Stephen Montoya
This is just one example of the imported porcelian from China brought back to the Netherlands via established trade routes via the 17th century.
Imagine a world without modern banking, a stock market, or even a spice rack in your kitchen. These innovations, plus many more, were all created by a burgeoning society in the Netherlands that also gave the modern world Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the telescope. To put it mildly, the world as we know it wouldn’t be remotely the same if not for the forward thinking of the Dutch.
This in part is what the new exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum titled “Dutch Art in a Global Age” on display from Nov. 10 to Feb. 9, 2025, explores. Often described as the “World’s Marketplace,” via the 17th century, the Netherlands were instrumental in changing the world’s economy along established trade routes through the Dutch East India Company, the world’s first multinational corporation.
Some of the products being imported became status symbols among the Dutch elite. So much so, that many paintings exist depicting still life portraits of things like tobacco, tulip bulbs, and fruit. Other paintings from this era depict the seascapes, landscapes, and maps where these items of note came from.
“The Dutch oversaw an unprecedented movement of goods, ideas and people giving rise to what many consider the first age of globalization and sparking an artistic boom,” George Shackelford, deputy director at the Kimbell said during a preview of the exhibit.
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Stephen Montoya
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Stephen Montoya
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Stephen Montoya
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Stephen Montoya
Paintings from famous Dutch painters like Rembrandt, Hals, and Ruisdael, all illuminate the culture of art, trade, and prosperity in masterworks from both the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Kimbell’s collections. Outside of the paintings, this exhibit also has highly decorated maps, religious objects, plus silver and porcelain all from the 17th and the first half of the 18th centuries.
It was during this era that two trade routes were established through the Dutch East India and Western India companies, which took trade goods from other countries to trade all over the world.
“These two companies and their astonishing entrepreneurial spirit, took things that they had in Europe to Africa and then took African people in captivity away to make them work on plantations in South America and the Caribbean for instance, or took things that they had in Europe all the way to Asia and came back with items that were similarly unheard of in Europe at the time,” Shackelford explained. “Porcelain from China and spices and silk from India are just some examples.”
The Netherlands, during this period, experienced a large amount of growth. In fact, by the mid-1600s, Amsterdam was considered one of the wonders of the world, exploding from a population of 30,000 people in the early 1600s to 200,000 by the 1660s. The Dutch were actually able to reclaim another 50% of landmass back by creating three large canals that allow sea water to be displaced back into the ocean.
Talk about innovation.
This exhibition, which is set up in sections, explores still life objects, trade routes, religious artifacts, everyday life and the conspicuous consumption of the Dutch elite.
Outside of the Kimbell and the MFA’s collections, many of the paintings and objects at this exhibition are recent gifts or loans from Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, and Susan and Matthew Weatherbie. According to the exhibit’s program, besides the artistic achievements of these objects, the Kimbell encourages visitors to consider the human cost of global commerce.
“It's the things behind these paintings, the stories behind them, which we've tried to hint at and pull out a little bit so that you have a broader and richer and deeper cultural context for understanding the meaning of them,” Shackelford said. “You couldn't get all of these things to Europe without an incredible array of naval accomplishments, and this exhibit displays that accurately.”
