Can you see the influence of Dutch old masters in works of 19th and 20th-century artists? An exhibition at the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague shows how themes from the Golden Era were still very much alive in artworks from the period 1860 to 1960. A meeting between great artists.

The exhibition displays 11 works by old masters from the Mauritshuis' own collection alongside more recent masterpieces from other Dutch museums. Although the artworks were produced in entirely different centuries, the portraits, still lifes and landscapes show many similarities.

Vincent van Gogh’s cloudy sky over an empty, freshly-ploughed field. Large clouds over a Dutch landscape that Jacob van Ruisdael painted two centuries earlier. Van Ruisdael’s painting is part of the Mauritshuis collection. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam lent Ploughed Fields to the museum in The Hague for this exhibition.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer hangs alongside two silhouettes by Salvador Dali. In Vermeer’s painting, the young girl stands against a dark background. In the Dali – he is known to have admire Vermeer – you don’t see the faces, only silhouettes with a landscape and clouds.

The most personal works are, of course, the self-portraits. Charley Toorop (1891-1955) looks at you intensely with a shadow on the left side of her face. She doesn’t make herself look any prettier than she actually is. In 1669, the year of his death, Rembrandt painted himself relaxed, the light also falls halfway over his face. Toorop and Rembrandt side by side. There’s not that much difference.

Dalí meets Vermeer: Modern Masters come to visit: in the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague from 15 September to 11 December 2011.

(hs/imm)