One of the largest and most varied collections of Northern Baroque art assembled anywhere in recent decades will be on view at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich beginning this fall. Northern Baroque Splendor, The HOHENBUCHAU COLLECTION from: LIECHTENSTEIN. The Princely Collections, Vienna will be displayed across multiple galleries at the Bruce beginning on September 20 and continuing through April 12, 2015.

The Hohenbuchau Collection was gathered by Otto Christian and Renate Fassbender and has been on long-term loan to the Collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein in Vienna, where it was exhibited in its entirety in the former LIECHTENSTEIN MUSEUM in 2011. A selection of some 80 paintings from The Hohenbuchau Collection was recently shown at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Germany (11/08/2013 – 02/23/2014), and paintings from The Collection are regularly being displayed alongside The Princely Collections, in the permanent exhibition in Vienna as well as on touring exhibitions worldwide. The selective showing of The Hohenbuchau Collection at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich is the show’s inaugural venue in the United States. In April the exhibition will travel from Greenwich to the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio.

Primarily comprised of Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century paintings, the collection exhibits all the naturalism, visual probity and technical brilliance for which those schools are famous. While many modern collections of Old Masters specialize in a single style or subject matter, the Hohenbuchau Collection is admirable for offering examples of virtually all the genres produced by Lowland artists – history painting, portraiture, genre, landscapes, seascapes, still lifes and flower pieces, animal paintings and hunting scenes.

“The Hohenbuchau Collection is not only remarkable for offering examples of virtually all the genres produced by Netherlandish Old Masters, but also for the rich diversity of size, format, and subject within each genre,” says Peter C. Sutton, Executive Director of the Bruce Museum and the organizer of the exhibition. “Particularly unique to the collection are the number of individual paintings executed by more than one artist, working in collaboration. Netherlandish artists tended to specialize, whether in figures, landscapes or still lifes, but they were not averse to collaboration.”

The collection is also distinguished for its emphasis on history painting, subjects sometimes neglected by modern collectors, featuring outstanding Mannerist (Joachim Wtewael, Abraham Bloemaert, and Cornelis van Haarlem), Utrecht Caravaggisti (Gerard van Honthorst and Hendrick ter Brugghen) and Flemish and German history paintings. Other strengths include genre scenes by the Leiden fijnschilders, Gerard Dou, Frans and Willem van Mieris, fine game still lifes by Jan Fyt, Hendrick de Fromantiou, and Jan Weenix, outstanding banquet pieces by Frans Snyders, Abraham van Beyeren and Joris van Son, as well as Dutch landscapes from the so-called Classic period by Salomon van Ruysdael, Jacob van Ruisdael, Allart van Everdingen and Aert van der Neer. The Flemish paintings include works by renowned artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, and Jan Bruegel the Elder, as well as excellent works by Joos de Momper, and David Teniers. There are also little-known paintings by artists once forgotten but today again held in high esteem, like Michael Sweerts.

“With its colorful diversity, naturalism and technical brilliance, the show will appeal to the general public, but there are also surprises for the specialist and connoisseur,” says Dr. Sutton, “for example, the only known signed pictures by several artists. This rare show affords the Bruce Museum a unique opportunity not only to share world-class masterpieces with Greenwich and surrounding towns, but also to offer a rare educational opportunity to learn from leaders in the field of seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish art.”