Egbert van der Poel.—In this connection may be mentioned Egbert van der Poel (1621-64), whose specialty was conflagrations. The effects of lurid light are seen in his Ruins in Delft after the Explosion of a Powder Magazine (1654) and Interior of a Farm-house (1646).
Collections on the Ground-floor and Basement.—After lunching in the pleasant little restaurant in the west wing on the ground-floor we take a rapid view of the collections here. The East and West Courts contain military, naval, and colonial collections, weapons, uniforms, and models of ships, which need not detain us long; nor will the department of Ecclesiastical Architecture and the Hall of the Admirals, where there is a collection of modern French paintings. In the western half of the building there are splendid collections of engravings, porcelain, lacquer, and textiles, two seventeenth century rooms furnished by the Antiquarian Society, and in the basement a collection of old Dutch costumes, carriages, and doll houses. On the east side are a number of correctly furnished Dutch rooms, one a "Chinese Boudoir" from the Stadtholder's Palace at Leeuwarden (seventeenth century), and a great collection of civic and industrial domestic art. Silver occupies a conspicuous place, and one of the cases contains drinking-horns, among which is the original drinking-horn of the Guild of St. Joris, which appears in Van der Helst's painting.
The visitor will seldom see a more wonderful collection of glass of all shapes and forms, and beautifully engraved, cut, and mounted; and the display of jewelry, trinkets, and children's toys will also claim attention.
The Garden.—We now enter the garden at the south side of the building. This is laid out in the Dutch style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with clipped hedges of beech and box, and adorned with flowers, vases, statues, and busts. There is also a maze, and fragments of old Dutch buildings, such as the old Bergpoort of Deventer (1619) and the Heerenpoort of Groningen (1621). Various old gables, pilasters, columns, walls, tympanums, and gates have been grouped; and in the eastern part of the garden is the house of the Director of the Museum.
THE STEDELIJK MUSEUM
Ground-floor of the Stedelijk Museum.—A short walk from the Rijks down Paulus Potter Straat brings us to the Stedelijk (Municipal) Museum, built in 1892-95. The ground-floor is devoted to uniforms, weapons, and pictures of the Schutterij of Amsterdam, and a series of rooms furnished in the style of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, including an old Dutch kitchen.
Its Pictures of the History of the Netherlands.—An extraordinary collection of pictures by Allebé, Israëls, Rochussen, and other well-known painters, treating of the history of the Netherlands, deserves a passing glance, for there are no less than 250 small canvases, all of the same dimensions and similar treatment. A more curiously monotonous effect would be impossible to imagine; but, to use a Dutch term, they are decidedly symmetrisch.
The Gallery of Modern Pictures.—Ascending the stairs we reach the gallery of modern pictures. The collection consists of about 200 paintings gathered by a society founded in 1874, and is very rich in fine examples of the modern Dutch school.