350 years ago Rembrandt was born. To mark the anniversary, Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum (State Museum) is staging an exhibition of 100 of the greatest paintings and 123 etchings.

In the university town of Leiden, The Netherlands, 350 years ago this week, a prosperous miller and his wife celebrated the birth of a son destined to tower over the painters of the northern Renaissance as Leonardo da Vinci towered over the masters of the Italian Renaissance. To mark the…

The U.S. flag is derived from a red-and-white-striped symbol of unity flown by Calvinists in seven northern provinces of The Netherlands during the revolt against Spain that began in 1568.

EVERY American schoolboy knows that Betsy Ross made the first U.S. flag for George Washington and the Continental Congress in 1777. It makes a pretty story, but historians are not so sure of its accuracy. Through the years, they have searched for evidence to support a variety of theories concerning…

In Paintings of Dick Ket, a painter in the school known as magic realism, paint had started to slide down because of impure linseed oil.

In the great wave of romanticism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, some painters became so absorbed in expression that they lost sight of the limitations of their materials. Ralph Albert Blakelock, the American romantic landscapist (1847-1919), delighted in the rich gloss of bitumen, a poor-drying, brown pigment, which…

Colonel H. J. Giskes, onetime chief of German military counterespionage in The Netherlands, tells how he masterminded Operation North Pole.

LONDON CALLING NORTH POLE (208 pp.)—H. J. Giskes—British Book Centre ($3.50).

The decisive moment for Operation North Pole came at 2 p.m. on March 15, 1942. At that moment H. M. G. Lauwers, a Dutch agent of British Intelligence, sat in a German police headquarters near The Hague…

In the Netherlands, which has produced some of the world’s finest painters and fakers of old masters, experts decided to stage a “Fake and Genuine” exhibition.

The Netherlands, which has produced some of the world’s finest painters, has also produced some of the finest fakers of old masters. *Partly for fun and partly to show the public “what the essence of a work of art is,” Amsterdam’s experts decided two years ago to stage a “Fake…

Ten years ago this month, a Jewish girl named Anne Frank received a diary for her 13th birthday, and began to keep it with care. A report on Anne Frank and her life.

Ten years ago this month, a Jewish girl named Anne Frank received a diary for her 13th birthday, and began to keep it with care. The entries were gay-spirited—even though the Franks, refugees from Hitler’s Germany, were living in occupied Holland. Anne saw an old Rin-Tin-Tin movie and told…

Citizens in The Netherlands have been contributing to the Prince Bernhard Fund for promising Dutch artists, but the verdict of deeply disappointed Dutch critics: the money was wasted.

For two years, public-spirited citizens in The Netherlands have been pitching in guilders to the Prince Bernhard Fund so that promising Dutch artists can broaden their vision and sharpen their palettes by foreign travel. Last week, in Amsterdam’s municipal museum, the travelers exhibited their new work. The general verdict of…

The musicians of the Concertgebouw protested when the orchestra manager picked Paul van Kempen as a stand-in conducter, because he conducted a few times for the Wehrmacht.

The musicians of Amsterdam’s distinguished old Concertgebouw protested when the orchestra manager picked Paul van Kempen to take the place of their sick-abed regular conductor.

Van Kempen was born Dutch and had been a Concertgebouw first violinist at 17. He had, years later, become conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic and…

The Germans started a Dutch opera with native singers and musicians and the Dutch loved it. At war’s end, they decided to keep it.

It took a national military defeat and four years of German rule to make the Dutch take grand opera and like it. It was not that Holland had plugged its dikes against all music: it has long had fine Bach societies and a great symphony orchestra, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam…

The tidy Dutch were checking over the books of Amsterdam’s famed Concertgebouw Orchestra. But it was not in order: conductor and collaborator Mengelberg, was still down for fl.10,00.

The tidy Dutch were checking over the books of Amsterdam’s famed Concertgebouw Orchestra. If everything was in order, Conductor Eduard van Beinum’s musicians would get their annual subsidy as usual. But this time everything was distinctly not in order: Van Beinum’s predecessor, the great Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg, was still…

Booksellers all over the world are preparing to meet the demand for the book ‘Imitation of Christ’ from Thomas à Kempis, who lived most of his life in the Netherlands.

Thomas Haemerken came from Kempen near Düsseldorf. He was a shy, quiet little German monk with fresh coloring and piercing brown eyes. He was gentle with everyone, especially the poor. When the psalms were chanted he often stretched on tiptoe toward heaven with his face turned upward. He seldom had…

At a symphony concert in the Dutch city of Scheveningen two solists were suddenly struck with amnesia. It was said to be a bet: succesfully disturbing the performance by tele-hypnosis.

It was the last symphony concert of the season in the Dutch resort city of Scheveningen. Suddenly, during a Bach violin concerto, Soloist Sam Swaap started scrubbing his fiddle discordantly. Then he stopped cold for a dozen bars, holding his fiddle like a broken toy. After embarrassing moments, Swaap got…

During the war Nazis removed 18 Jewish members from Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra. Now 15 of the 18 musicians were back for the symphony’s first concert since liberation.

ive years ago Nazis purged Amsterdam’s world-famed Concertgebouw Orchestra of 18 Jewish members, packed them off to a Czechoslovakian concentration camp. Last week 15 of the 18 Jewish musicians were back in their chairs for the symphony’s first concert since the liberation.

By way of a prelude, Amsterdamers had done…

A sponsored exhibition by Princess Juliana of 70 old Dutch masters is shown in Manhattan.

Sponsored by Princess Juliana of The Netherlands, the finest exhibition of old Dutch masters the U.S. has seen in a generation this week lured throngs of Manhattan gallery-goers to Fifth Avenue’s palatial Duveen Galleries. Purpose of the exhibition: to raise funds for Dutch refugees.

As an exhibition of great art,…

A new painting by Vermeer is discovered in Paris and exhibited in Rotterdam.

We arrived late at Rotterdam, where was their annual marte or faire, so furnished with pictures (especially landskips and drolleries as they call those donnish representations) that I was amaz’d. . . .

When John Evelyn in 1641 thus recorded the flourishing artistic life of Holland, Jan Vermeer of Delft…