Frits Lugt

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Frederik Johannes "Frits" Lugt (Amsterdam 1884–Paris1970), was a collector and connoisseur of Netherlandish drawings and prints and a selfless and tireless compiler of essential reference tools documenting Northern European prints and drawings, collectors' stamps and sale catalogues. An authority on Rembrandt's drawings, he collected all the etchings made by Rembrandt during his career.

Lugt was a precocious connoisseur who cut short his formal education to become an employee at the auction house Frederik Muller in Amsterdam in 1901, where he was engaged in compiling the auctioneers' sales catalogues. By 1911 he had become a partner of the firm, a position he held until 1915. One of his tasks at the auction house was the compilation of sale catalogues. His ongoing interest resulted in the four volumes of his famous Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques intéressant l'art ou la curiosité ("Repertory of catalogues of public sale concerned with art or objets d'art") published in 1938, 1953, 1964, and (posthumously) 1987, which gives essential details of sales catalogues published during the years 1600-1925, held in public collections in Europe and North America. The "Lugt number" of a sale catalogue is a familiar reference. While he was still occupied with this project, he donated his huge collection of sale catalogues and other documentary materials to the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie/Netherlands Bureau for Art History at The Hague along with his personal library, in the nature of a "permanent loan."

Lugt's marriage in 1910 to Jacoba Klever (1888–1969), a woman of independent means, meant that he could pursue his interests without financial concerns; at the death of his father-in-law in 1931, his wife inherited a sizeable fortune, which enabled the couple to expand their collecting interests. In 1921, he completed his first work essential to art historians, Les marques de collections de dessins et d’estampes,^[1] the definitive repertory identifying the collector's marks and stamps on drawings and prints, with a short descriptive biography of each owner and a description of the particular collection; the work is the essential reference for establishing the provenance of Old Master drawings and prints.^[2]

In 1922 he was commissioned to compile the inventory catalogue of Dutch and Flemish drawings in the Musée du Louvre. The first volume appeared in 1927, the series eventually comprising nine volumes cataloguing drawings of the Northern schools not only from the Louvre's collection but also in other collections in Paris, including the Petit Palais (the collection of Eugène Dutuit), the Bibliothèque Nationale, and the École des Beaux-Arts.

Meanwhile, the Lugts together built an impressive collection of drawings, prints, books, and paintings. During the Second World War, the couple fled to the United States, where Wolfgang Stechow secured a temporary position for him lecturing at Oberlin College, Ohio. Lugt, whose devout Mennonite faith led him to consider their art collection part of God's gift, sought a cultural center which would make their collection accessible to the public: the result was the Fondation Custodia (1947), which continues to conserve the Lugt art collection, housed in the eighteenth-century Hôtel Turgot, Rue de Lille, Paris, followed by the Institut Néerlandais, Paris (1957).

[edit] Notes

^ Marques de Collections: (Dessins-Estampes), Marques estampillées et écrites de collections particulières et publiques. Marques de marchands, de monteurs et d’imprimeurs. Cachets de vente d’artistes décedés. Marques de graveurs apposés après le triage des planches. Timbres d’edition. Etc., Avec Des Notices Historiques sur les Collectionneurs, les Collections, les Ventes, les Marchands et Editeurs, Etc., par Frits Lugt, Vereenigde Drukkerijen, Amsterdam, 1921.
^ His Fondation Custodia is preparing a revised printed and on-line edition of this essential reference tool.