The Rembrandt Association (Vereniging Rembrandt) aims to enable everyone to enjoy art, now and in the future. For over 130 years this has been the association’s main objective and their plans for the future include:

• assisting museums with art purchases, thus expanding the public art collection in a deliberate and professional manner with new masterpieces again and again;
• contributing to making and keeping important art treasures available for everyone;
• telling the stories behind extraordinary pieces of art.

The Rembrandt Association (Vereniging Rembrandt) and the Rijksmuseum

In 1883 the auction of collector Jacob de Vos’s drawings led to the foundation of the Rembrandt Association (Vereniging Rembrandt). A group of private collectors based in Amsterdam wanted to ensure that these drawings, which were so important to Dutch culture and society, would continue to be available for public viewing in the Netherlands. They purchased these drawings from the De Vos collection and handed them over to the Rijksmuseum. These drawings have therefore continued to be accessible to everyone, to this very day. Thus the Rembrandt Association (Vereniging Rembrandt) was born. For the Rijksmuseum alone, the Rembrandt Association (Vereniging Rembrandt) contributed to the acquisition of hundreds of artefacts: ranging from paintings, sketches and silverwork to Asian art and sculpture.

Hollands meisje aan het ontbijt Jean-Etienne Liotard, ca. 1756Supported by the Rembrandt Association for the following reasons: With his choice of topic, technique and his clear focus on the use of texture in the Dutch Girl at Breakfast, Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789) continued the tradition of painters such as Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu. The eye-catching image of the interior of a church on the wall is also a reference to Dutch painting in the Golden Age. This work of art is a bridge between seventeenth-century Dutch art and eighteenth-century European art, with which Rijksmuseum can vividly show how artists from different countries continued to influence each other’s work. With this purchase, another very special international masterpiece has been added to our collective art collection and it is destined to become firmly entrenched in our collective psyche.