Information
Relatively modest in number (70 works of the Flemish school and 54 of the Dutch), the Musée de Grenoble’s collection of northern art reflects an acquisitions policy that is opportunistic but highly focused, centered almost exclusively on seventeenth-century painting. It is distinguished by a group of large altar paintings that were consigned by the French State following Revolutionary and Napoleonic confiscations in France and Vienna (Jacob Jordaens, Abraham Bloemaert, Gaspar de Crayer II, Theodoor van Thulden, and, most importantly, the monumental Saint Gregory painted by Peter Paul Rubens for the Chiesa Nuova in Rome). From the time of its creation in 1799, the museum also presented small-format works across the genres (seized in the département of Isère or acquired in Paris), notably a series of still lifes by Osias Beert I. Throughout the nineteenth century, the collection was enhanced by gifts and purchases, especially of portraits and landscapes of the Dutch school (Meindert Hobbema, Bartholomeus Breenbergh, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout), and two Caravaggesque scenes by Matthias Stom.
Joëlle Vaissiere, Curator (April 2025)
Collection catalogues
Image d’une collection: Musée de Grenoble
Lemoine, Serge, Marianne Le Pommeré, Sandrine Lachaud and Jeanine Scaringella
Paris 1999
Peintures des écoles du Nord: la collection du musée de Grenoble
Destot, Marcel, in cooperation with Jacques Foucart
Paris 1994