The LEIDEN COLLECTION IN AMSTERDAM: A SUPERB GIFT TO THE PUBLIC
Publications:
Message of Humanity, Triumph of Civility: The Leiden Collection in Amsterdam: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/message-of-humanity-triumph-of-civility-the-leiden-collection-in-amsterdam/
Overcoming Time: The Art of Producing Humanity: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/overcoming-time-the-art-of-producing-humanity/
An extraordinary, in all and every sense, From Rembrandt to Vermeer. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection are on display currently at the H’Art Museum in Amsterdam. Everything there is a gift, unbelievable treasures presented in the impeccable way, supervised by such an indisputable authority on the Old Masters as Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
Here are two incredible Rembrandt masterpieces, which are also a finely balanced, display-wise: his smashing Bust of a Bearded Old Man, opening the exhibition.
This extraordinary portrait on paper mounted on a panel, painted by the greatest of artists around 1633, is the smallest known painting of Rembrandt. This is also the only Rembrandt’s work created in a technique of grisaille ( monochrome artwork in which the depth and volume are achieved by the shade of one colour) which is owned privately.
As its medium is paper, it obviously cannot be displayed permanently. Glass vitrine with this incredible treasure is opening the exhibition, taking one’s breath away from the first step-in.
No wonder that the work which has been privately owned all the time, for almost four hundred years by now, was in such extraordinary collections as owned by Andrew Mellon and his family and later on by Saul Steinberg.
Then, moving through the passage, graciously and measurably filled with some great works by Rembrandt and his contemporaries, some of them being truly gems in history of art, one gets towards the end of this superbly rich artistically journey, getting to several absolutely fantastic and famous works, one of them is that extraordinary Portrait of a Seated Woman with Her Hands Clasped, made in 1660 which grasp you for a far longer time than many even great works of art do.
The work, known as one of the brilliant achievements of the late Rembrandt, belonged, very justly, in the most distinguished collections, including its first acquisition by the famed Sir Abraham Hume in the early 19th century, and splendid collection of the Guggenheim family to which it belonged for a half of the last century.
As it happens with many privately owned treasures of the world’s art, this great work was available for the public to see rather sporadically, and with a large time gap in between. For example, before being acquired by The Leiden Collection with following many regular exhibitions worldwide from 2017 onward, the Woman with the Hands Clasped was not seen publicly for 30 years. And it really matters, twice so when the matter is such an outstanding piece of art.
The exhibition is in Amsterdam until August 24th, 2025, after which it will move on to Florida, for a pioneering show at the Norton Museum of Art from October 2025. It’s worth every second. And more.
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Introduction
The exhibition of 75 masterpieces from The Leiden Collection , on display until August 2025, is an extraordinary exhibition of a very rare private art collection at the H’Art Museum in Amsterdam.
Perfectly presented treasures of the world’s art history not only bringing these great artworks close to us, but being set at the context and at the very place of Amsterdam where they had been created by the most amazing of the world’s artists, have created a very special effect of a presence and palpable sense of a place, a very valuable quality of live art experience, doubly so if speaking about the masterpieces created more than 300 years ago – and still very much alive and breathing.
The joy of the exhibition is one of the most intimate and atmospheric Rembrandt’s self-portraits, Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes ( 1634) . Created by the genius at the time of his emotional joy, soon after marrying Saskia, and believing in his star of a successful and recognised historical and portrait artist in Amsterdam, three hundred years on, this work shines its smooth and soothing inner light onward. It is a rare sensation in art in general, not to mention the dark palette of the Dutch artists of the 17th century. And it is a very special graceful joy to be able to observe it in life.
Created at the same time Portrait of a Young Woman, ‘The Middendorf’ Rembrandt ( 1633) is simply brilliant. What is funny with regard to that amazing work is that the self-instituted top authority on Rembrandt authenticity, a large and powerful body of experts and officials, have decided to question Rembrandt’s authorship of this very work back in the mid-1980s. I think that Rembrandt himself would have a good laugh on that. At the same time, it is a rather well-known phenomenon in a modern art world when these kinds of self-imposed authoritative entities are starting to doubt authenticity of the works which are not at the established institutions but at the private independent collections. It gets more charming when some institutions, museums are coming out with striking admissions regarding their well-known works, as it has happened recently with not one but three of them being copies, not original Rembrandts, in the Mauritius museum in the Hague, of which the museum made a statement in April 2025.
This exquisite portrait has been privately owned all its life. Fortunately, it was presented at some exhibitions during the last hundred years, thanks to a good-will of consequent owners, but still, there were only five occasions during a hundred years at which the public could have a look at this brilliant work. Two of such exhibitions were in the 1930s in the US, where Rembrandt started to be seen and known to the wide public since that time only, and in the recent period, the portrait participated at the two exhibitions in the Netherlands, one in 2006 in Amsterdam at the Rembrandthuis which was a nice and welcoming institution at the time, in a sharp contrast with its current totalitarian, stupid and mass-control management that turned the place where the great artist lived and worked into cold and indifferent tourist machine of the worst kind.
The other two occasions for the great Rembrandt ‘Mittendorf’ portrait to be seen, in Leiden and at the Ashmolean in Oxford both fell the victims to covid. So, practically, we are seeing this fantastic in its clarity and craft work of the great master for the first time in twenty years now, since 2006. And in 2006, the work was exhibited for the first time in almost 70 years, and for the first time ever in Europe. This is the second time when the Europeans and people visiting Amsterdam are able to enjoy the heights of Rembrandt’s inexplicable craft.
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UNIQUE REMBRANDT DRAWING IS ON A PUBLIC DISPLAY IN AMSTERDAM FOR THE FIRST TIME
Little did we expect that even at the exhibition extraordinaire, as From Rembrandt to Vermeer. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection, which is on display at the H’Art Museum in Amsterdam till August 2024, we would be privileged to see a live unique drawing by Rembrandt, Young Lion Resting, created by the great master in between 1638 and 1642.
This drawing, one of six resting lion drawings by Rembrandt, has started to be exhibited from 2006 only. It’s really hard to imagine. And to all those important exhibitions the work was lent by Thomas S.Kaplan, meaning that no one from the previous owners of this great Rembrandt drawing was not shown this work publicly ever before it became the part of The Leiden Collection, and the world started to see it twenty years ago.
These six Rembrandt drawings of resting lions are divided into two equal groups, three works in each, young ones and older ones. Among three younger ones, two belong to the collection of the British Museum, and the third one, from The Leiden Collection, is in front of you. That one we saw recently in Amsterdam.
It is gentle, thoughtful, extremely masterful, and it is just unbelievable to think that you see in twenty centimetres from you the Rembrandt’s hand on paper which is almost 400 years old and which not many people had seen live, not in reproduction.
Moreover, the unique drawing is planned by Thomas Kaplan to be auctioned some time next year, for the purpose to contribute to the wildlife Panthera organisation, another passion of Thomas Kaplan. This auction is expected by the experts to break the record for the art sales of drawings at auctions at all times. And no wonder.
We are so very grateful for the opportunity to see it live. It is a treasure of our civilization.
Thank you to everyone at The Leiden Collection and at H’Art Museum for making it possible. It is a once in a time encounter, and it is truly fantastic.
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A SOUL ON CANVAS –
A wonderful, not very well known Rembrandt work is at the current exhibition in Amsterdam.
In the beginning of the stunning exposition of the unbelievably rich From Rembrandt to Vermeer. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection exhibition at the H’ART Museum in Amsterdam, there is one work that immediately grasps one’s attention by its outstanding qualities, the Bust of a Young Man with Curly Hair. It is so Rembrandt, in the most essential way, not only in its amazing light and expression of the face, but of everything that this expression bears with and beyond it, with the unique Rembrandt breathing and atmosphere which is probably one of the most enigmatic phenomena in the entire history of art.
More surprising than this great artwork’s history, in which, according to the studies of the impeccable Arthur K. Wheelock Jr, a legendary expert on the Dutch Old Masters, there were a physical altering of the thick panel on which Rembrandt painted his work in between 1656 and 1658, so we do not know what else had it been in the original piece, the ridiculous overpaint – over Rembrandt of all artists – made in the 18th century, shifting the original image of a Jewish young man from Rembrandt’s neighbourhood in Amsterdam into some ridiculously looking new-made ‘ burger’. It is hard to believe – and in this also is the nerve and the beauty of what I call ‘an art detective’ research and stories – but the ridiculously overpainted thoughtful young Jewish man into a fake ‘burger’ stayed like that at least until 1976, as it is possible to trace now.
Quite unexpected history of this great portrait also includes rejection, for some hardly verifiable reason, Rembrandt’s authorship itself, which is to me also simply ridiculous for anyone with a basic professional art education, so much Rembrandt this work of many is.
The rejection of Rembrandt’s authorship went on for almost a century, the last one, from the 1930 onward. Only in the beginning of this century, in 2004, was commissioned and conducted a serious scientific research reestablishing Rembrandt’s authorship of the work. That important research was confirmed further on, with more crucially important information, including discovery of the Rembrandt’s signature at the time when the oil layers at the panel were still wet, as recently as in 2020.
Thomas Kaplan, the owner of the stupendous The Leiden Collection, acquired this warm, deep and very special work in 2021.
Because of its unbelievable history, the exhibitional history of this great portrait by the supreme author of portraits of all time is very scarce. Believe or not, a great Rembrandt work which is 370 years old, was exhibited until this day only twice, at the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art in London in 1899, and at the Detroit Institute of Art exhibition in 1930, both times as indisputable Rembrandt, which is it.
And today, almost a century after the public could see this great portrait, contributing seriously to the conveying the important traits of Jewish mentality and to understanding of Jewish heritage back in Detroit, we are privileged and lucky to see one of the most special, articulated, deep and warm Rembrandt portrait with its special fleur of unique atmosphere, that Rembrandt Presence effect, live. What a gift.
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PORTRAYING A YOUNG FRIENDSHIP – Rembrandt and Lievens in Mutual Portraits at the same exhibition
At the current superb Rembrandt to Vermeer. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection at the H’ART Museum in Amsterdam, there are rarities, fantastic and rarely seen works, and discoveries as well. There are also finely curated and presented interesting dialogues, and historical knots which are keeping our attention.
In this category, there are two artworks that have been done by two close friends, of a similar age, at the same time, and quite possibly, at the same shared studio. Artists are used to portray each other, and it is always interesting, as it adds a personal intimate knowledge of a model, which was only known to a painter and was reflecting his or her personal attitude.
In the case when the protagonists are nobody else but Rembrandt and Jan Lieven, such occurrence is simply priceless.
In a Caravaggian Lieven’s Card Players ( oil on canvas, c 1625), the man in centre, the one with a pipe, is his friend and colleague Rembrandt, and perhaps, this is one of the earliest portraits of the great artist. At the time of Lievens creating this very good work, his friend, colleague and neighbour Rembrant was just 19.
Jan Lievens. Card Players ( c. 1625), with a young Rembrandt portrait in the centre, a man with a pipe. The Leiden Collection.
Nearby at the exhibition one can see three very interesting and important works by young Rembrandt, three from the existing five works from his Allegories of Senses early series. Their importance is also emphasised by the fact that most likely, those works are the earliest surviving paintings by Rembrandt.
As far as we know today, one work, Allegory of Taste, was lost, one more, Allegory of Sight, is at the collection of the Lakenhal Museum in Leiden, the native place for both Rembrandt and Lievens, and three more Allegories have been collected in a diminished but still series at The Leiden Collection. This fact alone is quite an achievement. And there is also quite an art detective story with the re-appearance of one of the works from this early Rembrandt series, Allegory of Touch, which unfolded as recently as in 2015.
But also the history of the work in which young Rembrandt portrayed young Lievens is unusual and gripping. After three hundred years since the time of its making, the work was re-discovered in 1930, and soon after such great news, it was acquired by a very well-known industrialist van Aalst in his famous collection where it has been for fifty years, before embarking on its consequent journey..
All those three works by young Rembrandt are small, all done in 1624-25 , most likely, at the time when he was sharing a studio with his friend Jan Lievens.
So, it was rather natural for him to portray his friend – as one can see it in the Allegory of Hearing, where Jan Lievens, who was 17-18 at the time, is portrayed by young Rembrandt as a top figure of a singing youth. This is the earliest portraying of Jan Lievens, a very good Dutch painter and contemporary of Rembrandt who was very successful during his life-time and internationally known, but who went to the oblivion thereafter.
And now, sharp four hundred years after two young friends, beginners but already so immensely talented, were portraying each other at the same studio in Amsterdam, their portraits have met again and are hanging ten metres from each other , in Amsterdam too. It is a dizzy feeling, indeed. One is just expecting those two youths to start to chat with each other, as they did in their shared first studio in the same city four centuries ago. Just four centuries. But they are here, with us, painted by quite steady hands of each other, in the originals of their works which we are so very privileged to see live and together.
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EARLIEST SURVIVING REMBRANDT in SERIES
Three small and very vivid panels which are now on display at the Rembrand to Vermeer. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection at the H’ART Museum in Amsterdam is a remarkable achievement.
These are the earliest surviving paintings of Rembrandt from a 5-piece Allegories of Senses series. As far as we know today, one work, Allegory of Taste, was lost, one more, Allegory of Sight, is in the collection of the Lakenhal Museum in Leiden, Rembrandt’s native place. Three more Allegories have been collected in a diminished but still series at The Leiden Collection. The reappearance of one of those works, the Allegory of Smell, that happened as recently as in 2015, is an amazing art detective story. When the work resurfaced ten years ago, it looked drastically different, being quite dark and hardly recognisable.
All the works were painted by young, 19-year old Rembrandt, around 1625, in his first studio in Amsterdam which he shared with Jan Lievens.
With regard to the Allegory of Touch work, there were suggestions that the barber there is modelled from Rembrandt’s father. It still is an open question.
In Allegory of Hearing, a top singing figure is Jan Lievens, which seems to be the earliest portrait of this great artist and close friend of Rembrandt.
The third work, Allegory of Smell, was missing for a very long time, until it resurfaced in 2015 at one of the auctions, where it was presented as ‘a work by the Dutch school’. The fact that one of the five very first Rembrandt’s paintings was returning from oblivion, was not immediately known. It is an amazing story by itself.
The part of the exposition in Amsterdam with these rare earliest Rembrandt works is a delight.
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The ART OF SOULFUL MEDITATION: REMBRANDT’S PORTRAITS OF MID-1650s
At the current great From Rembrandt to Vermeer. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection exhibition at the H’Art Museum in Amsterdam, there are some very well known works, some formal portraits, and also some which are special, informal and warm, not being seen by the public much. Those are real magnets, to me.
Among such works, there are two which are exhibited in a close proximity to each other, and they were also created by Rembrandt at the same time, in the mid-1650s. The works are Portrait of an Old Man ( Possibly Rabbi) and Head of a Girl, both created c. 1645, both resolved in the same warm and deep coloristic harmony, both are meditating, thoughtful and atmospheric, having that unique Rembrandt only fleur which stays with one for ever after seeing his work done in that special way and manner.
Portrait of an Old Man ( Possibly Rabbi). C 1645.
There are many discussions among the Rembrandt experts, from the 19th century onward, on who was the sitter for his wonderful Portrait of an Old Man, and was it a rabbi, indeed. We do not know. It looks very plausible, from several points of view and characteristics. At the same time, there was an artistic practice at the time when many artists were creating rabbi-like outfits for some of their sitters when they were aiming to portray a character which was known in the 17th century as ‘a learned man’.
As with many works of Rembrandt, there was also an ever-changing discussion on the authorship of this small great work, and the discussion went on until as recently as of 2009.
This work also went through many ownerships, all private ones, and most of them still undisclosed. The current owner of this fantastic work, collector Thomas S. Kaplan has bought it, the same as the Head of a Girl ( c. 1645) from the previous Scottish collectors as the works by Rembrandt’s most well-known pupil Samuel Hoogstraten.
Head of a Girl. c 1645
In the case of the Head of a Girl, this warm oil sketch was appreciated and owned for over thirty years in the important collection of Paul von Schwabach, a well-known German banker and a notable public figure of a Jewish origin with a complicated life story, who played serious role in preserving some important part of authentic documentation of Bismark-period Germany.
These both paintings are having one important common characteristic – they both were created by Rembrandt around 1645, when he was living in a cloud, metaphorically, after recent death ( in 1642) of his Saskia, and left with a young child, his beloved Titus, the only one of his and Saskia’s four children who survived to the adulthood. It is known that after Saskia’s death, and in the time when Titus was just one-year old at the time of her passing, Rembrandt lived through the darkest period of his life, psychologically. His works from the corresponding period, after 1642 and towards the end of the 1650s, are all characterised by this specific palette, deep, dramatic, reflecting, warm and thoughtful. Those works are truly special, also from that point of view and thinking of the background of his life in the given period.
The lovely Rembrandt oil sketch of a girl was not shown publicly for a century, from 1904 till 2000. In its turn, the Portrait of ( Possibly) Rabbi was not shown publicly also for a good half of a century, from 1958 till 2005.
And now, thanks to The Leiden Collection and their partners, we can gratefully enjoy the hand of a genius in some of his most warm works.
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SELF-PORTRAYING, REMBRANDT WAY
In the bright and airy halls of the H’ART Museum in Amsterdam, there is an exhibition of world art treasures dedicated to the celebration of Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary. All 75 works are from The Leiden Collection, and it is a great celebration of Rembrandt, his pupils and contemporaries in a stunning public exhibition.
As The Leiden Collection focuses on portraits and genre scenes largely, there are exquisite portraits in the H’ART Museum premises currently. Among them Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes, one of most lyrical ones in his huge oeuvre of self-portraits.
With regard to this very special work, it is worth mentioning that it really has an extraordinary destiny. This great work was entirely overpainted during Rembrandt’s life-time. Presumably, it was left by him at his studio in Amsterdam, and there it was totally and completely altered, most likely, for reasons to make it ‘more sellable’ and to portray some nobility-like looking character. In a true art-detective-like unfolding, the work was rediscovered and restored not before the late 20th century. Just imagine. What’s more, the public did not see this great and very special work by Rembrandt before 2003 when it was exhibited for the first time. After the rare self-portrait of Rembrandt was acquired by The Leiden Collection, it is exhibited widely and often – as if to compensate for all those 360 years when it was covered by overpainted strange images and when it was completely out of the public eye.
The other three portraits exhibited in Amsterdam now are masterly executed teaching, vision, palette and technique of Rembrandt in portrait and self-portrait by his very able students, Isaac de Jourdeville, Covert Flink and Ferdinand Bol, all becoming known masters in their own rights. Those four self-portraits, by the teacher and his students, represent what is known as ‘a school’ in art, in the most vivid way.
Isaac de Jourdeville was one of the first Rembrandt’s students. This close to the original copy of Rembrandt’s own Artist in an Oriental Costume self-portrait was so well done by Jourdeville that it was regarded as Rembrandt’s own work for a very long time, for over 300 years. Jourdeville’s authorship of the work was established only in 1983. The work’s title is Portrait of Rembrandt in an Oriental Dress ( 1631). Due to the fact that the great work was in private collections all the time, it was seen publicly just once, a century ago, back in 1927. After being acquired by The Leiden Collection, this historically important work is on public display all the time, widely internationally, in a non-stop exhibition motion from 2004 onward.
When Ferdinand Bol created his impressive Self-Portrait on a Parapet ( 1648), he was a prospering artist in Amsterdam. Still, he felt as if he needed inspiration and actually a setting for his self-portrait from Rembrandt. Everything in this masterly work alludes to Rembrandt’s way of self-portraying: the pose, the dress, the hat, the coloristic, the shadow and light balance, and, very notably, those gold-chains. Ferdinand Bols was never awarded with the chains, which was the privilege of the Dutch rulers to reward some of their citizens, elevating them for various exploits and giving them a visible recognition. In this self-portrait, Bol painted himself with several chains, following the thread of young Rembrandt who did it in his famous early Self-Portrait in Age of 23, from which his series of those famous self-portraits, which are believed to constitute the tenth part of his entire surviving oeuvre, have started to gain their all-reaching out recognition. Young Rembrandt was placing the coveted gold-chain on his chest in that self-portrait semi-jokingly, with a clear bit of self-irony. Ferdinand Bol, who was 32 at the time of creating his serious and ambitious self-portrait, was hardly joking while adding so many gold-chains on his chest. It was rather self-promotion, albeit extremely well-done artistically.
This work previously was on a public view quite rarely. It was exhibited a few times in the middle of the last century, in the end of the 1940s till mid-1950s, and then disappeared from public view for a half of a century. It started to be shown again at the exhibitions by The Leiden Collection from 2016 onward.
One more Rembrandt-inspired self-portrait at the exhibition at the H’ART Museum is by Covaert Flink.
The irony of the history of art thrives in the works which had been inspired by some other painters than those who were the real authors. Given an obscurity of centuries back and simple absence of documentation of the works of the Old Masters, it very often leads to wrong authorship attributions. This was exactly the case with this self-portrait of Covaert Flink ( 1643), which believed to be the work of Rembrandt, and his own self-portrait, for good three centuries, until the work was justly attributed to Flink between 1943 and 1953 only. So convinced were the experts even then that the work was even exhibited in 1953 as one of Rembrandt’s self-portraits.
Probably, we should not be too surprised by that. Flink’s self-portrait bears all details of Rembrandt’s style of self-portraying. Similarly to the self-portrait of Bol, this work has Rembrandt’s pose, gaze, dress, beret, and coloristic. This all matters especially in the case of Flink, because, very atypically for the old masters, he is known as painting only two self-portraits. A very specific detail of Covaert Flink’s work is his elbow here, which is painted in the position of as if being suspended in the air, which was a noted feature in the portraiture of the time. This detail too, Flink adopted from Rembrandt’s several self-portraits.
Being in the top British and Dutch private art collections for a long time, this important work was exhibited just once in the mid-1950, before it entered The Leiden Collection. With a pause for over 60 years, the work which was believed to be Rembrandt’s self-portrait for three hundred years, started to be exhibited widely, finally identified as one of just two existing self-portraits of Covaert Flink, from 2015 onward.
Those four portraits exhibited at the same exhibition in Amsterdam instituted a rare live look onto what the School of Rembrandt meant in real life and for the artists who represented it. It is both quite valuable and very interesting episode in the time-travelling process that such rare exhibitions can gifted us with
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