Abraham Bredius (18 April 1855 – 13 March 1946) was a Dutch art collector, art historian, and museum curator.

Life

Bredius travelled widely, visiting various art collections in his youth, and worked at the Dutch Museum for History and Art before becoming director, from 1889 to 1909, of the

Mauritshuis The Mauritshuis (, ; ) is an art museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The museum houses the Royal Cabinet of Paintings which consists of 854 objects, mostly Dutch Golden Age paintings. The collection contains works by Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van ...

. He became a

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...

expert who had many differences of opinion with

Cornelis Hofstede de Groot Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (9 November 1863 – 14 April 1930), was a Dutch art collector, art historian and museum curator. Life He was born in Dwingeloo and spent some time in Switzerland in his youth due to weak lungs, where he learned German ...

. He was a regular contributor to the historical magazines ''Oud Holland'' and ''Künstler-Inventare''. In 1922, he left the Netherlands for health reasons and settled in

Monaco Monaco, officially the Principality of Monaco, is a Sovereign state, sovereign city-state and European microstates, microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Regions of Italy, Italian region of Liguria, in Western Europe, ...

, publishing books in 1927 on

Jan Steen Jan Havickszoon Steen ( – buried 3 February 1679) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, one of the leading genre painters of the 17th century. His works are known for their psychological insight, sense of humour and abundance of colour. Life ...

and, in 1935, a

catalog Catalog or catalogue may refer to: *Cataloging **in science and technology ***Library catalog, a catalog of books and other media ****Union catalog, a combined library catalog describing the collections of a number of libraries *** Calendar (arch ...

paintings, often referred to in the literature as "Bredius 1935". He bequeathed his papers to the

Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: ), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in document ...

, and his art collection lives on in the

Museum Bredius 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 accu ...

. He also bequeathed several Rembrandt paintings to the National Dutch collection, including Rembrandt's ''

Homer Dictating his Verses ''Homer Dictating his Verses'' is a 1663 oil-on-canvas painting by Rembrandt, signed and dated by the artist. It is now in the Mauritshuis, to which it was bequeathed in 1946 by Abraham Bredius, who had loaned it to the museum since 1894, when he ...

''.

References

Abraham Bredius
in the

Dictionary of Art Historians The ''Dictionary of Art Historians'' (DAH) is an online encyclopedia of topics relating to art historians, art critics and their dictionaries. The mission of the project is to provide free, reliable, English-language information on published art h ...

External links

Books by Abraham Bredius
on the

Google Books Library Project Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...

Abraham Bredius
on inghist

1855 births 1946 deaths Directors of museums in the Netherlands Dutch art historians Mauritshuis Writers from Amsterdam Rembrandt scholars Scholars of Dutch art 19th-century Dutch LGBTQ people 19th-century Dutch non-fiction writers 20th-century Dutch LGBTQ people {{Netherlands-writer-stub