The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper is closed to the public due to major renovations. The museum is scheduled to reopen in spring 2026. Please consult the museum’s website for updates.

Information

The northern collection at Quimper is fully representative of the variety of genres practiced by Flemish and Dutch artists. It is no surprise that the seventeenth century dominates this group, which also includes a number of important works from the end of the sixteenth century that are representative of Mannerism (in particular The First Family by Cornelis van Haarlem) and—even rarer—a small corpus of paintings from the eighteenth century (among which Nicolaas Verkolje’s Susanna and the Elders stands out).

To return to the seventeenth century, artistic production was prolific, culminating in history painting with Peter Paul Rubens’s pulsating study The Martyrdom of Saint Lucy. Staying with the grand genre, the museum also presents a masterly Descent from the Cross by Peter van Mol from the Couvent des Minimes in Saint-Pol-de-Léon.

It is also worth mentioning a remarkable acquisition from 1985, The Reading Lesson by Pieter de Grebber, a masterly demonstration of the dissemination of the school of Rubens. The landscape, portrait, and still life genres are also abundantly represented in the Quimper collections. Gems of still life include two variations on the theme of exotic fruits by a painter rare in France, Dirk Valkenburg, and above all Otto Marseus van Schrieck’s Thistles, Squirrel, Reptiles and Insects, which is generally considered the artist’s masterpiece.

Text by CODART (March 2025)