Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis

Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis will mark the first time Johannes Vermeer's iconic painting will be seen in the Southeast U.S.

The painting headlines the exhibition, which highlights the artistic genius of Dutch Golden Age painters, including Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals and Jan Steen, through the presentation of more than 35 exceptional works.

Through landscapes and portraits, Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis will explore the idea that Dutch artists more readily embraced paintings of everyday subjects than their southern European contemporaries, focusing on capturing commonplace scenes of daily life. Dutch artists not only recorded representations of the domestic interior, still lifes and boisterous crowds, but often imbued these scenes with moral undertones and humorous, sarcastic wit.

Key paintings featured in the exhibition include:

• Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, ca. 1665


• Carel Fabritius, Goldfinch, 1654


• Rembrandt van Rijn, "Tronie" of a Man with a Feathered Beret, ca. 1635


• Jan Steen, The Way You Hear It, Is The Way You Sing It, ca. 1665


• Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds, 1670–1675

About The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis
Housed in a magnificent 17th-century city palace in The Hague, the Netherlands, the museum is celebrated for its masterpieces from the Dutch and Flemish Golden Age, including paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Steen, Hals and Rubens. The works on permanent display provide a magnificent panorama of Dutch and Flemish art from the 15th through 17th centuries, from Flemish primitives to sunlit landscapes; from biblical characters to meticulous still lifes; from calm interiors to humorous genre scenes. The core holdings of the Mauritshuis were acquired by Stadholder William V, Prince of Orange-Nassau (1748–1806), whose son, King William I (1772–1843), presented them to the Dutch nation in 1816. Consisting of nearly 300 paintings in 1822, the holdings of the Mauritshuis have grown to approximately 800 such works today.