Over the past two years, the Harvard Art Museums have slowly been welcoming into the collection a blockbuster gift of 18 paintings produced in the Netherlands during the 17th century, a period in Dutch art history known as the Golden Age. The paintings were first promised to the museums in 2007 by notable Boston art collectors Peter and Anne Brooke, whose thoughtful collecting was fueled by a love of both art and the natural world.
The Brooke collection is crucial for the museums in several ways. The quality of the paintings, by artists such as Jan van der Heyden, Jan van Goyen, Aert van der Neer, Willem van Mieris, and Godfried Schalcken, among others, is uniformly high. And by the numbers, the Brooke gift represents the largest individual donation of European paintings to Harvard in the last 50 years. Currently, eight paintings from the Brooke gift are on view at Harvard, with most hanging in the Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo Gallery (Room 2300). In the coming months, other paintings from the collection will be displayed. Highlights now on view include a still-life painting, a convivial interior scene, and landscape paintings.
For more information: https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/article/a-glimpse-into-the-dutch-golden-age
