AXA Art presents
Dutch Days Museum Lecture Series
Organized by Asia Week Hong Kong
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10 April 2018 | 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm | Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Heritage & Legacy Lecture Series: Delftware & Trade with China
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6pm registration, 6:30pm lecture
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The arrival of Chinese porcelain on the Dutch market around 1600 resulted in a significant alteration of the ceramics industry in the Low Countries. The shift in the production process and the decoration types had a great influence on the position of the earthenware industry in the Dutch economy and especially after the Chinese export stopped around 1650. The great demand and the little supply meant the creation of a large market for Delftware –marketed as “Delft porcelain” – and many jobs were created in the city of Delft. When the importation of Chinese porcelain regained traction towards the end of the 17th century, the entrepreneurs in Delft had to reinvent themselves and focused on the production of ceramics with Western shapes and decorations and they adapted to the ruling taste and fashion with regard to interiors and dining.
In this lecture, Robert D. Aronson explains how the city of Delft became the epicentre of and the role model in the production of European ceramics in the 17th century for other European factories and the influence it had in turn on the production of Chinese porcelain from around 1690.
Founded in 1881, Robert D. Aronson is fifth generation owner of Aronson Antiquairs in Amsterdam who specialises in 17th and 18th century Delftware. They publish on the subject on a regular basis and have partnerships either as a sponsor or through knowledge-sharing with museums worldwide. Robert also lectures internationally on the subject. Robert is also Chairman of the Royal Dutch Antiques Dealers Association and specialist on the Dutch version of the Antiques Roadshow.
Wednesday, 6 April 2015 | 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm | Hong Kong Arts Centre, agnès b. CINEMA
Where would Delft be without the VOC (East India Company)?
The history of Dutch ceramics from 1600 through 1850 by Robert Aronson
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6pm registration, 6:30pm lecture
This lecture tells extensively the story of Dutch delftware, especially of the historical context in which delftware could bloom. The discussion will address not only the 16th- and 17th-century majolica, but also the improvements in technique that made the realisation of a new Dutch faience possible. Well-skilled potters from Antwerp and other places brought with them the technical qualities of faience-making to the northern parts of Europe. Aronson shall discuss the di erences between majolica and faience, and remarkable role father and son Verstraeten in Haarlem have played in the development of delftware shall be mentioned.
Robert D. Aronson, fifth generation owner of the family company Aronson Antiquairs celebrates in 2015 his twenty-fifth anniversary in antiques. Spreading knowledge to a larger audience by means of lectures has become an important part of his business. By now, Robert has lectured in prominent museums all over the world, for example San Francisco, New York, Hong Kong and Melbourne Australia.
Saturday, 9 April, 2016 | 3 pm - 4 pm | Liang Yi Museum
The Rijksmuseum Treasure-House of the Netherlands: The Rijksmuseum as National Showcase of Dutch Golden Age Painting by Duncan Bull
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2:30pm registration, 3pm lecture​
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The concept of “Dutch Golden Age” is a relatively modern phenomenon, one that only arose during the later nineteenth century and which was largely fostered by the opening of the Rijksmuseum’s magnificent new building in 1885. There, pride of place was given, as it still is today, to Rembrandt’s van Rijn’s great Night Watch, one of the most powerful pictorial statements of secular civic pride ever to have flowed from brush of a painter. If Rembrandt stood central in the vision of the Rijksmuseum’s foundation and mission, other artists that the Museum profiled came to predominate in the public perception of Dutch art: the calm and measured domestic scenes of Vermeer and De Hooch; the “romantic” landscapes of Ruisdael and Hobbema; the atmospheric church interiors of Saenredam, the perfectly arranged still-lifes of De Heem and Weenix; and the broadly-brushed bravura portraits of Frans Hals.
Throughout its two-hundred year history, the Rijksmuseum has striven not only to collect and to present its public with a representative collection of Dutch Golden-Age painting, but also to acquire as many of the greatest masterpieces by the greatest Dutch painters as it can. This lecture traces the growth of that collection amidst the changes of taste that increasingly saw the Dutch school of painting take it place in public perception among the very greatest European cultural achievements.