Our history
137 years young and still going strong
A winning start
in 1883, a small number of wealthy art lovers helped acquire at auction in Amsterdam some 500 of the most important drawings from the collection of Jacob de Vos for the Rijksmuseum’s print room. It was a spectacular move that doubled the number of drawings in the fledgling print room’s collection. It was also the beginning of a new and ongoing story of private support for Dutch public art collections, for the initiative resulted in the establishment of the Vereniging Rembrandt, or Rembrandt Association.
Rembrandt, The Pancake Woman, c. 1638 | pen and brown ink; framing lines in brown ink over black chalk, 10.8 x 14.4 cm | Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam | acquisition supported in 1883
Art from all periods and all over the world
In 1892, the Rembrandt Association persuaded the state to share in the costs of buying a first Vermeer for the Rijksmuseum, and in similar fashion it sponsored in 1900 the acquisition of the Rijksmuseum’s first Rembrandt. The early history of the Association is very much about this matching of private and public money to collect the art of the Dutch Golden Age for Holland, but after 1914 its horizon widened to include Western European and Asian art. After 1945, it also opened up to modern art and to other cultures. in 1983, the Rembrandt Association celebrated its centenary by supporting the acquisition of two recent works by Willem de Kooning for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Henri Matisse, La Perruche et la Sirène, 1952 | gouache on paper laid down on canvas, 341 x 776 cm | Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam | acquisition supported in 1967
Support for over 2,000 art acquisitions for museums big and small
When the Association celebrated its 125th birthday in 2008, it had supported almost 2,000 acquisitions for over 120 Dutch museums, ranging from the most costly, such as Jheronimus Bosch’s Prodigal Son for Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and Henri Matisse’s perhaps finest paper cut-out, La Perruche et la Sirène, for the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, to hundreds of more modest but always more than locally relevant acquisitions for dozens of smaller collections. What had begun with support for the acquisition of a cityscape by Jan van Goyen for Leiden and two works by Hendrick ter Brugghen for Utrecht, was extended to the acquisition of local silver for the municipal collections of Deventer and Zutphen and a seminal group of works by Jan Mankes for Arnhem and by Hendrik Werkman for Groningen.
Louis de Haan (silversmith) and Jan Bagnol (goldsmith and engraver), Jacob van Belle's Tobacco Box, 1757 | silver and gold, L 17 cm | Rotterdam Museum | acquisition supported in 2016
Beyond funding art acquisitions
Helping museums enrich their collections to the best attainable level, is the Rembrandt Association's principal function to this day, but since 2012 it has also begun to invest in public art collections in other ways, most notably by helping museums do research and restorations. In order to increase the public interest in collecting the Vereniging has additionally started to actively create more awareness for the important role shared art collections play in our society. It is through the help of the Association's 17,000+ members and donors that it can keep up its good work.
In 2018 the Rembrandt Association helped Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar restore a militia piece by the 17th-century artist Ceasar van Everdingen, which was kept away in the depot for years because of its bad condition. It can now again be enjoyed in its original splendour.
Mijn Rembrandt
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