Exhibition Review: “In the Age of Rembrandt” at Royal Ontario Museum

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Review of In the Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Exhibition
The exhibition “In the Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” at the Royal Ontario Museum has several scintillating pieces of art done by some of the renowned artists the industry has ever had including Frans Hals, Willen Kalf, and Rembrandt. Going by critical analysis of the art pieces at the museum, one can easily run into a conclusion that the exhibition successfully succeeded in highlighting the Dutch way of life during the 16 century (In the Age of Rembrandt). In Dutch history, this era is referred to many as the Dutch Golden Age and the exhibition artistically drew the attention of it’s the audience to some of the things that used to happen during the time in Dutch.
From Willen Van De Velde art of The Brederedore off Vlieland that reveals Dutch’s superior sea power with global reach to Willen Kalf’s art of Still Life with Fruit in a Wan- Li Bowl, it is with no doubt clear that the exhibition targeted to highlight the plight of the Dutch people during the Golden Age era. However, as much as most of the installation aided to prove the successfulness of the exhibition, this article will try to analyze critically the strength and weaknesses of curators in this exhibition depending on how they installed some of the aspects such as style and color to connect the objects and the audience.
To start with, Willen Kalf’s painting of the Still Life with Fruit in Wan- Li Bowl generally exhibits a lot of success in terms of color installation. First, the installation does create a connection between the audience and the object in that the bright color of the fruits makes the audience to see the types of fruits that are in the bowl. The dark background, on the other hand, being a tried and tested style of making colors to stand out seems to have gone well in this piece since it has enabled the audience to separate the primary elements of the painting, which in this case are fruits from the rest dull parts of the painting. Use of several colors like the blue stripes on the bowl also helps in preventing the art from being dull (Kalf, Still Life with Fruit in Wan- Li Bowl).
However, as much as the curator’s installation on Willen Kalf’s piece of work appears to be successful in terms of creating a relevant connection with the audience, it does come with some dull elements in the artwork. For instance, the entire painting seems to be having the same dark color except for the bowl and the fruits in it. Furthermore, the jar behind the bowl also seems to be having more or less the same color as the frame and background (Kalf, Still Life with Fruit in Wan- Li Bowl). This creates some sort of isolation, as is evident that the background color and the color of the frame, as well as the color of the jar, is more or less the same. This, therefore, makes it a bit more difficult for the audience to notice the jar, especially when looking at it from far. To correct this, it is convincible to recommend that the color of the frame be changed to a slightly brighter one as well as introducing some sort of brightly stripes on the edges ...