Newsletter 2007
|
Throughout
almost the entire year, life at ‘121 rue de Lille’
revolved around the 50th anniversary of the Institut Néerlandais.
The festivities began on the morning of January 11, with a reception
at the Hôtel Turgot, followed by the opening of the superb exhibition
Rembrandt … bouquet final. Organised
by Custodia in collaboration with the Berliner print room, the show
was launched in the presence of HM the Queen along with various French
and Dutch ministers. Owing to its great success, the thematic exhibition
of the Rembrandt prints at Hôtel Turgot, Rembrandt
et les femmes, was extended for another month. For their
part, the Danish drawings from the collection, De Abildgaard
à Hammershøi, attracted considerable attention
not only at the Maison du Danemark here in Paris but also at the Statens
Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. In the autumn, the historical exhibition
Louis Napoléon, devoted to the first
king of Holland, was presented; Custodia together with the Paleis
Het Loo too curated this.
The publication Rembrandt … Bouquet final with short
entries by Holm Bevers to accompany the plates, even though the number
of copies printed was raised, sold out long before the exhibition
closed. Fortunately, there were still copies of the English edition
from the Rembrandthuis. The Exposition-Dossier De Abilgaard à
Hammershøi. 75 dessins danois de la Collection Frits Lugt,
penned by the Danish art historians Michael Nellemann, conseiller
culturel at the Danish embassy, and Jonas Storvse, curator at the
Musée Pompidou, accompanied the exhibition in the Maison du
Danemark (which attracted over 4,000 visitors). Unfortunately, the
change of director in Copenhagen—where over 30,000 visitors
had witnessed the exhibition—meant there was no time or opportunity
for a Danish-language edition of the catalogue. For the show Louis
Napoléon. Premier roi de Hollande (1806-1810), about whom
little or nothing has been published in France, the existing Dutch-language
edition was translated and adapted. In the course of two months, the
Rembrandt … bouquet final drew over 20,000 visitors
while the diminutive exhibition at Hôtel Turgot—Rembrandt
et les femmes—lured 18,400 in the space of three. On the
other hand, despite the stunning installation by Wim Crouwel, Louis
Napoléon attracted a mere 2,000 souls; the show’s
brief, 5 weeks and a half duration, coinciding with not one but two
major transport strikes, was largely to blame. A symposium devoted
to the 18th-century German engraver J.G. Wille, who was significant
for France, was held in January, along with a small presentation of
his works from our own collection. The extraordinary success of a
literary evening about the letters of Doesburg & Dada
in the collection, organised by the Institut Néerlandais, begs
for more of the same. At the time of the Salon du Dessin, a similar
gathering preceded an art viewing about Rembrandt the collector for
a number of journalists. By the same token, at the end of the year
an art viewing was organised for the Amsterdamse Prentkring, based
on drawings executed in preparation for prints from the collection,
followed by a presentation of illustrated letters. Various seminars
were offered by staff members, one tailored to French conservators
in training and another to students at the Ecole du Louvre. At the
request of the Musée du Louvre, a Rembrandt seminar was organised
for a group of American students. During the Séminaire
européen de conservateurs in June, put together in part
by the Musée du Louvre, a lecture was held on Lugt and the
Marques de collections, while in October a lecture in Nantes—organised
by the local Société archéologique & historique—anticipated
the imminent publication of Paysages en France. At the start
of the year in Besançon, a successful meeting of curators of
drawings and prints from museums both Parisian and provincial was
prompted by the biennial international meeting of print rooms (known
as 50° Lux). Reiterated at Hôtel Turgot in September, the
gathering was instigated by the respective curators of Besançon,
Rouen and Fondation Custodia. Plans have now been made for an annual,
one-day visit to a different French provincial museum—to see
an important exhibition or collection—as well as a likewise
annual meeting in Paris. A reception held by CODART (the Worldwide
Network of Museum Curators of Dutch and Flemish Art), to which the
staff of Custodia made no small contribution, marked the closure of
the Rembrandt exhibition. The gatherings on the days that followed
were of considerable importance, especially for the French colleagues.
Last year Hôtel Turgot served as venue for—besides
the eleventh festival of Early Music, in the framework of the programme
of the Institut Néerlandais—two literary evenings,
a concert, and a lecture. Six evenings for sponsors were likewise
hosted, and innumerable tours were led by the staff on behalf of
more or less specialist visitors.
Projects for 2008 include an Exposition-Dossier,
Dessins nordiques des collections Jean Bonna & Frits Lugt,
featuring 34 drawings from both of these collections. Sometime in
May or thereabouts two important publications will see the light,
the sheer size of which will attract much more attention than originally
foreseen: Paysages en France dessinés par Lambert Doomer
[et autres] and the two-volume catalogue of the permanent collection,
Rembrandt Etchings from the Frits Lugt Collection by the
print connoisseur Erik Hinterding. The publication of the correspondence
between the 19th-century sculptress Marcello and her confessor,
which belongs to the collection, will be the first in the series
Ecrits d’artistes de la Collection Frits Lugt. The
lectures held in 2005 in honour of retiring Custodia curator Carlo
James will appear this year in book form. In the autumn Custodia
will organise an exhibition for the Institut Néerlandais
of the Flemish and Dutch drawings from the Uffizi in Florence, accompanied
by a catalogue, highlighting the Netherlandish drawings in the collection.
Meanwhile Freek Heijbroek continues gathering material for his biography
of Frits Lugt. To this end he has already made several visits to
the United States (in combination with an art shipment), including
the Getty Museum; however, his most important discovery to date
was the supposedly lost second half of the Lugt archive, which was
still in the RKD!
The continuation of the Marques de collections
has reached a crucial point! As is known, on behalf of the new,
improved and expanded edition of Lugt’s standard work, Les
Marques de collections de dessins & d’estampes (1921-1956),
the Fondation Custodia entered into a ‘partnership’
with the RKD in The Hague, the Département des Arts graphiques
of the Musée du Louvre and, as of 2003, the Centre allemand
d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris. Starting in 2000 the work
was performed by Laurence Lhinares and Rhea Blok. In 2003 the Société
Frits Lugt pour l’Etude des Marques de Collections (SFL) was
established and a successful sale took place to support the work
on the Book. On 1 September 2006, Peter Fuhring assumed the team’s
leadership. Last year various meetings were followed by ‘presentations’
of the material to be discussed. The idea of publishing the (old
and) new information in book form in late 2009 has now been superseded.
Aside from the prohibitive bulk of the material, technological progress
has been such that the publication of an (initial) version on the
internet in the spring of 2010 is now preferable. The advantage
is that growing pains and/or textual errors can be avoided, just
as future supplements, corrections and maintenance can be carried
out more easily. The disadvantage is that interest in a future,
hardcopy version (comprising at least three volumes) will be that
much less. This last problem can be resolved by means of a subscription
campaign or publication subsidies, for instance. The ‘launch’
of the present database (financed by the FC up till now) by means
of an interface on the internet, however, will require a technical
feat beyond the capacity of the Fondation Custodia. Thanks to a
new cooperation with the technical department of the Louvre—our
principal partner in the project—the year 2008 will witness
the first efforts to perfect the database for the internet! So as
to retain at least some sense of a paper edition, a publication
numbering approximately 100 pages will coincide with the database’s
appearance on the internet—an (indispensable) compilation
of illustrations of all marks (with number but without text). This
will be preceded by an introduction about the project and the use
of the database.
Last but not least, 2007 was an especially good year for acquisitions.
Besides a number of donations (a fine watercolour by Jongkind, in
memory of a friend of the Foundation and a splendid impression of
the Adoration of the Magi by the 16th-century Netherlandish
engraver Jan Muller, to commemorate the Lugts’ foundation
of the Institut Néerlandais fifty years ago), we were able
to acquire an early drawing by the Danish artist Ch.W. Eckersberg
with The Hercules Pavilion in Copenhagen (1809) as well
as a watercolour showing the rolling landscape near Gruchy in Normandy
by J.-F. Millet (1814-1875). In one go we laid claim to ten remarkable
Indian miniatures from a Parisian private collection, while the
beautifully preserved chalk drawing by F. Boucher—a long-term
loan—entered the collection once and for all.
|
|
