The famed Vermeer painting “Girl with a Pearl Earring” (circa 1665), unseen in the U.S. in more than 15 years and never shown in the Southeast, will be featured in an exhibit of Dutch masterworks coming the High Museum of Art in summer 2013.
The High announced Friday that it will host the exhibition “Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis,” in collaboration with the museum in The Hague, June 22-Sept. 29, 2013.
The exhibit of more than 35 works will focus on "Golden Age" Dutch painters including Vermeer, Rembrandt ("‘Tronie' of a Man with a Feathered Beret"), Jan Steen ("The Way You Hear It, Is the Way You Sing It") and portraitist Frans Hals.
Coincidentally, a Hals portrait was sold by Christie's this week for nearly $2.1 million, no doubt boosted by the fact that its last-known owner was Elizabeth Taylor.
“This genre is underrepresented in this part of the country and this exhibition will create an opportunity for our community to study and admire these works of art that rarely travel outside of Europe,” High director Michael Shapiro said in a statement.
Emphasizing landscapes and portraits, "Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis" will explore the notion that Dutch artists embraced genre paintings of secular subjects more so than their southern European counterparts. While the Dutch "Golden Age" painters focused on commonplace scenes of day-to-day life, the High said the exhibit will show that oftentimes it was with a moral undertone and sarcastic wit.
Interest in Vermeer's “Girl with a Pearl Earring” was elevated with the release of the 2003 movie of the same name, a fictionalized drama starring Scarlett Johansson as the pillow-lipped maid working in Vermeer's (Colin Firth) home who became the model for his best-known painting.
The exhibit is the second major announcement in two weeks of an international art exhibit coming to the High next year, following news of plans to bring "Frida & Diego" from Feb. 16 to May 12, 2013.
Before it comes to Atlanta, "Girl" will premiere at San Francisco's de Young Museum next January.
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