Northern Baroque Splendor
The HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION from: LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vienna
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20.9.2014 – 20.9.2015
Greenwich (CT), Cincinnati
The HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION, a private collection of 98 masterpieces by Dutch, Flemish, German, Italian and Spanish painting, has been administered by the Princely Collections as a long-term loan since December 2007. From February 2008 selected works from this collection were included in a number of temporary exhibitions and have also augmented the permanent display at the Liechtenstein summer palace. The HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION was exhibited in its entirety in Vienna in 2011.
Following a temporary exhibition in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in 2013/14, selected masterpieces from this superb collection will be displayed at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, and afterwards at the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio in 2014/15.
One of the largest and most varied collections of Netherlandish Baroque painting assembled anywhere in recent decades will be on view at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, near New York, beginning this fall. The exhibition Northern Baroque Splendor. The HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION from: LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vienna will be displayed across multiple galleries from 20 September 2014 to 12 April 2015.
The HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION was assembled by Otto Christian and Renate Fassbender over a period of several decades and since 2007 has been administered as a long-term loan of the Princely Collections in Vienna, where it was exhibited in its entirety in the former LIECHTENSTEIN MUSEUM in 2011. The selective showing at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich is the show’s inaugural venue in the United States, where the collection will subsequently be shown at the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio.
Primarily comprised of Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century paintings, the collection exhibits all the naturalism and technical brilliance for which these schools are famous. While many modern collections of Old Masters specialize in a single style or subject matter, the HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION is admirable for offering examples of virtually all the genres produced by Lowland artists during the Baroque period – history paintings, genre, portraits, landscapes, marine pieces, still lifes and flower pieces, animal paintings and hunting scenes.
“The Hohenbuchau Collection is remarkable for offering examples of virtually all the genres produced by Netherlandish Old Masters as well as rich diversity of size, format, and subject within each genre,” says Peter C. Sutton, Executive Director of the Bruce Museum and the organizer of the exhibition.
The exhibition includes works by some of the most important artists of the period, including the Utrecht Caravaggists Gerard von Honthorst and Hendrick ter Brugghen, the Leiden fijnschilder Gerard Dou, Frans and Willem van Mieris, the landscape painters Salomon van Ruysdael and Jacob van Ruisdael and the great Flemish masters Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens. In addition, the HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION also holds ten paintings created in collaboration among artists of varying specialities.
“This show presents an exciting opportunity for us to display a collection of Old Master paintings of spectacular quality”, says Julie Aronson, curator at the Cincinnati Art Museum. “Baroque art is intended to evoke emotion by appealing to the senses with astounding realism and highlighting rich, dramatic details – and this art certainly does that. The masterpieces of the HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION not only open a window onto the culture of the seventeenth century, a crucial period of art history, but delight us with the artists’ masterful handling of color and light.”
The HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION was assembled by Otto Christian and Renate Fassbender over a period of several decades and since 2007 has been administered as a long-term loan of the Princely Collections in Vienna, where it was exhibited in its entirety in the former LIECHTENSTEIN MUSEUM in 2011. The selective showing in Cincinnati concludes the exhibition tour in the USA, where the collection was previously shown at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich.
Curator: Peter C. Sutton
Catalogue: The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue of the collection in German and English, authored by Peter C. Sutton and published in 2011.
