With Stuffed Animals from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden ColonyIn 1636 the Haarlem-born artist Frans Post (1612-1680) travelled to the Dutch colony of Brazil in the retinue of the governor Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, who had been charged with securing the new colony and making it even more profitable by increasing the number of sugar plantations. The governor took a group of artists and scientists with him, among them Frans Post, to record the landscape, the inhabitants and the flora and fauna. The country continued to inspire Post when he got back to the Netherlands in 1644, and he carried on painting Brazilian landscapes, which sold very well.

Special loansWith a retrospective of six paintings, preliminary sketches, a wall map, and real (stuffed) animals, the Rijksmuseum will show how Frans Post encountered and immortalized this fascinating new world. There are loans from the Louvre, Paris, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and the Fundação Estudar, São Paulo.

Families and childrenThe exhibition is especially suitable for young visitors and ther families. The renovation of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden has given the Rijksmuseum the unique opportunity to display a large number of stuffed animals for this exhibition. They include a white-lipped peccary, a porcupine, a nine-banded armadillo, a capybara, a jaguar, a giant anteater, a sloth and a water opossum. During weekends and holidays children are welcome to explore and sketch animals in an art studio.

The Big DrawOn 8 and 9 October 2016 the Rijksmuseum is staging The Big Draw weekend. Young and old alike can take part in drawing activities throughout the whole museum. The Frans Post exhibition and the stuffed animals from Naturalis are essential elements of the programme.

Frans Post. Animals in Brazil runs from 7 October 2016 to 8 January 2017 in the Rijksmuseum’s Philips Wing. The exhibition is made possible by ING and Zabawas Foundation.