Masterworks from the Frits Lugt Collection
Basé sur les collections exceptionnelles de la Frits Lugt Collection, ce cataloguetente d’éclairer le rôle du dessin de figure à l’époque de Rembrandt. La publicationaccompagne une exposition présentée à la Fondation Custodia à Paris.Bien que souvent associé au paysage, l’art néerlandais du XVIIème siècle excellait toutautant dans la représentation de la figure humaine. Qu’il s’agisse d’études réaliséesd’après des modèles vivants ou de mémoire, aussi bien que des portraits et des scènes dela vie quotidienne ou d’épisodes historiques, nombreuses de ces œuvres furent crééesen préparation de compositions peintes ou gravées, mais aussi souvent comme œuvresachevées ou à des fins pédagogiques.Spanning the entire seventeenth century, from the transitional generation ofHendrick Goltzius, Abraham Bloemaert and Jacques de Gheyn to that of Gerard deLairesse and Adriaen van der Werff, this book covers the work of such major artists asWillem Buytewech, who focused on Hollands’s jeunesse dorée; the brothers Adriaen andIsaac van Ostade, who specialized in representations of peasant life; members of the TerBorch family; Jan de Braij, whose varied oeuvre straddles several genres; and Adriaenvan de Velde, a landscapist who has long been admired for his figure studies in chalk.Rembrandt and his school are particularly well represented, with studies from models aswell as genre scenes and often rarely depicted episodes from the Bible and literature. Itis in his workshop and circle that drawing the female nude emerges as a practice that seta standard for artists elsewhere in the Netherlands and abroad.Extensive entries present each of the selected drawings, many of which count amongthe collection’s best-known, while others have received little attention in the past.Managed by the Fondation Custodia since 1947, the Frits Lugt Collection is widelyrenowned for its Old Master Drawings from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries,and especially for its remarkable group of works from the Dutch school, covering everyaspect of the extraordinary creativity and variety of artistic production in the NorthernNetherlands in the seventeenth century. The core of the collection was formed by theDutchman Frits Lugt (1884–1970), one of the great drawings connoisseurs and collectorsof his age. Also including important prints, paintings, artists’ letters and rare books,the collection continues to be enriched, and several recently acquired sheets are herepresented for the first time.The catalogue accompanies an exhibition held in Paris at the Fondation Custodiafrom 21 March to 21 June 2026.
