The Speed Art Museum has organized Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough and the Golden Age of Painting in Europe from the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, a travelling exhibition featuring works from its distinguished collection of old master paintings.

Highlights of the exhibition include Portrait of a Forty-Year-Old Woman by Rembrandt and The Princes of the Church Adoring the Eucharist by Rubens. Also on view are works by van Dyck, Teniers, Jordaens, Tournier, Ruisdael, Mignard, Crespi, de Troy, Largillière, Boucher, Batoni, Panini, Tiepolo, and Gainsborough. Together these works illustrate the golden age of European painting. Comprised of the major genres of painting that were popular at this time—portraits, religious paintings, landscapes, scenes of everyday life, still lifes, and interpretations of classical antiquity—this exhibition illustrates both the people and the objects that made the two centuries between 1600 and 1800 such a rich cultural age.

Scheduled tour dates are as follows:

October 7, 2011 - January 8, 2012 - Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK
January 22, 2012 - April 15, 2012 - Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis, TN
May 5 - August 19, 2012 -Flint Institute of Art, Flint MI
September 6, 2012 - January 6, 2013 - El Paso Museum Art, El Paso, TX
January 31 - June 9, 2013 - Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, FL
June 30 - Sept. 22, 2013 - Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
January 4 - May 4, 2014 - Orlando Museum of Art
June 14 - Sept. 14, 2014 - Museum of Art, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute


The Golden Age of European Painting
Tremendous changes swept Europe during the two hundred years in which the art in this exhibition was produced. Religious upheavals changed the way people thought about and utilized art. Trade routes to faraway lands, such as China and India, became more established, ensuring a steady stream of exotic goods for European consumers. Advances in the sciences transformed long-held views on the way the universe worked and the place of humans within that universe. Technical aspects of art making were honed and codified, as art academies grew in number and power. These exciting times resulted in a golden age of European painting. The number of artists and the number of art collectors grew exponentially during this period, as the fine arts reached an increasingly wider audience.