Museum Geelvinck-Hinlopen

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Coordinates: 52°21′51.23″N, 4°53′28.76″E

Museum Geelvinck-Hinlopen Huis on Herengracht 518

1 History
- 1.1 Four rooms open to the public
2 External link
3 References

[edit] History

This double canal-side mansion was built for Albert Geelvinck (1647-1693) and Sara Hinlopen (1660-1749) in a chique and new part of town, close to the Rembrandtplein. In the year 1687 the couple moved in.

Albert Geelvinck, a lawyer, came from a family, who had acquired their wealth through merchant shipping on Africa, Surinam and the West Indies. The family delivered several burgomasters (mayors) in the 17th and 18th century. Sara Hinlopen came from a family of rich cloth merchants, already in an early stage involved in the Dutch East India Company. She became an orphan at the age of six, when most of the family members died of the plague. Her father was an art-collector, who owned the Rembrandt (now in the Pushkin Museum), a Rubens, two paintings by Jan Lievens, one by Bartholomeus van der Helst and several paintings by Gabriel Metsu. (These paintings are spread all over the world; Metsu's finest paintings, depicting the family Hinlopen, can be see in the Metropolitan Museum and the Gemäldegalerie). Joan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen, her grandfather, is mentioned as the first merchant in Amsterdam, who bought a painting from Rembrandt, at that time still living in Leiden.^[1]

[edit] Four rooms open to the public

The Red Room is decorated in the Louis XV or Rococo style. The high ceiling and the mirrors are impressive. There are six 17th century paintings in this room: one is a (Flamish) fantasy landscape with tree, game and birds; also depicting Christ healing the blind, by Gillis d'Hondecoeter. Another painting is depicting Christ and the Samaritan woman, by Pieter de Grebber, a religious painter.
The Blue room has an ensemble of five wallpaper panels, painted around 1788 by Egbert van Drielst. Van Drielst was a romantic painter, who in his style was influenced by Meindert Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael. On all the panels the horizon is on eyehight. Originally the panels were designed for a house on the Keizersgracht, then decorating a room in New York and Miami, now back in Amsterdam.
The Chinese Room has four Rococo wallpaper panels on canvas with fantasy flowers and birds, made in somewhere Germany around 1765. The artist may have copied Jean-Baptiste Pillement, then famous for his engravings in a Chinese style. The ceiling in the library is in a neo-classical style, and resembling the work of the Scottish architect and interior decorator Robert Adam.
In the hall one can see a tapestry, made in Brussels around 1600, depicting Cyrus the Great and the rich Croesus, after his defeat and the revolt. The story comes from Herodotus, the carton was designed by Michiel Coxcie, the Flemish Raphael.

The magnificent and quiet garden is divided in two parts. The back, near the coach house, gives the impression of an English cottage garden. The front part is a formal French garden and has the largest pond of the Amsterdam inner-gardens. In June the museum participates in the Open Garden Days. The museum started to programm concerts; a tearoom is under construction.