Drawing the Figure in Rembrandt's Time

Basé sur les collections exceptionnelles de la Frits Lugt Collection, ce catalogue tente d’éclairer le rôle du dessin de figure à l’époque de Rembrandt. La publication accompagne une exposition présentée à la Fondation Custodia à Paris. Bien que souvent associé au paysage, l’art néerlandais du XVIIème siècle excellait tout autant dans la représentation de la figure humaine. Qu’il s’agisse d’études réalisées d’après des modèles vivants ou de mémoire, aussi bien que des portraits et des scènes de la vie quotidienne ou d’épisodes historiques, nombreuses de ces œuvres furent créées en préparation de compositions peintes ou gravées, mais aussi souvent comme œuvres achevées ou à des fins pédagogiques. Spanning the entire seventeenth century, from the transitional generation of Hendrick Goltzius, Abraham Bloemaert and Jacques de Gheyn to that of Gerard de Lairesse and Adriaen van der Werff, this book covers the work of such major artists as Willem Buytewech, who focused on Hollands’s jeunesse dorée; the brothers Adriaen and Isaac van Ostade, who specialized in representations of peasant life; members of the Ter Borch family; Jan de Braij, whose varied oeuvre straddles several genres; and Adriaen van de Velde, a landscapist who has long been admired for his figure studies in chalk. Rembrandt and his school are particularly well represented, with studies from models as well as genre scenes and often rarely depicted episodes from the Bible and literature. It is in his workshop and circle that drawing the female nude emerges as a practice that set a standard for artists elsewhere in the Netherlands and abroad. Extensive entries present each of the selected drawings, many of which count among the collection’s best-known, while others have received little attention in the past. Managed by the Fondation Custodia since 1947, the Frits Lugt Collection is widely renowned for its Old Master Drawings from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and especially for its remarkable group of works from the Dutch school, covering every aspect of the extraordinary creativity and variety of artistic production in the Northern Netherlands in the seventeenth century. The core of the collection was formed by the Dutchman Frits Lugt (1884–1970), one of the great drawings connoisseurs and collectors of his age. Also including important prints, paintings, artists’ letters and rare books, the collection continues to be enriched, and several recently acquired sheets are here presented for the first time. The catalogue accompanies an exhibition held in Paris at the Fondation Custodia from 21 March to 21 June 2026.