Museum

The Netherlands is a good place for museum. I visited Rijkmuseum and Van Gogh in Amsterdam on Saturday. Well, both are nice. Sadly though the Rijkmuseum is largely under renovation when I went in so I didn't manage to see much. There is one or two Van Gogh's, 1 Monet, and 1 Rembrandt. That's it. The museum's brochure is rather misleading because the entire section with > 5 paintings where one of it is those painting are actually listed with the famous painter name! I was expecting to see the entire section lined up with Rembrandt, or Van Gogh, or Monet's paintings only to end up with 1. What a disappointment. Well, on average, the paintings in the museum are quite complete in depicting the painting style from 1600-1800s. The details of the drawing by Rembrandt and his peers never stop to amaze me. They managed to draw up even the intricate laces that people of that era wore!

The Rijkmuseum was rather quiet when I visited. It was 9.15 AM anyway while it opened at 9.00 AM. Hehehe.. The museum really depicts the proud of Netherlands' golden age aka the colonization era. There is this huge painting by Rembrandt, "The Night Watch" which took him 1 year to finish. Extreme details and what a hand! No more words, just visit there and you'll know what I mean ;-)

I must warn you though if you want to visit Van Gogh's museum. You better get there at the time the door opened! I was there from 10.30 AM and the place is rather packed. Despite holding 200 paintings of Van Gogh and his letters and drawings, there were at least 3-5 people seeing each painting! My gosh... it's really too much touristy for my liking. The collection shows the ingeniousity of Van Gogh though. The progression and his experimental work is visible through his bright strokes, experiments with pointillism, sharp drawings, and colour improvisation. Perhaps he might have died because of overworking himself. After all, he finished more than 1,800 works in 10 years. In average, around 1 drawings per 2.5 days! I find that his brother is extremely kind though because he supported him throughout the 10 years of painting effort while Van Gogh didn't seem to manage to sell a single piece of his drawings. Theo Van Gogh even died few months after Vincent killed himself. :-( They are buried side by side by the way.

A fabulous museum experience. :-)