front cover exterior Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
Identification and Creation
Object Number
1999.123.1-53
People
Various Artists
Title
Abrams Album
Classification
Drawings
Work Type
album
Date
c. 1635-1645
Culture
Dutch
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/294019
Physical Descriptions
Dimensions
cover: 11.7 x 15.8 cm (4 5/8 x 6 1/4 in.)
pages: 11 × 15.2 cm (4 5/16 × 6 in.)
Provenance
Possibly Pieter Spiering, Delft and The Hague. Private collection, United Kingdom, sold [private sale, via Sotheby's, London]; to Maida and George Abrams, Boston, 1987 (Lugt 3306, without their mark), gift; to Harvard Art Museums, 1999
Acquisition and Rights
Credit Line
The Maida and George Abrams Collection, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Accession Year
1999
Object Number
1999.123.1-53
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
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Descriptions
Description
An album of 52 parchment leaves, in a black leather stationer's binding of the seventeenth century. The cover measures 11.7 x 15.8 cm; the pages measure 11 x 15.2 cm. 41 full-page drawings were executed directly onto the bound sheets, some on the recto, and some on the verso (in folio 40, drawings are on both the recto and the verso of the same leaf). All but five of the drawings are signed. Parchment stubs between pages indicate that six leaves have been cut out.
Publication History

William W. Robinson, Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drawings: A Selection from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, exh. cat., H. O. Zimman, Inc. (Lynn, MA, 1991), cat. no. 20, pp. 58-59

William W. Robinson, "Abrams Dutch Drawings Given to the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.", Apollo (December 1999), vol. 150, pp. 14-16, p. 16

Seymour Slive, "Collecting 17th-century Dutch art in the United States: the current boom", Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum (2001), vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 84-99, p. 98 (n. 11)

Michiel C. Plomp, "[Review] Bruegel to Rembrandt. Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the Maida and George Abrams Collection.", Oud Holland (2004), vol. 117, no. 1/2, pp. 99-102, pp. 99-101 (n. 3)

Christiaan P. van Eeghen, "Simon de Vlieger as a Draftsman, II: Chalk Drawings Other than Pure Landscapes", Master Drawings (2011), vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 179-221, p. 212

William W. Robinson, "The Abrams Album: An 'Album Amicorum' of Dutch Drawings from the Seventeeth Century", Master Drawings (Spring 2015), LIII, no. 1, pp. 3-58, pp. 3-58, front cover repr. p. 3 as fig. 1

Giovanna Sapori, L'album amicorum come libro di disegni. Alcuni esempi tra Cinquecento e Seicento (Venius, Ortelius, Abrams, Heyblocq), Libri e album di disegni 1550-1800: Nuove prospettive metodologiche e di esegesi storico-critica (Rome, 2018), pp. 107-110, illus. pp. 106-107, figs. 13-17

Exhibition History

Seventeenth-Century Dutch Drawings: A Selection from the Maida and George Abrams Collection, Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 02/23/1991 - 04/18/1991; Albertina Gallery, Vienna, 05/16/1991 - 06/30/1991; Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 01/22/1992 - 04/22/1992; Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 10/10/1992 - 12/06/1992

From Lowlife to Rustic Idyll: The Peasant Genre in 17th-Century Dutch Drawings and Prints, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 03/29/1997 - 06/22/1997

A Decade of Collecting: Recent Acquisitions of Prints and Drawings from 1480 to 1940, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 03/25/2000 - 07/02/2000

Vermeer and the Delft School, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 03/05/2001 - 05/27/2001

Drawings by Rembrandt, his Students and Circle from the Collection of Maida and George Abrams, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, 09/24/2011 - 01/08/2012

Elegance and Refinement: The Still-Life Paintings of Willem van Aelst, National Gallery of Art, 06/24/2012 - 10/14/2012

Drawings from the Age of Bruegel, Rubens, and Rembrandt, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 05/21/2016 - 08/14/2016

Subjects and Contexts

Dutch, Flemish, & Netherlandish Drawings

Related Works

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu