From the museum website
The main focus of the collection is the painting of the seventeenth century, in particular the Dutch and Flemish Baroque, an era known as the Golden Age. Within these parameters, the collection aims at presenting this epoch and its schools both in terms of the multiplicity of its pictorial genres, ranging from the history painting, portrait, genre scene and landscape to the still life, and of the broad diversity within each individual genre. An interesting feature of the collection is that it is not composed exclusively of cabinet paintings – as is so often the case with so many private collections today – but also has examples of works executed in large-scale and in some cases even monumental formats.
To a large degree, the collection was assembled autonomously. Good paintings have been replaced with better examples, the result of growing expertise acquired from numerous visits to all the world’s major museums and to countless exhibitions which honed the eye of the collector Otto Christian Faßbender, underpinned by the advice of expert restorers and the resources of an extensive library. When a painting was being considered for acquisition, whether from other private collections, on the fine art market or at auction, two criteria were always imperative: the painterly quality of the work and its state of preservation.
While many great names – from Brueghel to Momper, from Rubens to Jordaens, from Ter Brugghen to Honthorst – are represented in the collection, it also contains superb and important works by less well-known artists standing side by side on equal terms with the paintings of the great masters.
Many of the paintings in this collection have already been shown all over the world in museums or temporary exhibitions. Equally, many are familiar to scholarly circles from publication in catalogues raisonnés or other books on art. Since December 2007 the collection has been on loan to the LIECHTENSTEIN MUSEUM on a permanent basis. From 27 May to 20 September 2011 this distinguished collection will be presented to the general public for the first time in its entirety in the form of a temporary exhibition.
Designed by Dr Johann Kräftner, director of the Liechtenstein Museum, the exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue in German and English by the internationally renowned art historian Dr Peter Sutton, as well as by a varied programme of associated events.