Rarely has a personality in the art world achieved such unanimity. Suddenly passing away a year and a half ago (see the news item dated 12/20/22), Ger Luijten was a curator as we like them: passionate, exciting, and eager to enrich the collections in his care. He had spoken several times in our columns: the first time in 2011 in a written interview, shortly after his appointment as head of the Custodia foundation, the second time in a video broadcast which had little of issues (but we are thinking of one day returning to this type of format), and finally in 2014 in one of our podcasts.
We had difficulty talking about all his acquisitions. We were even far from it. The exhibition which today pays tribute to him can only show a tiny part of the enrichments of this institution made under his supervision. And for good reason: no less than around 10,000 works have entered its collections, in just over twelve years. That’s on average a little more than two works per day!
If we do not write, except in exceptional circumstances and for lack of time, on the acquisitions of prints and autographs, nor on contemporary art which goes beyond our field (it has also acquired in this field), even the number drawings and tables prevented us from being exhaustive.
Several exhibitions had already given rise to the presentation of works included in the collections, notably On the pattern. Painting en plein air 1780-1870 (see the article) which showed how a very rich set of 19th century landscapes could be brought together to complete an initial core due to a bequest from Carlos van Hasselt and Andrzej Niewęgłowski, and another display of graphic art acquisitions ( see the article) in 2018. This tribute to Ger Luijten cannot obviously be exhaustive, but it aims to show all the areas in which the Custodia Foundation has acquired in recent years. We were promised that the catalog would soon have a paper edition; in the meantime, its publication on the internet allows you to refer for each work, via a link, to the notice dedicated to it
- 1. Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904)
A workshop corner1861
Oil on canvas – 24 × 41.5 cm
Paris, Custodia Foundation
Photo: Custodia Foundation
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See the image on his page
Of course, the oil sketches, mainly of landscapes, but not only – a recent acquisition by Fantin-Latour which we had cited but not reproduced (ill. 1) demonstrates it [1] – are in the spotlight. We can admire that of John Constable, one of the most important of this set which we had already seen in the 2020 exhibition and which we had already spoken about, but also works which are shown here for the first time.
Let us cite and reproduce, for example (they will all eventually appear in our acquisitions database):
- 2. Simon Denis (1755-1813)
THE…
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