Exhibition RKD: From stately portrait to snapshot

Artists’ portraits from the RKD Collection
The RKD has a large number of artists’ portraits in its collections, many of which are unknown to its visitors. To highlight these works we are organising several focus displays this spring. Three portrait sculptures from the Museum Beelden aan Zee in Scheveningen have been installed in the entrance hall and you can currently see a selection of material from a our own collections in the showcases. We have also put up posters of artists’ portraits in the Study Room.
The collection of artists’ portraits is extremely diverse, with documentation consisting of paintings, drawings, prints, miniatures and photographs of artists. Besides traditional portraits, there are portraits alluding to the sitter’s artistry – the artist holding a palette and brush, for example, or posing with a work of art. There are also numerous self-portraits from all periods, and a special place in the collection is occupied by the genre of artists in their studios.

Levi van Veluw, Landscape I, 2008, photograph, 120 x 100 cm, Scheringa Museum voor Realisme, Spanbroek

With photography came a faster and cheaper method by which the artist could be portrayed. Portraits taken by professional photographers frequently show the artist in a rather static pose while amateur shots – family snapshots and pictures taken in and around the artist’s home and studio – tend to have a more personal character. Within the collection Preciosa Photographs, a group of unique and special old photographs, a further 700 artists’ portraits were found. A proportion of the artists’ portraits has already been catalogued in our database of art objects, RKDimages; 3200 artists’ portraits can thus be consulted online, including the Preciosa Photographs.