1. Visit to the Adriaen de Vries Museum at Drottningholm Palace with Linda Hinners

The former stables at Drottningholm Palace house the Adriaen de Vries Museum. The museum contains the world’s largest collection of this artist’s work. It is not possible to visit the Adriaen de Vries Museum on an individual basis, therefore we are very pleased to offer CODART 25 participants the opportunity to visit this unique collection on the afternoons of Sunday 16 June and Tuesday 18 June. The visits will be guided by Linda Hinners, curator of sculpture at the Nationalmuseum.

Adriaen de Vries (1556-1626) was originally from The Hague, and trained in Delft and Florence. His expertise in modeling and his technical skills appealed to Europe’s courts and art patrons, who were eager to obtain bronze sculptures to adorn their Kunstkammern, galleries, and gardens. The fact that many of De Vries’s sculptures ended up in Sweden can be explained by the country’s success in the Thirty Years’ War and the siege of Prague in 1648, and as a consequence of the Northern Wars and the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658. By the end of the seventeenth century the sculptures were placed in the gardens of Drottningholm Palace. Many of these original sculptures have been on display in the museum since 2001, after being replaced in the gardens by modern bronze casts.

Traveling to the Adriaen de Vries Museum is at your own leisure on Sunday. The visit concludes with a scenic boat trip back to the city center of Stockholm. This is optional and an extra fee of 20 euros applies. You can also travel back to the city individually.

Drottningholm Palace
Built in the late seventeenth century, Drottningholm Palace is the private residence of the Swedish royal family. The rooms in the southern wing of the palace are reserved for this purpose. The rest of the palace and grounds are open to the public, and include the eighteenth-century Chinese Pavilion and the Palace Theater.

Please note that only the visit to the Adriaen de Vries collection will be arranged by CODART. You can visit the adjacent Drottningholm Palace and its grounds at your own leisure during the regular opening hours. More information can be found here.

2. Cycle tour of Stockholm’s Royal Djurgården by Camilla Hjelm

Join us for a pleasant bike tour at Royal Djurgården – once a royal hunting ground, until it was opened to the public in the mid-1700s. This museum island in the center of Stockholm offers beautiful palaces, gardens and animal life. The bike route will lead along the shoreline, passing museums, Skansen – the world’s oldest open air museum – and places of historic interest. We will visit some of the most beautiful museums in Sweden: we will be welcomed by museum director Karin Sidén at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde and visit Thielska Gallery. The bike tour will be led by Camilla Hjelm, Chief Curator of the Spökslottet.

Short clip giving an impression of Royal Djurgården:

3. Architecture walking tour of Stockholm (Old Town and Riddarholmen) with Martin Olin

This walking tour is dedicated to the history of Stockholm and its connection to Dutch and Flemish history, art and architecture. Martin Olin, Director of Collections at the Nationalmuseum, will take you on a guided tour to various highlights in the old city.

The designs of many of Stockholm’s most important buildings reflect foreign influences. In the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, architects and artists from different European countries contributed to Stockholm’s cityscape. The tour will focus on the architecture of the islands in the old city. A rich merchant class, often with family connections in the Dutch Republic, resided here and therefore a lot of buildings and locations that you will visit during the tour have a connection to Dutch and Flemish artists and architects, such as Nicodemus Tessin (II) and his father Nicodemus Tessin (I). Besides the Royal Palace, the Roman ideals of father and son are conveyed by the old Riksbank (National Bank) and the Tessin family house. Another example is the Riddarhuset, the “House of Nobility.” Built between 1641 and 1675, the Riddarhuset has remained more or less unchanged since its construction. Its façade was designed in the Dutch Classicist style by Justus Vinckboons (ca. 1620–1698), an Amsterdam architect who is also known for designing buildings such as the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam. The tour includes visits to several churches, such as the Storkyrkan (Old Church), the German (or St. Gertrude’s) Church, and the Riddarholm Church, the final resting place of most Swedish monarchs.

4. Visit to the collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French and Scandinavian art with Carl-Johan Olsson

The in-depth study visit to the collections of the eighteenth and nineteenth century at the Nationalmuseum will be guided by Carl-Johan Olsson, curator of nineteenth-century art. The focus will be on the early history of the collection of French and Swedish art. The Nationalmuseum is Sweden’s biggest art museum, housing around 16.000 paintings and sculptures, together with decorative arts and around 500.000 prints and drawings. The beginning of the collection dates back to the royal collection of King Gustav Vasa I in the sixteenth century, but it has been expanded and reorganized considerably in later centuries.

Swedish paintings and sculptures from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, heavily influenced by French art, are well represented with artworks by Johan Tobias Sergel, Alexander Roslin, Carl Olof Larsson, Richard Sven Bergh, Eugène Fredrik Jansson, Anders Leonard Zorn, Hanna Pauli and Eva Frederika Bonnier. The collection of French eighteenth-century paintings is considered to be one of the best worldwide, due to the numerous acquisitions by Count Carl Gustaf Tessin, Swedish ambassador in Paris, made in the 1740s. Among the artworks are paintings by François Boucher, Jean Baptiste Oudry and Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin and Jean Antoine Watteau. The collection of nineteenth-century French art, including masterpieces by Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet, has recently been strengthened by acquisitions of works by Anne Vallayer-Coster, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, Xavier LePrince, Antoinette Cécile Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot, Antoine Berjon, Henry Lerolle, Camille Claudel and others.