Information

Founded in 1855, the Musée de Picardie in Amiens holds an important collection of Flemish and Dutch paintings ranging from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Among paintings presented to Amiens Cathedral by the city’s elite are five exceptional panels (1518) for which the Master of Amiens is named. This anonymous painter trained in Antwerp and was a prominent influence in Picardy in the 1520s. Most of the seventeenth-century paintings, representing the largest part of the collection, were donated by the Lavalard brothers, who inherited 110 paintings of the northern school in 1890. Of particular note is a fine group of portraits and head studies (Frans Hals, Jacob Jordaens, Anthony van Dyck, Govert Flinck, Jan Weenix, Gerard de Lairesse), tronies and genre scenes (Cornelis de Vos, Adriaen Brouwer, Joos van Craesbeeck, Adriaen van Ostade, David Ryckaert), landscapes and seascapes (Salomon van Ruysdael, Simon de Vlieger, Jan van Goyen), still lifes (Frans Snyders, Daniël Seghers, Willem Kalf), and Italianate landscapes (Jan Weenix, Johannes Lingelbach, Cornelis van Poelenburgh, Adam Pijnacker, Jan Asselijn). Representative of the end of the Dutch Golden Age are paintings by Arent de Gelder, Gerard de Lairesse, and Willem Kalf. Finally, the museum has an exceptional harpsichord, made by Joannes Ruckers in Antwerp in 1612, from the collection of the Amiénois art lover Gérard de Berny (1880–1957).

Text based on the catalogue ‘Couleurs d’Italie, couleurs du Nord, peintures étrangères des musées d’Amiens’ (Matthieu Pinette, Somogy éditions d’art, 2001)

Collection catalogues

Couleurs du Nord: peintures flamandes et hollandaises des musées
Amiens 1999