Frits Lugt
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Frederik Johannes "Frits" Lugt (
Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...
4 May 1884 – 15 July 1970
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
), was a self-taught collector and connoisseur of Dutch drawings and prints and a selfless and tireless compiler of essential reference tools documenting Northern European prints and drawings, collectors' stamps and sale catalogues. An authority on
Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 â€“ 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 ...
's drawings, he collected all of the known etchings made by Rembrandt during his career.


Biography

Lugt was a precocious connoisseur who made a catalog of his own ''Museum Lugtius'' at age eight. Encouraged by his father, he became an art expert at a young age and cut short his formal education in 1901 to become an employee at the auction house of Frederik Muller in Amsterdam. Lugt's marriage in 1910 to Jacoba Klever (1888–1969), a woman of independent means, meant that he could pursue his interests without financial concerns. By 1911 he had become a partner of the firm, a position he held until 1915. One of his tasks at the auction house was the compilation of auctioneers' sale catalogues. Though ''art history'' as an academic field did not exist, he made a difficult choice to focus on this, and gave up his budding art career. He began to collect art with his wife, travelling throughout Europe for this and focussing on masters of the
Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age ( ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands which roughly lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established, to 1672, when the '' Rampjaar'' occurred. During this period, Dutch trade, scientific development ...
. Upon the death of his father-in-law in 1931, his wife inherited a sizeable fortune, which enabled the couple to expand their collecting interests.


Research

His ongoing interest resulted in the four volumes of his famous ''Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques intéressant l'art ou la curiosité'' ("Repertory of catalogues of public sale concerned with art or objets d'art") published in 1938, 1953, 1964, and (posthumously) 1987, which gives essential details of sales catalogues published during the years 1600–1925, concerning art works held in public collections in Europe and North America. The "Lugt number" of a sale catalogue is a familiar reference. While he was still occupied with this project, he donated his huge collection of sale catalogues and other documentary materials to the
Netherlands Institute for Art History 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 ...
(RKD) at
The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...
along with his personal library, in the nature of a "permanent loan."


Collectors' marks

In 1921, he completed his first work essential to art historians, ''Les marques de collections de dessins et d’estampes'', the definitive repertory identifying the collector's marks and stamps on drawings and prints, with a short descriptive biography of each owner and a description of the particular collection; the work is the essential reference for establishing the
provenance Provenance () is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, p ...
of Old Master drawings and prints. In 1956 this first volume on collectors' marks was followed by a Supplément.Frits Lugt, "Les marques de collections de dessins & d'estampes", The Hague, 1956. In March 2010 the Fondation Custodia published an on-line edition of the two volumes by Lugt. This database is being regularly updated with new information and newly found marks: www.marquesdecollections.fr.


Inventory catalogs for Paris collections

In 1922 he was commissioned to compile the inventory catalogue of Dutch and Flemish drawings in the
Musée du Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...
. The first volume appeared in 1927, the series eventually comprising nine volumes cataloguing drawings of the Northern schools not only from the Louvre's collection but also in other collections in Paris, including the
Petit Palais The (; ) is an art museum in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France. Built for the Exposition Universelle (1900), 1900 Exposition Universelle ("universal exhibition"), it now houses the City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts (''Musée des beaux-arts ...
(the collection of Eugène Dutuit), the
Bibliothèque Nationale A library is a collection of books, and possibly other materials and media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or digital (soft copies) materials, and may be a p ...
, and the
École des Beaux-Arts ; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centu ...
. In 1932 he moved his family and growing art collection to the Lange Vijverberg in The Hague, in the house that now houses the Museum Bredius. This building was only a few hundred yards from the young Netherlands Institute for Art History, and across the
Hofvijver The Hofvijver (; ) is a small lake in the centre of The Hague, Netherlands. It is adjoined in the east by the Korte Vijverberg road, in the south by the Binnenhof and the Mauritshuis, in the west by the Buitenhof (The Hague), Buitenhof and in th ...
from 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 ...
.


Oberlin College

When war threatened the Netherlands, the Lugts together sent the top pieces of their impressive collection of drawings, prints, books, and paintings in six packages to Switzerland. During the Second World War, the couple fled to the United States, where Wolfgang Stechow secured a temporary position for him lecturing at
Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational lib ...
, Ohio. While in America Lugt was impressed by the number of public institutions founded by private bequests. After the war they returned to their home in The Hague by boat, accompanied by fifty chests of books, catalogs, journals, and reproductions, most of which he gave to the RKD. Together the husband and wife team proceeded to recover the parts of their collection that they had not previously sent to Switzerland and that had been seized by the German occupying forces.


Fondation Custodia

In the style of self-taught American philanthropists such as
Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie ( , ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the History of the iron and steel industry in the United States, American steel industry in the late ...
, Lugt, whose devout
Mennonite Mennonites are a group of Anabaptism, Anabaptist Christianity, Christian communities tracing their roots to the epoch of the Radical Reformation. The name ''Mennonites'' is derived from the cleric Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland, part of ...
faith led him to consider their art collection part of God's gift, sought a cultural center which would make their collection accessible to the public: the result was the Fondation Custodia (1947), which continues to conserve the Lugt art collection, housed in the eighteenth-century Hôtel Turgot, Rue de Lille, Paris. The next thing Lugt did was to arrange accommodation for a center devoted to scholarship and the arts in the Netherlands. After attempts to found this in their home on the Lange Vijverberg in
The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...
, this became the Institut Néerlandais in Paris (1957).


Legacy

Frits Lugt survived his wife by less than a year. In his sale catalog for the illustrious 18th-century art collector
Pierre-Jean Mariette Pierre-Jean Mariette (; 7 May 1694 – 10 September 1774) was a collector of and dealer in old master prints, a renowned connoisseur, especially of prints and drawings, and a chronicler of the careers of French Italian and Flemish artists. He ...
, he signed it as 'your very humble and very dutiful great-great-grandson'. He certainly managed to collect more art than Mariette. At the time he died, the Lugt collection consisted of about six thousand drawings, thirty thousand prints, and two hundred paintings. His research is preserved in the databases of the RKD, while much of his art is still preserved in Paris.


Notes


References


''Dictionary of Art Historians'': "Frits Lugt""Frits Lugt (1884-1970)"

Fondation Custodia"Database on collectors' marks by the Fondation Custodia""Rembrandt the Narrator: etchings from the Frits Lugt collection":
exhibition, 2006, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, Netherlands * "A choice collection: seventeenth-century Dutch paintings from the Frits Lugt Collection", by Quentin Buvelot, Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, Hague, Netherlands, 2003,


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lugt, Frits 1884 births 1970 deaths Dutch art historians Writers from Amsterdam Art collectors from Amsterdam