Over the past two years, the Harvard Art Museums have slowly been welcoming into the collection a blockbuster gift of 18 paintings produced in the Netherlands during the 17th century. The paintings were first promised to the museums in 2007 by notable Boston art collectors Peter and Anne Brooke. In 2003, CODART was honored to visit the the Brooke-collection during a study trip to Boston, Cambridge, and Worcester.
Information from the Harvard Art Museums, 27 April 2018
The Brooke collection is crucial for the museums in several ways. The quality of the paintings, by artists such as Jan van der Heyden, Jan van Goyen, Aert van der Neer, Willem van Mieris, and Godfried Schalcken, among others, is uniformly high.
Jan van Goyen (1596-1656), View of Rhenen, ca. 1640
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Gift of Peter and Anne Brooke
Currently, eight paintings from the Brooke gift are on view at Harvard, with most hanging in the Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo Gallery (Room 2300). In the coming months, other paintings from the collection will be displayed. Highlights now on view include a still-life painting, a convivial interior scene, and landscape paintings. See the article A Glimpse into the Dutch Golden Age on the Harvard Art Museums website for more details about these selected works.
Anthonie Palamedesz. (1601-1673), Merry Company in an Interior, 1633
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Gift of Peter and Anne Brooke