Girl with the Pearl Earring

We headed to San Francisco today to go to the Art Museum.

They have an exhibit of Dutch painters and the highlight at the moment is the Vermeer painting of the Girl with the Pearl Earring.

After our school group was taken into the museum, we had a little hands on demonstration about where the pigments for the paint came from and a little history of the Netherlands. Evidently the blue of the turbin is made from Lapis Lazuli which is mined in Afghanistan, the pearl which had to come all the way from Shri Lanka all tell us that the Dutch were world travelers and brought back many of the things found in their many colonies around the globe.

We went through a few different galleries where we saw landscape, still life and portrait paintings done by some of the Dutch masters, including a few Rembrants, before we finally got to see the Vermeer.

Henry made the comment "We drove all the way here just to see that?!".  I guess he weren't as impressed as I was. It really is amazing to see the actual painting rather than just pictures of it.


Of course we weren't allowed to take pictures inside so we snapped a few outside in the gardens.

And since we were so close to the Golden Gate bridge we just had to drive over it

We don't make it into San Francisco often. It was a beautiful sunny day. A nice change of pace for the day.