CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

Ing Real Estate Supporting Catalogue of Dutch Paintings in National Gallery in Prague

The following announcement, dated 2 June 2006, just came to the attention of CODART and is much too important not to post, despite the delay.

ING Announcement

ING Real Estate Development will give financial support to the production of a comprehensive scientific catalogue of all 600 the Dutch paintings in the Old Art Collection kept by the National Gallery in Prague. Thanks to the financial assistance provided by ING Real Estate, the National Gallery can buy the scientific publications that are necessary for creating the catalogue.

 
National Gallery Prague - Sternberg Palace

Part of the donation will be used for the restauration of certain works of art which are too vulnerable to undergo the scientific research in relation to the production of the catalogue. The collection of Dutch paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries, containing some 600 pictures, is one of the most extensive sets in the Old Art Collection of the Czech National Gallery.

The English language catalogue will serve as a reference book for researchers and also as the basic source of information for the general public. Each and every work will be subjected to analysis from an art historical perspective and a comparison with comparable works in other collections. The scientific processing requires, among other things, the registration of the work, restoration examination, dating of pictures etc. The project is extremely extensive and technically challenging, and therefore only a highly specialised group of scientists can be involved in the research. This is one of the reasons for planning the printing of the publication for as late as 2010. As from this year, the project also receives support from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic.

With its approximately 600 pictures, the collection of Dutch paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries is one of the most extensive sets included in the Old Art Collection of the National Gallery in Prague. Only 97 pictures are on display at a standing exhibition in Šternberský Palace; some other works are displayed in, for example, Alšova jihoceská galerie in Hluboká nad Vltavou and at Nostickýy Palace in Prague, but the largest part of the collection is kept in the National Gallery’s repository. The whole collection’s importance lies primarily in its high quality and large extent. On an international scale, the collection is comparable with Dutch painting collections at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany.