Van Gogh vs Rembrandt: clash of the Amsterdam art museum titans

Size: Compared to Amsterdam’s main art museums – the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk among them – both Rembrandt’s House and the Van Gogh Museum are relatively small, requiring only 1-2 hours of your time to get a real feel for the life and work of these visual virtuosos.

Age: The Rembrandt House Museum opened in 1911, welcoming the Netherland’s Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Hendrik as its very first visitors; the Van Gogh Museum opened at Amsterdam’s Museumplein in 1973.

Artworks: The collections are quite different, in that – as the name suggests – the Rembrandt House Museum is Rembrandt’s actual former home, where he lived with his family (and various lovers) from 1639 until bankruptcy forced him to give it up in 1658. Inside, you can experience the house roughly as it would have looked in Rembrandt’s day, the furniture having been carefully sourced and replaced, based on a 1656 auction inventory of its art, furnishings and various other household items. 

There’s also a near-complete collection of Rembrandt etchings here (260 of the approximate 290 he created in his lifetime), plus paintings by his students, teacher and contemporaries, as well as a pair of pots used to mix quartz and clay for canvas preparation by Rembrandt himself.

The Van Gogh Museum on the other hand, is a straightforward gallery of the Post-Impressionist prodigy’s work. There’s nothing ordinary about the collection here though, which comprises some 1,300 Van Gogh paintings, drawings and letters, including iconic works like The Potato Eaters and Sunflowers. Alongside this, the largest collection of Van Gogh pieces on the planet, the museum also showcases notable works by his Impressionist and Post-Impressionist contemporaries, among them paintings by Monet, Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, and sculptures by Rodin.

Annual visitors: The Van Gogh Museum outflanks most of the local competition here, pulling in around 2.2 million visitors every year to Rembrandt’s 250,000.

Did you know? You can visit Rembrandt's House and many more Amsterdam art museums with an Amsterdam pass from Go City? Well, you do now. 

We’re talking about two of the greatest all-time wizards of western art here, so your expectations are likely to be high, and the Van Gogh Museum does not disappoint. Here’s where you can view some 200 of the maestro’s paintings, among them his beautiful Almond Blossom which – if you like it – is also available to purchase in a gazillion different formats in the museum’s gift shop. 

Then there’s his Sunflowers, his Irises, his Wheat Field with Crows, his Self Portrait with Pipe, and the challenging masterpiece that is The Potato Eaters, Van Gogh’s depiction of 18th-century Dutch peasants at dinner. Add to this some 400 drawings and 700 letters, and Van Gogh votaries will be in clover.

The Rembrandt House Museum is more of an immersive experience, one in which you can step into the Golden Age master’s former home and experience the living quarters and studio roughly as Rembrandt and his family would have done in the 17th Century. Authentic contemporary furnishings and artworks adorn the rooms, including pieces by Rembrand’s teacher Pieter Lastman, and his students Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck.

Rembrandt’s etchings were far better-known than his paintings during his lifetime (due to the relative ease of mass reproduction), and are considered some of the greatest examples of the art form to this day. The museum owns the vast majority of these, and some of them can be viewed here, alongside relics including pots used by the artist, as well as his funeral medallion. 

If it’s an insight into Rembrandt’s life you’re after, this is very much the place for you. If, however, you want to ogle some of the artist’s most celebrated works up close, you’ll need to hit up the nearby Rijksmuseum, home of The Night Watch (pictured above), Self Portrait with Disheveled Hair and other world-famous Rembrandt masterpieces.

Well, it’s less a question of which is better and more a case of whether you have a particular fondness for the (very different) work of Rembrandt or Van Gogh. Of course, you could kill two birds with one stone and see works by both of them (and many many more) at the Rijksmuseum, but if you’re looking for a deep dive into the life and works of these Dutch masters in particular, you’ll find no better place on the planet than the Van Gogh Museum and Rembrandt House in Amsterdam.

Did you know? In 1656, Rembrandt’s spiraling debts led to him petitioning for bankruptcy. The contents of his house were meticulously catalogued for sale, making it much simpler, 250 years later, for the house to be restored to its original state before opening as a museum in 1911.

Did you know? Van Gogh is one of the original selfie takers, painting some 36 self-portraits across his brief 10-year career. His tally is topped only by – you guessed it – Rembrandt, who racked up around 100 paintings, etchings and drawings of his own fair phizog, but over a much longer period.