Musée Condé

While the French and Italian schools are widely represented in Chantilly, Dutch art reigns supreme at the musée Condé – sometimes described as France’s second most significant collection of Old Master paintings after the Louvre. This collection was started in the seventeenth century by the Prince de Condé and continued in the following century by the Orléans family. The central figure in its history is Henri d’Orléans (1822-1897), Duke of Aumale. He gradually became an avid collector of Dutch art and bought paintings by masters such as Ruisdael, Willem van de Velde the Younger, Jacob van Loo, and Allaert van Everdingen. Besides his sixteen Dutch paintings, Aumale also owned over eighty drawings of the same school in his rich collection of works on paper. Largely acquired during his period of exile in England (1848-1871), this collection of drawings was completed during the last twenty years of his life – when Dutch art became one of his main passions. As a great lover of prints, the Duke of Aumale also owned twenty-two etchings by Rembrandt, most of which he acquired in England in the 1860s. The rarity of the states, the quality of the prints, and the prestige of their provenance make this collection one of the most beautiful to be preserved in France. His interest went far beyond Rembrandt, however: the duke acquired prints by a surprising range of artists, including Adriaen van Ostade, Paulus Potter, Nicolaes Berchem, Ferdinand Bol, Antoon van Dyck or Hendrik Goudt. These collections were all bequeathed to the Institut de France on the duke’s death in 1897 and today contribute to making the musée Condé a major collection of Dutch art in France.

Baptiste Roelly