Special loans now on display!
The Dordrechts Museum is proud to present special loans from the Royal Collections and Museum Arnhem: two works by Aert Schouman and a painting by Melchior d’Hondecoeter.
Aert Schouman is considered one of the finest painters from Dordrecht in the 18th century. He is known for his wall hangings and meticulous animal drawings. In 1748, he moved to The Hague, where Stadtholder William V became his most important patron. In William V’s menagerie, located behind Huis ten Bosch—a precursor to the modern zoo—Schouman created watercolors and wallpaper designs depicting live and exotic animals, such as birds, an orangutan, elephants, and deer.
Two of these monumental wall hangings, owned by the Royal Collections, are now on display at the Dordrechts Museum. Along with works from the museum’s own collection, this exhibition offers a magnificent overview of Schouman’s oeuvre as well as his contemporaries and sources of inspiration, such as Melchior d’Hondecoeter.
Together with d’Hondecoeter’s *Fable of the Crow Robbed of Its Feathers* from the Museum Arnhem, these paintings illustrate the love of birds in the 17th and 18th centuries. Now, the finest Dutch bird painters of that era can finally be admired side by side at the Dordrechts Museum.
This loan, from d’Hondecoeter, was made possible with support from the Rembrandt Society (in part thanks to its Fusien Fund).
