Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie (1(37).2012/2013)

Joanna A. Tomicka

I Bequest from the Fondation Custodia
in Paris to the Library of the National Museum
in Warsaw
In January 2011 an exceptional bequest for the Library of the National Museum arrived in
Warsaw. On the initiative of its director, Dr Ger Luijten, the renowned Fondation Custodia
in Paris had donated several thousand art history books. The donation includes holdings
and exhibition catalogues (including those co-organized by Custodia), artist monographs
and critically appended editions of primary sources. Some of them come from the collec-
tions of the foundation’s late former director Carlos van Hasselt and Polish-born André
Niewęgłowski.
All the steps in this undertaking deserve special recognition. Director Luijten took on the or-
ganizational side of the enterprise, hiring the Dutch transport firm Jan Kortmann, which fulfilled
all formalities and became solely responsible for the shipment, organizing its door-to-door delivery.
The foundation’s librarians, Wilfred De Bruijn and Hans Buijs, packed the books according to
schools (Italian, French, etc.) and subjects to make it easier for the staff of the National Museum
in Warsaw to organize them. The donors also gave the museum the freedom to pass any books it
does not need to other institutions in Poland.
Despite the fact that the scholarly relationship between Fondation Custodias current
director and our museum dates back to his long tenure as head of the Rijksprentenkabinet of
the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Dr Luijten’s idea for the donation came as a great surprise
to us. His research on the artistic and social aspects of old Dutch engravings, as well as his
studies of publishing houses in both Northern and Southern Europe, repeatedly brought
him to the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw. Significantly, for over ten years he
had frequently given much-appreciated consultations to the staff of the European Etchings
Room. This outstanding researcher’s and expert’s tenure as the scholarly editor (jointly with
Christian Schuckman) of The New Hollstein. Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and
Woodcuts, 1450-1700 series contributed to the growth of our contacts. They culminated in the
unforgettable, brilliant special lecture on “Rembrandt. The Painter as Printmaker,” which Dr
Luijten, an expert on Rembrandt’s etchings, gave in November 2006 during the Rembrandt.
Rysunki i ryciny w zbiorach polskich [Rembrandt. Drawings and prints in the Polish collections.
A catalogue]1 exhibition celebrating the artist’s 400th birthday, organized by the then-director
of the National Museum in Warsaw, Ferdynad B. Ruszczyc.
The special bond linking our museum and the foundation was a multi-year project initi-
ated by the continuators of the work of Frits Lugt in which they expanded the 1921 and 1956

1 Rembrandt. Rysunki i ryciny w zbiorach polskich. Katalog [Rembrandt. Drawings and prints in Polish col-
lections. A catalogue], Anna Kozak, Joanna A. Tomicka, eds (Warsaw: Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, 2009).