Information

The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux houses a remarkable group of Flemish and Netherlandish paintings that reveal the artistic vibrancy of these regions in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Jan Bruegel’s Wedding Dance is one of the most emblematic masterpieces in the collection, which also includes works by Peter Paul Rubens, notably The Martyrdom of Saint George and The Miracle of Saint Justus. Moreover, the collection comprises important  works by Anthony van Dyck, Johannes Fijt, Frans Snijders, Jan Porcellis, Joos de Momper (II), Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts, and Jan van Kessel.

The museum also holds a significant collection of Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century. Alongside landscapes, represented most prominently by Jan van Goyen (The Oak Struck by Lighning) and Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael, there are important examples of religious art (Benjamin Cuyp, Abraham Hondius, Herman van Swanevelt, Pieter de Grebber), antique subjects (Pieter Soutman’s Laocoön), genre scenes (Cuyp), portraits (Jan van Noordt, Nicolaes Maes, Adriaen Hanneman, Frans Hals, and Hendrick ter Brugghen’s The Lute Player), and still lifes (Jan Davidsz. de Heem).

Also worth mentioning is the prints and drawings room, with a number of sheets by artists of the northern school, some of which, forming part of Albert Brandenburg’s major legacy of 1891, are yet to be studied.

Sandra Buratti Hasan, Curator of Fifteenth- to Eighteenth-century Painting and Sculpture (March 2025)

Collection catalogues

L’ or & l’ombre: catalogue critique et raisonné des peintures hollandaises du dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles
Le Bihan, Olivier
Bordeaux [etc.] 1990