Museum Bredius is a museum showing the collection of the early twentieth century Dutch art historian Abraham Bredius. The collection is remarkable for its seventeenth-century etchings and paintings, but is most attractive to visitors for its accurate restoration of the 18th-century Herenhuis interior with period furnishings. The museum is situated on the Lange Vijverberg in The Hague, the Netherlands [1]
The house was built together with its neighbours (numbers 14 & 15) by the architect Pieter de Swart in 1755, and was home to a series of important Heren up to the 1930s, when it was purchased by Frits Lugt, to house his large collection of drawings and prints that later, along with the initial donation by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863–1930), formed the basis for the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), and is now mostly housed in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands.
In 1955 the house was purchased by the city of The Hague for the Bredius collection, which until then was housed in the former home of its donor, Abraham Bredius (Amsterdam, 1855 - Monaco, 1946). His house on the Prinsengracht 6 had been the location for the collection until 1985, when it closed its doors due to falling number of visitors, combined with a subsidy stop. Friends of the museum created the Bredius Genootschap (Bredius Society) that took the collection on tour, which met with great success. When the society finally had enough funding to reopen in a permanent location, the old house could not be used. The decision to move to the present location was made possible with the gift of a generous sponsor to remodel it in the original Louis XV style. It has been home to the Bredius Museum since 1990. [2]
Abraham Bredius was the son of a gunpowder manufacturer who left him a large fortune to spend in the arts. He was a very learned man and writer of many articles and books on art history, who became known internationally as a Rembrandt expert. He became director of the Mauritshuis in The Hague and in that capacity devoted himself to scientific research. [3] When he moved to Monaco for health reasons in 1922, he believed that the climate was bad for his paintings, and he left them in his old home as a museum, with the promise that they would go to the city on his death. In Monaco he wrote his books on Jan Steen and Rembrandt.
He was embroiled in many controversial academical battles over various aspects of art history, such as attributions of paintings by Jan Steen and Rembrandt, or the proper way to present and build a museum collection. He was unable to work together with Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, which is why the Museum Bredius is now totally separate from the RKD, which ironically has its roots in the same building today.
The collection is represented by over 150 artists, with illustrious names such as Aelbert Cuyp, Anthony van Dyck, Melchior de Hondecoeter, Adriaen van Ostade, Quiringh van Brekelenkam, and Rembrandt. Bredius only kept pieces which were of academic interest in the art history field, such as the only known landscape example by the seascape painter Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen, or a mutilated piece that was originally a biblical scene by Jan Steen of the marriage of Tobias and Sarah, that had been cut down into two genre pieces in the 19th century and sold separately. He donated more than 46 paintings he attributed himself to the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Bredius tended to only keep the masterpieces, which were the first known work by many artists when they were accepted as a master into a local Guild of St. Luke.
The museum contains a large collection of silver, including 70 examples by Amsterdam silversmiths from the 17th to 19th centuries. There is also a porcelain collection with Chinese blue and German pieces to offset the historical themes in Delftware.
Adriaen van Ostade was a Dutch Golden Age painter of genre works, showing everyday life of ordinary men and women.
Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He is generally considered the pre-eminent landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, a period of great wealth and cultural achievement when Dutch painting became highly popular.
Gerard or Gérard (de) Lairesse was a Dutch Golden Age painter and art theorist. His broad range of skills included music, poetry, and theatre. De Lairesse was influenced by the Perugian Cesare Ripa and French classicist painters such as Charles le Brun, Simon Vouet and authors such as Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. His importance grew in the period following the death of Rembrandt. His treatises on painting and drawing, Grondlegginge Ter Teekenkonst (1701), based on geometry and Groot Schilderboek (1707), were highly influential on 18th-century painters.
The Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) was an initiative of the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), which is the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Its purpose was to organize and categorize research on Rembrandt van Rijn, with the aim of discovering new facts about this Dutch Golden Age painter and his studio. The project started in 1968 and was sponsored by NWO until 1998. Research continued until 2014. It was the authority on Rembrandt and had the final say in whether a painting is genuine. The documentation generated by the project was transferred to the Netherlands Institute for Art History and renamed the Rembrandt Database.
Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, was a Dutch art collector, art historian and museum curator.
Abraham Bredius was a Dutch art collector, art historian, and museum curator.
Horst Gerson was a German-Dutch art historian.
The Head of Christ is a 1648 oil-on-panel painting by the Dutch artist Rembrandt. It is now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Flora or Saskia as Flora is a 1634 oil-on-canvas painting by Rembrandt, depicting his wife Saskia van Uylenburgh as the goddess Flora. It is held by the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
The pendant portraits of Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit are a pair of full-length wedding portraits by Rembrandt. They were painted on the occasion of the marriage of Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit in 1634. Formerly owned by the Rothschild family, they became jointly owned by the Louvre Museum and the Rijksmuseum in 2015 after both museums managed to contribute half of the purchase price of €160 million, a record for works by Rembrandt.
Portrait of Catharina Hooghsaet (1607–1685) is a 1657 painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt.
View of the Dam and Damrak at Amsterdam is a 17th-century oil on canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jacob van Ruisdael. It is in the collection of the Mauritshuis in the Hague. It gives a bird's eye view of the crowd watching the parade of the civic guard on the Dam Square, the main square of Amsterdam.
Tobias and Sarah in Prayer with the Angel Raphael and the Demon is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Steen. It is now in the collection of the Bredius Museum, The Hague.
Head of Christ is a 1650s painting by Rembrandt's workshop. It shows Christ with a beard and long dark hair. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Oval Portrait of a Woman is a 1633 portrait painting painted by Rembrandt. It shows a woman with a millstone collar and diadem cap. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Portrait of Petronella Buys (1610–1670) is a 1635 portrait painting painted by Rembrandt. It shows a young woman with a very large and impressive millstone collar. It is in a private collection.
Portrait of Elisabeth Bas is a portrait by Ferdinand Bol of the Dutch businesswoman Elisabeth Bas, commissioned by her granddaughter Maria Rey, from the 1640s. It is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, where it is known as Elisabeth Bas and attributed to Golden age of Dutch art painter Ferdinand Bol, though the identity of the sitter is held in doubt by the Rijksmuseum.
Raising of the Cross is a circa 1633-1645 painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt in the collection of the Museum Bredius. It was assumed to have been painted as a study for Rembrandt's larger painting of the same subject, as part of a series commissioned in 1633 by Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. Having been rejected as autograph by the Rembrandt Research Project after Abraham Bredius's death, it was recently reattributed to the master by Jeroen Giltaij, though dendrochronology indicates the wood for the panel was not felled before 1642.
The Feast of Bacchus is an oil-on-canvas painting that was completed in 1654 by the Dutch painter Philips Koninck. The painting is on display at the Museum Bredius in The Hague. Once thought to be an allegory of the five senses, it may depict a festival held by the Amsterdam Guild of Saint Luke, a celebration of the Bentvueghels, or a meeting of the Chamber of Rhetoric.
Portrait of a Girl is a circa 1632 portrait painting formerly attributed to Rembrandt. It shows a woman with a millstone collar and diadem cap. It was sold on 24 August 2024 for US$1,468,750 in Thomaston, Maine, near where it had been stored since 1970 in the collection of Cary W. Bok. It had been in the collection of Abraham Bredius who lent it for several years to the Mauritshuis, but it landed up in the Philadelphia collection of Mrs. Zimbalist, who in turn left it to her son Cary W. Bok, who outlived his mother by less than a year.
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