Fourteen paintings from The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts in Kyiv (Ukraine) will be on show in The Hague at Museum Bredius. Portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and history paintings from both museums are shown together for the first time in ensembles that tell the story of the close ties linking Ukraine and the Netherlands. Old Masters from Kyiv in The Hague. The Khanenko Museum at Museum Bredius was realized in close collaboration with the RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, The Khanenko Museum was closed to visitors, and its collection was dismantled and secured. However, as early as May of that year, the museum resumed its work: guided tours were held through the emptied halls, telling the stories of the building and the collection, and soon the first exhibition project was launched. In October 2022, a missile strike near the museum damaged the building — all façade windows and part of the roof were destroyed. Immediately after the explosion, the building was sealed, and the museum had to close again.

Restoration work has now been completed, and despite the absence of a permanent exhibition, the museum continues its active operations, offering a variety of temporary exhibitions and educational programs, while also engaging in cultural diplomacy through international partnerships and initiatives, including the exhibition Old Masters from Kyiv in The Hague. The Khanenko Museum at Museum Bredius.

Bredius’s travels

In 1897 Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), director of the Mauritshuis, traveled to Eastern Europe in search of long-forgotten paintings by Rembrandt for the great Rembrandt exhibition in Amsterdam celebrating the investiture of Princess Wilhelmina as the new Dutch monarch the following year. Bredius’s two-month journey took him to Warsaw, Cracow, Lviv, Kyiv, St Petersburg and Moscow as well as various castles in Galicia. He filled forty pages in two notebooks (shown in the exhibition) describing the extensive collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings assembled by Bohdan (1849-1917) and Varvara Khanenko (1852-1922). In 1919, their stately mansion in the Ukrainian capital became home to The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts.

Man in Oriental Dress

One of the works on show from Kyiv is a large portrait of a man in Oriental dress, after Rembrandt’s painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Bredius wrote in his notebook: ‘Rembr[andt’s] father lifesize, displayed high, wearing a large turban[,] may be by R[embrand]t’. Museum Bredius presents the painting alongside a self-portrait by Samuel van Hoogstraten (1644) from its own collection.

Other works from The Khanenko Museum on display include paintings by the Master of the Khanenko Adoration, Kerstiaen de Keuninck, Klaes Molenaer, Anthonie Palamedesz., Peter Paul Rubens, Jacques Jordaens, Alessandro Magnasco and Juan de Zurbarán.

This exhibition was realized jointly with the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD, The Hague).