Rembrandt Drawing Facsimiles From a Rare 1903 Portfolio Shown at Lithuania's National Library
The Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania in Vilnius is showing 150 facsimiles of Rembrandt drawings from a portfolio published in 1903, of which only seven copies survive. Its owner, Lithuanian artist and collector Vaidotas Žukas, hopes to return it to a Berlin library.
An exhibition of 150 drawings by the Dutch master Rembrandt is under way at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania in Vilnius. The works are facsimiles, meaning faithful reproductions, taken from a rare portfolio published in 1903. Only seven copies of it survive, and one belongs to Lithuanian artist and collector Vaidotas Žukas. The portfolio is regarded as a bibliographic rarity, and the show lets the public see it.
Origin of the portfolio
The portfolio was printed in The Hague in 1903 using heliography, a reproduction method that was rare and costly at the time. It bears the stamps of the Royal University Library in Berlin and is numbered 7. According to publicly available information, six comparable portfolios are held in museums and university libraries in the United States.
Žukas says it came to him in the winter of 1979–1980 from Aleksandras Kubilas (1928–2021), a librarian and collector, who bought one of his portraits for 300 roubles. Kubilas's account, which may be partly legend and which Žukas has been unable to verify, holds that the Red Army took the portfolio from the Berlin library in 1945, carried it to Moscow as a war trophy, and that it was swapped at Vilnius railway station for a litre of moonshine.
Rembrandt's collection and the drawings
Žukas notes that Rembrandt himself amassed a vast collection, including turbans, weapons, marine specimens, copies of busts of Roman emperors, engravings and fabrics. Its contents are known because the artist went bankrupt and notaries inventoried his house before an auction. Some of the objects appear in the exhibited drawings.
Two drawings show a woman tied to a post. Documents identified her as Elsje Christiaens, an eighteen-year-old from Denmark who worked as a servant in Amsterdam and was executed for murder. Historian Isabella van Eeghen found records of the crime and dated the drawings to 1664 rather than 1655, as earlier scholars had.
Possible restitution
Žukas intends to return the portfolio to the Berlin library after showing it in Vilnius. For several years, with the help of the Lithuanian Embassy in Berlin, he has been searching for documents that could substantiate the alleged theft in 1945. If such evidence is found, a restitution process could begin.
