Art Of The Day Weekly
#354 - from 10 July 2014 to 10 September 2014
Jan Baptist van der Hulst (1790 – 1862), William II, Anna Pavlovna and their four children in front of the Tervuren Palace in Brussels, 1826, oil on wood, © La Haye, House of Orange-Nassau Historic Collections Trust.
The dream of William and Anna
LUXEMBOURG – We know quite a few of the great collections from principalities, such as those of the Farnese, the Este, the Lichtenstein or the Esterhazy. But who has ever mentioned the one gathered during the first half of XIXth century by William II of the Netherlands and his Russian wife Anna Pavlovna, the sister of Alexander I (the same one who defeated Napoleon)? Yet this collection was sumptuous, and included works by Sebastiano del Piombo, Guido Reni, Memling, Van Dyck, Rubens and a few absolute art masterpieces such as The Annunciation by Jan van Eyck (which today is at the National Gallery in Washington) or the Portrait of Titus by Rembrandt (today at the Wallace Collection, London). The collection was scattered at an auction when William died and it ended up in the great museums of the world, among which the Hermitage. The current exhibition is the result of long, patient work to identify and return – temporarily – a lost unit.
• Une passion royale pour l’art at Villa Vauban, from 12 July to 12 October 2014.