already seen the Metropolitan Museum's authorized images of great masterpieces from its "Age of Rembrandt" show. But the majority of the 228 works---an array of all the museum's Dutch old master holdings---are usually (and often for good reason) hidden away in storage. This motley assemblage cries out for a mischievous photo essay.

So here it is.

Fool's Gold from The Golden Age: The Met's Blooper Outtakes:

Imitator of Johannes Vermeer, "A Young Woman Reading," Jules Bache Collection

"The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art" includes the good, the bad and even the fake: This would-be Vermeer was acquired by Jules Bache as authentic but was actually painted in the 20th century. The Met has five authentic Vermeers, all in the exhibition.

Style of Frans Hals, "Malle Babbe," 1871 Purchase

A continuing theme running through the exhibition is the large number of works that were treasured as masterpieces when acquired and then downgraded, sometimes not long after their acquisition. The loosely painted, grotesque portrait of a retarded woman, above, was considered "one of the proudest trophies" of the 1871 purchase that formed the core of the Met's inaugural collection, but only 12 years later its attribution to Frans Hals was already in doubt.

Possibly Abraham van Dijck inspired by Nicolaes Maes, "Old Woman Cutting Her Nails," Bequest of Benjamin Altman

Only 20 of the 42 works that entered the Met 's collection as Rembrandts are still regarded as by that artist. As a youngster in New York, I gazed with awe and admiration at some of the now downgraded works. I felt bereft when I later discovered they weren't what I had thought they were. One of those was the much loved portrait above.

Willem Claesz Heda, "Still LIfe with Oysters, a Silver Tazza and Glassware," Bequest of Rita Markus

This is no blooper. It's the real deal, acquired just two years ago, as part of the Rita and Frits Markus Collection. As a monochrome banquet picture, it filled a gap in the museum's collection. But it was part of a package deal that also brought to the Met seven other pictures in the show, including the one below.

Style of Rembrandt, "Young Woman with a Red Necklace," Bequest of Rita Markus

This lackluster portrait, also from the Markus collection, may be a work by Samuel van Hoogstraten, according to Met curator Walter Liedtke.

Rembrandt, "Lieven Willemsz van Coppenol," Bequest of Mary Stillman Harkness

This portrait is deemed by the Met to be an authentic (if lesser) Rembrandt. But it is doubted by some experts. Along with the above-mentioned "Vermeer," it's one of 83 works in Part Two of the show, most of which are deemed of secondary quality.

Despite the Met's determination to display works chronologically according to the date in which they entered the museum's collection, it appears as if the show's curator, Walter Liedtke, couldn't quite bear to diminish the overall masterpiece-quotient in the primary installation. You will have a long circuitous walk from the show's main section to get to the also-rans in Part Two---time that might be more rewardingly spent at the companion exhibition of the Met's Dutch prints and drawings, which opens today along with the paintings show.

My apologies for the mediocre quality of the photos that I took at the press preview. (There's a good reason why I'm a writer, not a photographer.)

I'll try to get more serious about this rich but somewhat frustrating show in a later post. Meanwhile, here's the appraisal by the ambivalent (and appropriately named) HOLLAND Cotter in today's NY Times.

For now, all I'll say is that, taking the show on its own terms, it's a fascinating look at the zigzag path towards forming a great museum collection---among the best holdings of such material outside Holland. Just don't go expecting (as the show's title implies) a greatest-hits blockbuster. They're all there, but you've got to find them amid the duds and the bloopers.