Masterpieces of the Leiden collection : The Age of Rembrandt

Musée du Louvre
22 February - 22 May 2017

As part of its season devoted to the Dutch Golden Age, the Musée du Louvre is presenting a selection of masterpieces by 17th-century Dutch painters from the collection of Thomas Kaplan and his wife, Daphne Recanati Kaplan. This selection, brought together at a major international museum for the first time, showcases the largest private collection of works by Rembrandt. Visitors will discover some thirty paintings and drawings by the greatest painters of the Golden Age from the region of Leiden in the Netherlands, primarily ten works by Rembrandt and a painting recently attributed to the artist.

Among the Leiden Collection’s Rembrandt paintings is the Minerva, a particularly spectacular large-format work, part of a series of strong women and mythological goddesses. As its name indicates, this collection highlights the “fine painters” of Leiden, among them Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris. It also includes a number of Rembrandts—currently the largest private holding of his work—and numerous “Rembrandtesques.” Thus the collection is made up of excellent pictures by the greatest artists—Jan Steen, Rembrandt, and Jan Lievensz, and their master Lastman, Frans van Mieris, Gerrit Dou, and others—and covers the various specialties of Dutch art.

The thematic presentation shows how a single painter can practice different genres. It also reminds us that Dutch painting, often seen as simultaneously ribald, colorful, charming, and bourgeois, draws on a mixed repertoire and makes use of all the modes from the satirical to the solemn

On the occasion of this exhibition, the large-format painting  

Eliezer and Rebecca at the Well is to be officially gifted to the Musée du Louvre by Thomas Kaplan and Daphne Recanati Kaplan. The work was painted by Ferdinand Bol (1616–1680), one of Rembrandt’s most talented pupils. Acquired by the Kaplans in 2009, the work has been on loan to the Louvre’s Dutch galleries since 2010.

After Masterpieces from the Leiden Collection. The Age of Rembrandt has been shown at the Louvre, an expanded group of approximately 60 highlights will travel to The Long Museum in Shanghai and the National Museum in Beijing in 2017 and 2018 and to the Louvre Abu Dhabi before returning to Europe and the Americas.

Jan Lievens Boy in a cape and turban (Portrait of the Prince Rupert of the Palatinate) (c) New York_The Leiden  

• Rembrandt  

  Minerva in her study

  (c) New York_The Leiden Gallery

  
  
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  Rembrandt

  Self-Portrait with Shadded eyes

   (c) New York_The Leiden Gallery

  
  
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  Jan Steen

  Prayer before the Meal 

  (c)New York_The Leiden Gallery

  
  
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  Gerrit Dou

  Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier 

  (c) New York_The Leiden Gallery

  
  
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  Rembrandt  

  Unconscious patient (Allegory of Smell) 

  (c) New York_The Leiden Gallery

Organized by: Blaise Ducos, curator at the Department of Paintings of the Musée du Louvre

The Leiden Collection, assembled since 2003 by the American philanthropist and Francophile Thomas Kaplan (Chevalier of the Legion of Honor) and his wife, Daphne Recanati Kaplan, contains some 250 paintings and drawings by Rembrandt and several generations of his pupils among the Leiden fijnschilders. Since its inception, the Leiden Collection has loaned works on more than 170 occasions. 

A further illustration of the collectors’ generosity, 

A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal by Johannes Vermeer 

and Woman Feeding a Parrot by Frans van Mieris the Elder 

will also be shown at this exhibition focusing on Vermeer and the masters of genre painting.

 

Exhibition catalog
Masterpieces of the Leiden collection : The Age of Rembrandt
Authors : Blaise Ducos and Dominique Surh 
A musée du Louvre éditions / Somogy éditions d'art coedition
80 pages
40 illustrations
French/English bilingual edition