Self-Portrait (Rembrandt, 1629)
1629 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Rembrandt was barely in his twenties and using his own face as a laboratory for light. Dozens more would follow over forty years.
★ 6.1
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters
1608 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Hundreds of tiny figures skating, sledging and falling over on one frozen river. Avercamp was deaf and mute and known as the mute of Kampen.
★ 6.1
The Merry Family
1668 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The parents sing and drink and a toddler is handed a pipe. A note in the picture reads: as the old sing, so the young pipe.
★ 6.3
Meagre Company
1637 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Hals left this militia portrait unfinished and another painter finished the right-hand figures, a join you can still see if you look.
★ 6.3
Feast of St. Nicholas
1665 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
One child hugs her presents while a boy howls because his shoe held nothing but a birch rod, and the grandmother beckons with a secret.
★ 6.8
Wedding Portrait of Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen
1622 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
A married couple sitting on the grass, leaning into each other and visibly amused, which is not how marriage portraits were done.
★ 6.8
The Merry Drinker
1630 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
He raises his glass and talks straight at you, painted in slashing strokes laid down about as fast as the moment they catch.
★ 6.9
The Potato Eaters
1885 · Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Van Gogh made the faces deliberately coarse and the browns deliberately muddy, wanting it clear that these people had dug the meal themselves.
★ 7.2
Almond Blossoms
1890 · Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
He painted it for his brother's newborn son, named Vincent after him, and cropped the boughs against the sky like a Japanese print.
★ 7.2
Wheatfield with Crows
1890 · Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Three paths run into the wheat and none of them go anywhere. Painted at Auvers in his last weeks, and read too neatly ever since.
★ 7.7
The Milkmaid (Vermeer)
1660 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
A kitchen maid pours a thin stream of milk in ordinary daylight, given the weight and stillness usually reserved for saints.
★ 8.5
The Night Watch
1642 · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
A militia company surges out of the shadow with a dog barking and a girl glowing among the men. Varnish, not night, made it dark.
★ 9.2