Exhibition of the 'Dutch House' pavilion

About exhibition

The Dutch House creates an atmosphere of simplicity and coziness. But simplicity is relative: here everything is on display — whether it’s the abundance of precious Dutch tiles on the walls (their number exceeds 10,000), or the many subjects and sizes of paintings that cover the walls. There was also a fashionable passion for collecting porcelain: Eastern and European pieces, tableware and fragile figurines, vases, jugs, and tulip vases. At the estate’s heyday the pavilion was the center of a small ensemble on the shore of a bay-pond, and it immediately drew visitors into a world of play and imagination, into the “irretrievable mirage of pastoral paradise.” Not only the little house itself, with its ornate stepped gable and windows with numerous panes — “thirty-two panes” — exactly like those from paintings by the Little Dutch Masters, but its entire surroundings were meant to evoke certain associations with Holland. The interior layout and the main details of the Dutch House’s architectural decor have been fully preserved. On the ground floor are the service and utility rooms: the Lower (Front) vestibule and the Kitchen. An oak staircase leads to the second — the formal — floor with the Hall and the Dessert Room.