18 artists in the museums, in order of birthArtists to see in Amsterdam
The most famous artists in the museums of Amsterdam, and where to stand in front of their work: who they were, what they made, and the museum it hangs in.
- 18
- Artists, in order of birth
- 50
- Works to look for
- 4
- Museums that hold them
- 1582
- The earliest born: Frans Hals
Artists to see in Amsterdam
Show
All 18
Painter, 1582 to 1666
Frans Hals
The portrait painter of Haarlem, whose quick, loose brushwork caught people laughing, drinking and talking, two centuries before the Impressionists.
Dutch Golden Age. 3 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1585 to 1634
Hendrick Avercamp
The painter of Dutch winters, whose frozen rivers are crowded with skaters, sledges, players of kolf and people falling over.
Dutch Golden Age. 1 work in 1 museum
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Painter, 1606 to 1669
Rembrandt
Amsterdam was Rembrandt's city for almost forty years. The Rijksmuseum has The Night Watch and the great late pictures, and the house he lived in on the Jodenbreestraat keeps almost all his etchings.
Dutch Golden Age. 5 works in 2 museums
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Painter, 1609 to 1660
Judith Leyster
A Haarlem painter of music-makers and merry drinkers, admired in her lifetime and then forgotten, her pictures sold for two centuries as Frans Hals's.
Dutch Golden Age. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1626 to 1679
Jan Steen
The comic storyteller of Dutch painting, whose crowded, untidy households gave the Dutch a phrase: a Jan Steen household.
Dutch Golden Age. 4 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1629 to 1684
Pieter de Hooch
The painter of Dutch houses and courtyards, of mothers and maids at work in rooms that open one into another towards the light.
Dutch Golden Age. 3 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1629 to 1682
Jacob van Ruisdael
The greatest landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, of windmills, waterfalls and great skies that fill two thirds of the canvas.
Dutch Golden Age. 3 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1632 to 1675
Johannes Vermeer
The Rijksmuseum has four of the thirty-odd paintings by Vermeer that survive, among them The Milkmaid and The Little Street.
Dutch Golden Age. 4 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1746 to 1828
Francisco Goya
The Rijksmuseum has one of Goya's late portraits, Don Ramón Satué, painted in Madrid in 1823.
Romanticism. 1 work in 1 museum
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Painter, 1840 to 1926
Claude Monet
Monet came to Holland in 1871 and painted the windmills of Zaandam. The Van Gogh Museum has one of them, the Rijksmuseum a view of the Riviera and the Stedelijk a late Giverny.
Impressionism. 3 works in 3 museums
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Painter, 1848 to 1903
Paul Gauguin
The Van Gogh Museum has the pictures Gauguin painted in Arles in 1888, when he and Van Gogh shared the Yellow House, among them his portrait of Vincent painting sunflowers.
Post-Impressionism. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1853 to 1890
Vincent van Gogh
Amsterdam has the largest collection of Van Gogh's work in the world, more than two hundred paintings in the Van Gogh Museum, kept together by his family.
Post-Impressionism. 6 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1864 to 1901
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
The Van Gogh Museum has Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Van Gogh, made in Paris in 1887 when the two were friends, and a woman at a café table.
Post-Impressionism. 2 works in 1 museum
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Picture: Txllxt TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0
Painter, 1866 to 1944
Wassily Kandinsky
The Stedelijk has Kandinsky's Painting with Houses of 1909 and Improvisation 33 of 1913, the years in Munich when he left the visible world behind.
Abstract art. 2 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1869 to 1954
Henri Matisse
The Stedelijk has Matisse's great paper cut-out The Parakeet and the Mermaid, made in 1952, and an odalisque from his years in Nice.
Fauvism. 2 works in 1 museum
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Picture: Txllxt TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0
Painter, 1872 to 1944
Piet Mondrian
The Dutch painter who went from windmills and trees to black lines and planes of red, yellow and blue, and made one of the most recognisable styles of the century.
De Stijl. 3 works in 1 museum
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Picture: Txllxt TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0
Painter, 1879 to 1935
Kazimir Malevich
The Russian painter of the Black Square, who founded Suprematism in 1915. The Stedelijk has the largest group of his work outside Russia.
Suprematism. 3 works in 1 museum
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Painter, 1912 to 1956
Jackson Pollock
The Stedelijk has Pollock's Reflection of the Big Dipper, one of the first of his poured paintings, from 1947.
Abstract Expressionism. 1 work in 1 museum
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When they lived
Each bar is a life, from birth to death, on one line of time. 374 years separate the birth of Frans Hals from the death of Jackson Pollock, and 8 of the 18 were alive at the same moment, in 1632.
- Frans Hals1582 to 1666
- Hendrick Avercamp1585 to 1634
- Rembrandt1606 to 1669
- Judith Leyster1609 to 1660
- Jan Steen1626 to 1679
- Pieter de Hooch1629 to 1684
- Jacob van Ruisdael1629 to 1682
- Johannes Vermeer1632 to 1675
- Francisco Goya1746 to 1828
- Claude Monet1840 to 1926
- Paul Gauguin1848 to 1903
- Vincent van Gogh1853 to 1890
- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec1864 to 1901
- Wassily Kandinsky1866 to 1944
- Henri Matisse1869 to 1954
- Piet Mondrian1872 to 1944
- Kazimir Malevich1879 to 1935
- Jackson Pollock1912 to 1956
Which museum holds whom
Each block is an artist with work on show in that place. The Rijksmuseum has the Dutch Golden Age, from Hals and Rembrandt to Vermeer and Ruisdael. The Van Gogh Museum has Van Gogh and the friends he painted with, and the Stedelijk the twentieth century, from Mondrian and Malevich on. Rembrandt's etchings are in his house on the Jodenbreestraat.
How to read this page
The choice of artists is this site's: the most famous of those whose work is on show in the museums of Amsterdam that it covers. They are in order of birth, which is not a ranking.
A work is listed where it is normally on show. Museums move their works between rooms, lend them and take them down for conservation, so before a special journey check with the museum.