Institute: Rijksmuseum

Country: The Netherlands

Link: www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/nightwatch

Dr. Esther van Duijn is paintings conservator and researcher. In 1996 Van Duijn finished her art history study at the University of Utrecht with a M.A. thesis about father and son Hopman, two restorers from the nineteenth century. During the subsequent five-year training program for paintings conservation at the Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg in Maastricht, the history of her own profession turned into a lifelong passion that has run as a thread throughout her career ever since.

As independent conservator she worked for several institutions and museums, including the Cultural Heritage Agency, the Kröller-Müller Museum and the Mauritshuis. Between 2008 and 2013 she worked part-time – alongside her work as a conservator – on her Ph.D. thesis All that glitters is not gold. The depiction of gold-brocaded velvets in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Netherlandish paintings, which was part of an interdisciplinary research project called The Impact of Oil: A history of oil painting in the Low Countries and its consequences for the visual arts, 1350-1550.

Since February 2015 she is working in the Rijksmuseum on a research project into the conservation history of the museum’s paintings collection. Her current focus the conservation history of Rembrandt’s Night Watch, which she does within the larger research project Operation Night Watch. 

In February 2021 Van Duijn recorded a lecture on the history of wax-resin linings especially for the masterclass. The lecture is available through this subpage on our website: lecture 2 – Esther van Duijn.

In June 2021 Van Duijn recorded a lecture on Operation Night Watch. The lecture is available through this subpage on our website: Lecture 10 – Esther van Duijn.