Information
Associate Member of CODART since 2007
Specialist in Provenance Research and the History of Collecting Dutch and Flemish Paintings, Princeton, New Jersey
Esmée Quodbach is an independent art historian specializing in the history of collecting, with a focus on seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings. She is the former Assistant Director and Editor-in-Chief of the Center for the History of Collecting at The Frick Collection, New York.
Areas of specialization
- 17th-century Dutch painting
- Provenance research
- History of collecting
- Collectors of Dutch and Flemish art in the United States
- Connoisseurship and its history
- International art market (past and present)
- Widener Collection
- Leo Nardus (1868-1955) [art dealer]
Exhibitions curated since 1999
CODART publications
Esmée Quodbach, “Henry Clay Frick and The Frick Collection”, CODARTfeatures, October 2013.
Selected publications
Forthcoming
The Evolving House Museum: Art Collectors and Their Residences, Then and Now
Esmée Quodbach and Margaret Iacono Wertz (eds.)
Expected 2023
“Wilhelm Bode and Johannes Vermeer: Creating a Taste and a Market”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay, to appear in Wilhelm von Bode and the Art Market, edited by Joanna Smalcerz, in the series Studies in the History of Collecting & Markets
Leiden (Brill), expected 2022/23
“Rise and Fall: The American career of Leo Nardus, 1894–1908”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay, to appear in “Money in the Air”: Art Dealers and the Transatlantic Market, 1880–1930 (preliminary title), edited by Gail Feigenbaum, et al.
Los Angeles (Getty Research Institute), expected 2022
2021
“View of Haarlem and Haarlemmermeer, Jan van Goyen, 1646, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York”
Essay in 100 Masterpieces Dutch and Flemish Art (1350-1750): CODART Canon, edited by Maartje Beekman, Rosalie van Gulick and Barbara Luijken, Marijke Overpelt, pp. 208-209.
Tielt (Lannoo) 2021
“A Forgotten Episode from America’s History of Collecting: The Rise and Fall of Art Dealer Leo Nardus, 1894–1908”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in Simiolus. Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 43 (2021), no. 4, pp. 353–75
“What’s Mine Is Yours”: Private Collectors and Public Patronage in the United States. Essays in Honor of Inge Reist”
Esmée Quodbach (ed.)
Volume editor, author of Introduction, pp. 23–35, and essay “A Philadelphia Story: John Graver Johnson and His Gift to the City,” pp. 206–31
Madrid (CEEH) and New York (The Frick Collection) 2021
2020
America and the Art of Flanders: Collecting Paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, and Their Circles
Esmée Quodbach (ed.)
Volume editor, author of Introduction and essay “‘Never a dull picture’: John Graver Johnson Collects Flemish Art,” pp. 88–101
Series: The Frick Collection Studies in the History of Art Collecting in America. Vol. 5
University Park (Penn State University Press) and New York (The Frick Collection) 2020
2019
“An Unsung Hero: Henry Gurdon Marquand and His 1889 Gift to The Metropolitan Museum of Art”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in New York: Art and Cultural Capital of the Gilded Age, edited by Margaret R. Laster and Chelsea Bruner, pp. 105–21. Series: Routledge Research in Art History
London (Routledge) 2019
“‘Frans Hals and the Moderns: Hals Meets Manet, Singer Sargent, Van Gogh,’ Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem”
Esmée Quodbach
Exhibition review in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide (NCAW) 18 (2019), no. 1, posted online March 2019
2017
“Collecting Old Masters for New York: Henry Gurdon Marquand and The Metropolitan Museum of Art”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 1–11. (Memorial issue dedicated to Walter Liedtke)
“Acquisition of the Year: The Van Otterloo and Weatherbie Gift to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston”
Esmée Quodbach
Article in Apollo, December (2017), pp. 16–17
2016
“America’s First Vermeer: ‘Young Woman with a Water Pitcher’ in the Metropolitan Museum of Art”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in Collecting for the Public. Works That Made a Difference, edited by Bart Cornelis, et al., pp. 78–83
London (Paul Holberton Publishing) 2016
“The Life of a Painting: Some New Findings on Vermeer’s ‘Girl Interrupted at Her Music’ in The Frick Collection”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in “Gij zult niet feestbundelen.” 34 Bijdragen voor Peter Hecht, edited by Jonathan Bikker, et al., pp. 160–68
Zwolle (Waanders & De Kunst) 2016
2015
“‘I have great faith in your judgment’: Henry Clay Frick and Roger Fry”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in The Frick Collection Members’ Magazine, Fall 2015, pp. 12–15
2014
Holland’s Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals.
Esmée Quodbach (ed.)
Volume editor, author of Introduction, xii–xix, and essay “Collecting Vermeer, 1887–1919,” pp. 94–107
Series: The Frick Collection Studies in the History of Art Collecting in America. Vol. 1
University Park (Penn State University Press) and New York (The Frick Collection) 2014
2013
“Henry Clay Frick, Dutch Painting, and the Hudson-Fulton Exhibition”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in The Frick Collection Members’ Magazine, Fall 2013, pp. 14–17
“Hollands Gouden Eeuw in New York/Holland’s Golden Age in New York”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in “United States” issue of Mauritshuis in Focus 26 (2013), no. 1, pp. 6–14
“‘The Thirty-First Vermeer’: The Rediscovery of Girl Interrupted at Her Music”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in The Frick Collection Members’ Magazine, Spring/Summer 2013, pp. 10–15
2011
“Henry Clay Frick Collects Rembrandt, 1899–1919”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in Rembrandt and His School: Masterworks from the Frick and Lugt Collections, exhibition catalogue by Colin B. Bailey, et al., pp. 10–27
New York (The Frick Collection) 2011
2009
“‘I want this collection to be my monument.’ Henry Clay Frick and the Formation of The Frick Collection”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in Journal of the History of Collections 21 (2009), no. 2, pp. 229–40. (Special issue: The Art Collector: Between Philanthropy and Self-Glorification)
2008
“The ‘Sphinx of Delft.’ Rediscovering Vermeer at The Frick Collection”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in The Frick Collection Members’ Magazine, Spring/Summer 2008, pp. 2–7
2007
The Age of Rembrandt in New York. Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Esmée Quodbach
New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and New Haven (Yale University Press) 2007
Also published as The Age of Rembrandt. Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 65, no. 1 (Summer 2007; expanded issue)
2005
“‘American Collections Rich in Dutch Art.’ De eerste Amerikaanse reis van Cornelis Hofstede de Groot”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in Van Cuyp tot Rembrandt. De verzameling Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, exhibition catalogue edited by Luuk Pijl, pp. 65–79
Groningen (Groninger Museum) and Ghent (Snoeck) 2005
2004
“‘Rembrandt’s “Gilder” is Here’: How America Got Its First Rembrandt and France Lost Many of Its Old Masters”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in Simiolus. Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 31 (2004), nos. 1/2, pp. 90–107.
“Rembrandt’s Journey. Painter, Draftsman, Etcher (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago)”
Esmée Quodbach
Exhibition review in Burlington Magazine 146, no. 1213 (April 2004), pp. 279–81
2003
“Colin B. Bailey, Patriotic Taste. Collecting Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Paris”
Esmée Quodbach
Book review in Burlington Magazine 145, no. 1201 (April 2003), pp. 301
2002
“‘The Last of the American Versailles’: The Widener Collection at Lynnewood Hall”
Esmée Quodbach
Essay in Simiolus. Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 29 (2002), nos. 1/2, pp. 42–96