Dutch Masters From the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Exhibition themes:
The Republic and the Dutch East Indies

'Sir Edmund Pooly carried me down into the hold of the India shipp, and there did show me the greatest wealth lie in confusion that a man can see in the world. Pepper scattered through every chink, you trod upon it; and in cloves and nutmegs, I walked above the knees; whole rooms full. And silk in bales... which was as noble a sight as ever I saw in my life.'

Samuel Pepys's Diary, 16 November 1665,
describing the English capture of two Dutch East Indiamen vessels

The Dutch East India Company or Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (commonly abbreviated to VOC) was founded in 1602, as a cooperative venture of mercantile organisations from various cities in Holland and Zeeland. The Dutch government granted the VOC a monopoly on Dutch shipping in Asia and empowered the company to enter into trade agreements, maintain diplomatic relations and even wage war in its name. The company soon proved a resounding success. Spices, gold, ivory, silk, porcelain and sugar filled the warehouses of Amsterdam and made the VOC into the world's largest trading and transport enterprise. Over a period of two hundred years the VOC sent more than a million people from Europe to Asia, and engaged in trade in an area stretching from the Red Sea to Japan.

The VOC's trade with the Far East naturally also had an effect on Dutch seventeenth-century art. Silversmiths designed new objects to show off the exotic spices imported by the VOC, shiploads of Chinese porcelain inspired Delft potters to produce faience which was Chinese in both shape and decoration. There were even some painters, such as Jacob Coeman in the present exhibition, who migrated to work for the VOC elite in the Dutch East Indies.