Extraordinary examples of works form the golden era of Dutch and Flemish painting, drawn from what is one of the finest collections still in private hands, are on display at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts until June 19, 2011.

Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection showcases almost 70 works from the collection, the owners of which have been called “the most important collectors you’ve never heard of” by arts writer Judith Dobrzynski.

The section for the exhibit on the museum’s website shows 12 of the paintings. In addition there are two interactive features, accessed from links in the right-hand column, highlighting Jan van der Heyden’s View of the WesterKerk, Amsterdam (image above, second down), and Isaack Kodijck’s Barber-Surgeon Tending a Peasant’s Foot (above, third down).

Contemporary painter Jeffrey Hayes, who I’ve written about previously, was kind enough to let me know about the exhibit. He has an enthusiastic review of it on his site in which he remarks in particular about the two works in the show by Gerritt Dou (image above, top).

The collectors promise that their remarkable collection is destined to be made public at some point, but have not made any announcements about a specific museum that might wind up as home to the works.

(Images above; Gerritt Dou, Jan van der Heyden, Isaack Kodijck, Rembrandt van Rijn, Willem Claesz)

Seascapes are rarely subjects that capture my attention. The seascapes of Ruo Li, however, are striking exceptions.

Sweeping carpets of foam vibrate over rough edged rocks, throwing up volumetric plumes of spray; or quietly seep through crevices and channels on their way back to join the greater sea. Flat planes of water lay against the sand, carrying reflections of the sky in their glistening surface.

His depiction of foam and spray, as well as other white subjects like snow or the white decks of boats, are handled with masterful aplomb.

Li’s rich, painterly approach revels in the textures of his subjects, whether seascapes, landscapes or still life. He often works with a very controlled palette, though he will employ brighter busts of color in his landscapes.

Li was born in Hunan, China and received his BA degree from the Fine Art Department of Guangzhou Academy. He went on to teach in the Fine Art Department of Henan University. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1989 and is currently based in California.

Unfortunately, the galleries on his website are slightly awkward. You can choose easily enough from subject categories along the bottom for Seascapes, Watercolor (image above, bottom), Sketches, Landscape and Floral, as well as “Other” which includes more conceptual pieces, usually involving animal themes.

Once in a particular gallery, however, you have to click on a thumbnail before any images from that gallery appear, and need to take note of the small indicator under the thumbnails of how many pages of thumbnails are in the gallery (the Seascape gallery has 17), and use the small symbols to navigate to the next batch.

There is a mention of his work on the PaintAmerica site, where he won top honors in the 2009 competition. The image there is linked to a larger version than the images on his site, allowing for a better sense of his brushwork and use of texture.

In addition, there is a book of Ruo Li’s Art available on Blurb.

[Suggestion courtesy of James Gurney]

As blockbuster exhibitions have become more prohibitively expensive to mount, museums have had to work to fill their exhibition schedules with more modest shows, usually based on a fairly specific theme.

Far from being disappointing, I’ve found this trend to be filled with unexpected delights and often enlightening twists on how the works and artists are viewed.

A case in point is Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until July 4, 2011.

The theme here is a simple one, compositions in which the artist has used an open window as a major component, if not the overt focus of the work. This was a common theme in the 19th Century, and the exhibition is even more specific, focusing on the early two decades of the century and works by German, Danish, French, Italian and Russian artists, several of them artists’ studio interiors.

The museum’s feature on the exhibition includes a gallery of selected works, each linked to a slightly larger image. Presumably, you can look up the image and artist on the web site of the institution from which the original is on loan if you are interested in pursuing the works further.

I happen to particularly enjoy this subject, and would love to see an exhibition in which it was expanded across eras and genres to include works like Young Woman Drawing by Marie-Denise Villers, the open windows of Pieter de Hooch and the enigmatic window/canvas paintings of Rene Magritte; but that’s a thought for the future.

For the moment, the Met has opened a window on a specific, fascinating aspect of the early 19th Century.

(Images above: Martin Drolling [att.], Jacob Alt, Martinus Rorbye, Giovanni Battista de Gubernatis, Leon Cogniet, Georg Friedrich Kersting)