Ruth Bernard Yeazell | The New York Review of Books

Rembrandt’s DNA

The Leiden Collection—one of the largest private collections of Dutch art in the world—was conceived as a “lending library for Old Masters,” animated by the humanist spirit found in Rembrandt’s paintings.

Art and Life in Rembrandt’s Time: Masterpieces from the Leiden Collection

an exhibition at the H’ART Museum, Amsterdam, April 9–August 24, 2025, and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, October 25, 2025—March 29, 2026

The Leiden Collection Online Catalogue, Fourth Edition

edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Elizabeth Nogrady

March 26, 2026 issue

The Significance of Trivial Things

Exhibitions and books commemorating Jane Austen’s 250th birthday call attention to the ways in which she transmuted the ephemera of her life into the precious treasures that figure in her novels.

A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250

an exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum, New York City, June 6–September 14, 2025

Miss Austen

a PBS Masterpiece series adapted by Andrea Gibb from the novel by Gill Hornby and directed by Aisling Walsh

A Jane Austen Year

by Sophie Reynolds

Jane Austen in 41 Objects

by Kathryn Sutherland

September 25, 2025 issue

The Collector as Autocrat

Even as he assembled a world-class art collection, Albert C. Barnes always saw himself as an embattled underdog.

The Maverick’s Museum: Albert Barnes and His American Dream

by Blake Gopnik

The House of Barnes: The Man, the Collection, the Controversy

by Neil L. Rudenstine, with a new preface by the author and a foreword by Yve-Alain Bois

July 24, 2025 issue

The Pen and the Brush

“Style is what finally draws me most profoundly to writers and artists.”

November 16, 2024

Friend of the Family

Jean Strouse’s Family Romance explores the relationship between the Anglo-Jewish Wertheimers and John Singer Sargent, who painted twelve portraits of them.

November 21, 2024 issue

Life Made Light

The twenty-eight Vermeer paintings assembled at the Rijksmuseum this year were a testament to how he is understood today: as an artist of the interior, a master of subjects at once alluring and enigmatic.

Vermeer

an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, February 10–June 4, 2023

Johannes Vermeer: Faith, Light and Reflection

by Gregor J.M. Weber

Vermeer and the Art of Love

by Aneta Georgievska-Shine

July 20, 2023 issue

Laughs and Smiles

Frans Hals’s animated paintings allow viewers to feel the presence of an artist whose life is largely unknown.

The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World

by Steven Nadler

March 23, 2023 issue

Who Was First?

July 21, 2022 issue

Painting Herself

From the beginning, female self-portraitists have chosen to show themselves at work, as if to demonstrate that they could handle a brush as well as male artists.

The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution, and Resilience: Five Hundred Years of Women’s Self Portraits

by Jennifer Higgie

The Self-Portrait

by Natalie Rudd

May 12, 2022 issue

Letter

Anthony Apesos

Who Was First?

July 21, 2022 issue

Dickens’s Multitudes

Two new books examine the novelist who produced some of the greatest multivoiced fiction in all of English literature.

The Artful Dickens: Tricks and Ploys of the Great Novelist

by John Mullan

The Mystery of Charles Dickens

by A.N. Wilson

October 7, 2021 issue

A Vermeer for the IRA

Rose Dugdale, famous for a 1974 art heist, would probably rather be remembered as a heroine of Irish republicanism.

The Woman Who Stole Vermeer: The True Story of Rose Dugdale and the Russborough House Art Heist

by Anthony M. Amore

March 11, 2021 issue

Stardom Is Born

The Drama of Celebrity

by Sharon Marcus

Celebrity: A History of Fame

by Susan J. Douglas and Andrea McDonnell

Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry That Changed Acting Forever

by Peter Rader

September 26, 2019 issue

Unnatural Naturalism

Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement

an exhibition at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, October 11, 2018–January 6, 2019; the Vero Beach Museum of Art, February 9–May 5, 2019; the Seattle Art Museum, June 13–September 8, 2019; the San Antonio Museum of Art, October 11, 2019–January 5, 2020; the Yale Center for British Art, February 13–May 10, 2020; the Nevada Museum of Art, June 20–September 13, 2020; and the Frick Pittsburgh, October 29, 2020–January 24, 2021

Christina Rossetti: Poetry in Art

edited by Susan Owens and Nicholas Tromans

March 21, 2019 issue