Abraham Bredius

Abraham Bredius
Bredius, by Hendrik Haverman, 1899
Born	(1855-04-18)18 April 1855 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Died	13 March 1946(1946-03-13) (aged 90) Monaco
Occupation(s)	Art collector, art historian, museum curator

Abraham Bredius (18 April 1855 – 13 March 1946) was a Dutch art collector, art historian, and museum curator.

Life

In 1921, Bredius bought Raising of the Cross by Dutch painter Rembrandt. The painting is still located in the Museum Bredius today.

Bredius travelled widely, visiting various art collections in his youth, and worked at the Dutch Museum for History and Art before becoming director, from 1889 to 1909, of the Mauritshuis. He became a Rembrandt expert who had many differences of opinion with Cornelis Hofstede de Groot. He was a regular contributor to the historical magazines Oud Holland and Künstler-Inventare.

In 1922, he left the Netherlands for health reasons and settled in Monaco, publishing books in 1927 on Jan Steen and, in 1935, a catalog of Rembrandt paintings, often referred to in the literature as "Bredius 1935". He bequeathed his papers to the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, and his art collection lives on in the Museum Bredius. He also bequeathed several Rembrandt paintings to the National Dutch collection, including Rembrandt's Homer Dictating his Verses.

References

• Abraham Bredius in the Dictionary of Art Historians

External links

• Books by Abraham Bredius on the Google Books Library Project
• Abraham Bredius on inghist
• Bredius, Dr. Abraham in German Lost Art Foundation Beteiligte Privatpersonen und Körperschaften am NS-Kulturgutraub Archived 2021-11-14 at the Wayback Machine