CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

The State Museum (Landesmuseum) for Art and Cultural History opened in February 1923. After the November 1918 Revolution that forced the abdication of Friedrich August, the last Grand Duke, the government of the Free State of Oldenburg decided in 1919 to establish a State Museum in Oldenburg Castle (Schloss Oldenburg). It was to be a contemporary, multi-disciplinary museum, in contrast to the courtly culture of representation that had prevailed in the past. The Frankfurt art historian and publicist Walter Müller-Wulckow (1886­–1964) was appointed as the founding director.

The Fine Arts Collection

The third section – the fine arts collection – comprises paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings from antiquity to the present day. The prints and drawings collection contains almost 14,000 works largely highlighting Classicism, German Impressionism, landscape prints from around 1900 (esp. featuring Worpswede), German Expressionism, New Objectivity, and German prints and drawings after 1945 as well as photographs.

Works from the nineteenth and twentieth century span the periods of Classicism and Romanticism, Historicism and the Founders’ Period (Gründerzeit), German Impressionism, North German landscape painting from around 1900 (esp. featuring Worpswede), German Expressionism (esp. Brücke), New Objectivity (esp. Franz Radziwill), and German painting after 1945.

The Old Masters Gallery includes some 1,000 Italian, Dutch, French, and German paintings from the fifteenth to eighteenth century. These include outstanding pieces by Lucas Cranach, Joos van Cleve, Jan van Scorel, Francesco Salviati, Bartholomäus Spranger, Gerrit Willemsz. Heda, Jacob Jordaens, Guido Reni, Johann Liss, Christian Wilhelm Dietrich, and Phillip Loutherbourg.

Another key subsection focuses on the court painter Johann Heinrich Tischbein (1751-1829). The museum possesses several of his paintings and numerous manuscript and prints from his estate. Tischbein was both artist and collector. In 1804, Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig of Oldenburg (1755–1829) acquired the painter’s art collection, comprising around 80 works. This served as the nucleus for the Grand Duke’s Picture Gallery, and hence became the basis of the present-day Old Masters Gallery at the State Museum.

The Grand Duke’s Collection

Prior to his acquisition of the Tischbein collection, the Duke had already purchased items from the collection of the ducal postmaster Major Georg von Hendorff (1744–1800), which was auctioned in Oldenburg in 1800. The latter comprised 257 paintings, mainly by Italian and Dutch masters, along with some copperplate engravings. Some of the items acquired by the Duke at the 1800 auction are still in the museum’s holdings today. Examples include The World Pays Homage to Apollo by Frans Francken the Younger (fig. 1).

The painting can be interpreted from a colonial historical perspective as representing Spanish or Habsburg rule over all the continents of the earth. It is also seen as the world paying homage to Emperor Charles V.

In a further expansive move in 1804, the Duke purchased the Tischbein collection, with works by Italian, Dutch and Flemish masters. Among its highlights were Rubens’s Prometheus Bound – to which we will return below – and the double portrait of Petrus Aegidius and his wife Cornelia Sandrin by Quentin Massys (fig. 2).

During the nineteenth century, the portraits were tentatively ascribed to a German painter, with suggestions including Holbein and Bartel Bruyn. Max Friedländer correctly attributed them to the Antwerp artist Quentin Massys, and in 1954 Louis van Wachem identified the sitters as Pieter Gillis, also known as Petrus Aegidius, and his wife. Petrus Aegidius was an editor, lawyer, and humanist in Antwerp.

The Duke further enlarged his collection (with Tischbein’s help) over the following decades. One early nineteenth-century acquisition (in 1820) was Jacob Jordaens’s The Miracles of Saint Dominic (fig. 3).

Grand Duke Nikolaus Friedrich Peter (1827–1900), grandson of Peter Friedrich Ludwig, greatly expanded the collection in the mid-nineteenth century by acquiring masterpieces in Italy, France, and Germany, propelling the collection to international fame. The Dutch and Flemish acquisitions included works by masters such as Rembrandt, Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Aert van der Neer, Frans Snijders, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacob van Ruisdael.

The Grand Duke’s Picture Gallery

The ducal collection was displayed in a picture gallery in Oldenburg Castle and opened to visitors in 1817. In 1867, the collection moved to custom-built premises at the Augusteum (fig. 4). This first art museum in Oldenburg was made possible by the Grand Duke Nikolaus Friedrich Peter, who donated the plot of land and 10,000 thalers, thereby simultaneously creating a monument to his father, Paul Friedrich August. The architect Ernst Klingenberg (1830–1918) designed the building in the style of a yellow brick Italian Renaissance palazzo and its construction took only about two years. The Grand Duke’s Picture Gallery occupied the upper floor, while the lower floor was used for temporary exhibitions mounted by the local art association.

With the end of the German Empire and the forced abdication of the Grand Duke in 1918, the Picture Gallery was dismantled. Those interested in purchasing the former Duke’s art collection included the newly founded Free State of Oldenburg. But in 1919, after failed negotiations, the last Grand Duke decided to auction off around 120 costly masterpieces in the Netherlands. They were sold by Frederik Muller & Cie in Amsterdam at diverse public sales in 1923, 1924, and 1927. The rest were acquired by the Free State of Oldenburg, where they were exhibited in Oldenburg’s newly-established State Museum for Art and Cultural History in Oldenburg Castle from 1923 onwards.

A few of the paintings that were initially auctioned off were bought back a short time later. These included the Portrait of a Bearded Man by Nicolaes Eliasz. Pickenoy (fig. 5), which probably belonged to the original Duke’s Picture Gallery. (Like almost all Dutch portraits in the collection, it had been removed from the gallery in 1919 and sold at auction in Amsterdam in 1924). The State Museum was fortunate in this regard. Other paintings sold before the auctions held by Frederik Muller & Cie could not be repurchased. These included three portraits by Verspronck (one now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and two in Rijksmuseum Twenthe (inv. no 0514 and 0515); and Rembrandt’s tronie of an old bearded man (now in The Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum).

The first director of the State Museum, Walter Müller-Wulckow, was informed by Paul Cassirer as early as December 1923 that “the Ravesteyn [to whom the Pickenoy painting was attributed at this time], 7000 guilders” was still available on 25 June, 1924. Müller-Wulckow reported from Amsterdam: “The battle has been fought and three pictures have been captured […].” These included the Portrait of a Bearded Man, which at 4,900 guilders was the most expensive piece. The portrait has been in the possession of the State Museum since 1924.

The State Museum continues its search for works from the former Duke’s collection to this day. Very rarely, these efforts are rewarded with reacquisitions. A case in point is Prometheus Bound by the Rubens workshop (fig. 6) – one of the most important acquisitions in the museum’s history. It is one of several known versions of the motif by the Rubens workshop, only two of which survive today: one version in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the other in Oldenburg. This impressive painting tells the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and was severely punished for it. But its eventful history gives it a second significance: it reflects the loss of the Grand Duke’s collection of paintings for Oldenburg and recalls the fate of many artworks during the Nazi era. Originally from the Tischbein collection, Prometheus Bound was displayed in the Grand Duke’s Picture Gallery in Oldenburg from 1804 to 1919. It was one of the ten most valuable artworks in the collection. It was among those taken to the Netherlands in 1919 and auctioned by Frederik Muller auctioneers in 1924. It was initially purchased by the art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who finally sold it to the couple Ernst Proehl and Julia Schwarz in 1925. After the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, the couple, who were considered Jewish under the so-called Nuremberg Laws, suffered persecution and were forced to sell the painting to the Amsterdam art dealer P. de Boer for 20,000 guilders. The art historian and SS officer Kajetan Mühlmann, who was heavily involved in Nazi art theft, acquired it from De Boer for the planned “Führermuseum” in Linz. During the Second World War, the painting was stored with other works of art in a salt mine in the Alps, where the paint layer became badly damaged. The Rubens masterpiece was finally returned to the Netherlands under restitution laws in 1951, but it was not until 2009 that the painting was returned to Proehl’s rightful heirs.

The painting was reacquired by the State Museum in 2021, more than a hundred years after it had left the Grand Duke’s collection. It is currently undergoing examination and restoration.

Despite the losses suffered after 1918, the Old Masters Collection of the State Museum is still highly relevant to the entire region and beyond. Dutch art was always one of the most strongly represented schools in the Oldenburg collection. This preference of the Grand Dukes – which continued in later acquisitions – is probably because of the Netherlands’ proximity to Oldenburg. Today, the State Museum’s collection of Dutch and Flemish masters – which has been on display in the Augusteum since 1981 – includes numerous pieces besides those mentioned: from landscape paintings to still lifes and portraits, by artists such as Barent Avercamp, Jan Wynants, Aert van der Neer, and Willem Claesz. Heda.

Dr. Anna Heinze is Acting Director and Curator of Fine Art, Decorative Art, and Design at Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Oldenburg. She has been a member of CODART since 2025.