Some serious artwork

This week was a mid-term school holiday week, so while Eline stayed home with Whopper Onno and I got to spend a day together in Amsterdam. We went to the refurbished Rijksmuseum and it is a good thing we are early birds, because already early in the morning it was soooo busy!

 

We headed straight for Rembrandt’s Night Watch (which I had never seen before) and look at the crowd already there!

 

Eventually we did manage our way to the front, I have better pictures than this one, but this one – as it is taken from the side and it shows one of only two ladies guarding the painting (!) – gives you a good idea of the size of the painting.

 



Apart from the Rembrandt paintings also the Vermeer paintings drew real crowds and no wonder, from up close I loved these:

 

Another favourite of mine that day, the Threatened Swan by Jan Asselijn, apparently the very first painting the museum every acquired

 

And this, Festoon of Fruit and Flowers by Jan Davidsz de Heem





Also this selfportrait by Vincent van Gogh, amazing from up close

 



The museum has much more to offer than paintings, like the doll’s houses. The crowds over here made it difficult to make pictures, so I only have pictures of parts of one house. See that reception room on the second floor? Those walls were paintings made with oil paint! And those very small Delft blue plates in the kitchen on the ground floor!

Unlucky for me the library was closed, I did so want to see that (love libraries), so I could only take a picture through the glass door.

And those Delft blue tulip vases, I love these! Can you imagine these with red tulips in spring?!

Not only were the artworks impressive and so beautiful, so is the building itself (it was my first visit, I never went before the refurbishment)

The view from the restaurant

 



We had to laugh too, look at this Meissen porcelain monkey, who does it remind you of:

 



Yes, we named this the Miley Cyrus monkey!

And this drawing by Appel reminded us of …

Yes, Whopper!

And obesity….. not a 21^st century thing at all!

By 12.30 it had become too busy for (our) comfort, time to head out for a nice lunch at the Café Luxembourg

 



Home made tomato soup, veal croquet, home made Russian salad (huzarensalade) with fried parsley and some pickles, yum!

It was a very enjoyable day!

Quilt wise, I worked on Phebe ....after taking off some of the borders, redoing the dogtooth borders and reattaching those and the applique borders, she lies  f l a t !

So now finally I can go ahead with Phebe and give her applique borders more applique!

 

Phyllis