The Queens Gallery Art Galleries

The Royal Collection contains one of the world's finest groups of Dutch 17th-century paintings. Among the most enduringly popular images in Western Art, these pictures have for centuries been admired for their harmonious compositions, close observation of detail, subtle light effects and meticulous finish. The 51 outstanding examples selected for the exhibition embrace genre scenes, portraits, still-lifes, history paintings, landscapes and marinescapes. They include works by the great masters of the period, among them Rembrandt's jewel-like Christ and St Mary Magdalen at the Tomb and his Self-Portrait of 1642, luminous landscapes by Aelbert Cuyp, and Johannes Vermeer's enigmatic A Lady at the Virginals.