Amsterdam Art

Amsterdam has two main art museums. Janet and Jeff along with Barbara and Jake saw the van Gogh museum Thursday morning. Judy and I went to the van Gogh museum in the afternoon. Van Gogh painted in the 1880s and used many different colors and brushstrokes to paint landscapes and people. His father was a pastor in a very poor village, and he studied to be a pastor himself and his first posting was to poor coal miners in a part of Belgium where they were destitute and very hard worked as though they were slaves. he apparently decided to become a painter to show people, the beauty of the world, and of people themselves in a world that is filled with trouble and difficult living conditions. Very few of his paintings were sold during his life and his sister in law after his death promoted his work with gallery showings and he became very popular among artists in the early 1900s. During his last summer, he painted in a French Village and painted a painting each day for 75 days. I wondered what would be on display if someone made a museum for my life? There might be a room for each of my major projects and reports with color graphs, but the best part of my museum would be the stories of you kids and your families-our 15 grand children and their young lives. I didn’t make beautiful paintings, but you are wonderful treasures that have filled our lives- you are our greatest blessings from God. Jesus wondered what would be in our life museums when he asked us “where is your treasure?”

  

Van Gogh knew God’s word

 

Colorful countyside

 

Famous for painting sunflowers

 

Lilies from the garden

 

The resurrection of Lazarus

Self portrait of Vincent van Gogh

On Saturday after our breakfast, the six of us went to the Rijks museum, and saw paintings and other art pieces, including furniture, and ceramics from Dutch artists. The most well-known artists are Rembrandt and Vermeer, but there are many great artist from the Netherlands. After three hours of looking at paintings, and listening to the audio guide, we stopped for a very nice lunch in the Museum Cafe. We had toured the second floor, with paintings from the 1600’s, and didn’t have a chance to see the paintings, furniture and decorative items from later centuries- perhaps we’ll come again for a third time to see more art in Amsterdam.

Lots of the paintings were portraits

 

Model of a sturdy Dutch ship

Many paintings were of major ship battles

Family portrait playing music together 

Delft Blue ceramics imitated Chinese porcelain 

Winter fun in Netherlands- but too cold for me

We walked back to our hotel and took taxis to our ship, the Viking Bragi. We had a safety drill reporting to our emergency stations in our life jackets, and later had our first delicious dinner in the dining room-tables of 6 or 8 with white tablecloths and lots of silverware- very fancy. River cruise number two has begun!