ATLANTA, GA.- The High Museum of Art in collaboration with the Mauritshuis, The Hague, is presenting a major exhibition of Dutch masterworks, including Johannes Vermeer’s iconic “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” which has not been on view in the U.S. for more than 15 years and has never been seen in the Southeast.

Drawn from the Mauritshuis’s collection, “Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis” highlights the artistic genius of Dutch Golden Age painters, including Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals and Jan Steen, through the presentation of 35 exceptional paintings. The exhibition will remain on view through Sept. 29, 2013.

“For a selection of works from this renowned collection to be shown in the Southeast is a rare and extraordinary opportunity,” said Michael E. Shapiro, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director of the High. “Paintings of this caliber are underrepresented in this part of the country and this exhibition will create an opportunity for our community to study and admire these works of art that rarely travel outside of Europe.”

“We are delighted to have three excellent museums as partners for our U.S. tour,” said Emilie Gordenker, director of the Mauritshuis. “This collaboration allows us to present our collection on both the West and East Coasts of the United States, in large as well as more intimate venues.”

“Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis” showcases such masters as Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Jacob and Salomon van Ruysdael, Paulus Potter, Meindert Hobbema and Jan van Goyen. Through landscapes and portraits, the exhibition explores the idea that Dutch artists more readily embraced genre paintings of secular subjects than their southern European contemporaries and focused on capturing commonplace scenes of daily life. Dutch artists not only recorded representations of the domestic interior, still lifes and revelrous crowds, but often imbued these scenes with moral undertones and humorous, sarcastic wit.

Key paintings featured in the exhibition include:
•Johannes Vermeer, “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” ca. 1665
•Carel Fabritius, “Goldfinch,” 1654
•Rembrandt van Rijn, “‘Tronie’ of a Man with a Feathered Beret,” ca. 1635
•Jan Steen, “The Way You Hear It, Is The Way You Sing It,” ca. 1665
•Jacob van Ruisdael, “View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds,” 1670–1675