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The Museum of Art in Łódź owns a diverse collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings and works on paper from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The collection was not shaped by a homogeneous collecting tradition but originates from diverse cultural domains of Northern Europe: it is eclectic and uneven in artistic quality.
The collection includes a meticulous Portrait of a Lady in a Dark Dress with a Ruff from the Delft school, painted in the style of middle-class realism, dating from the first half of the seventeenth century. The museum also has a painting by Dirck Dircksz. van Santvoort (1610–80), Portrait of a Young Man with Greenery in the Background, which dates from the mid-seventeenth century. The changes that took place in the art of portrait painting in the second half of the century are aptly represented by the works of Aleijda Wolfsen (1648–1692), Reinier de la Haye (1640–1695), and Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693).
Especially noteworthy is an etching by Adriaen van Ostade (1610–85) entitled Wine Tasting and the first dated painting by Claes Corneliszoon Moeyaert (1592–55): Jacob Despairing over Joseph’s Bloodied Robes (1624). Other prominent works in the museum’s collection include Interior of a Church by Daniel de Blieck (1610–73) and Still Life with a Roe Deer (c. 1610–12) by Frans Snijders (1579–57), one of the earliest specialist animal painters.
The Old Master collection is preserved at the Herbst Palace Museum, a branch of the Łódź Museum of Art.
Maria Mażewska, Assistant of the Old Art Department at Herbst Palace Museum (July 2024)