From the museum website, 30 November 2010
The exhibition Treasures from Moscow. Dutch drawings from the Pushkin Museum is presenting the ninety best 17th-century Dutch drawings from the Pushkin Museum. The Bonnefantenmuseum will be the first place outside Russia to exhibit such a large number of these works in 150 years. The Pushkin Museum’s collection of drawings originated from
several Moscow collectors, who acquired their works at auctions and, in particular, from art dealers in Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin and many other German cities.
Treasures from Moscow presents a chronological and thematic overview of Dutch drawing from the 17th century. It includes drawings from undisputed celebrities like Rembrandt, Abraham Bloemaert and Adriaen van Ostade. There are drawings by artists born in the Netherlands, as well as those from elsewhere who sought refuge in the 17th -century centre of the arts, such as Gerard de Lairesse from Liège and Wallerant Vaillant from Lille.
The underlying principle in compiling the exhibition was the astounding quality of the art works, followed by the aim of displaying a variety of themes, compositions and functions. For instance, sketches will be displayed alongside fully detailed figure and composition studies. In this way, the exhibition will give a splendid overview of Dutch drawing in the Golden Age – hitherto practically unprecedented – as well as a glimpse of the history of Dutch art collection in Russia.
The exhibition is accompanied by the extensive catalogue: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts – Netherlandish, Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the XVI-XVIII Centuries, Belgian and Dutch Drawings of the XIX-XX Centuries.
This catalogue, which is based on the existing Russian catalogue, was compiled on the initiative of the Foundation for Cultural Inventory (SCI) together with the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, under the supervision of Charles Dumas from the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD).