Information

The diverse collection of the WAG – Qaumajuq includes a small but significant selection of Dutch and Flemish work. This part of the WAG – Qaumajuq’s collection began in 1973 with a donation of twenty-eight Northern Renaissance paintings and tapestries known collectively as the Gort Collection after their donors, Lord and Lady Gort. An avid art collector with business investments in the Canadian coal industry, Gort had shipped his collection to Canada for safekeeping during World War II. Shortly after former WAG – Qaumajuq Director Ferdinand Eckhardt’s arrival in Winnipeg in 1953, he convinced Gort to lend several works to the Gallery, which led to the subsequent gift including Nicolas Neufchatel’s Portrait of Johann Neudörfer the Elder, and the Master of the View of St. Gudule’s The Flagellation of Christ. In the intervening years, the collection was expanded with a variety of acquisitions, including a purchase of thirty-five seventeenth century prints in 1991. In 2015, the Salgo Trust for Education donated several Dutch and Flemish works, such as A Ship in Distress in Stormy Seas by Simon de Vlieger.

Nicole Fletcher, Collections Coordinator (October 2020)

Collection catalogues

The Winnipeg Art Gallery: guide to the collections
Borys, Stephen D.
Winnipeg 2010