B.C.
Koekkoek-Haus
Catalog of the exhibition „A Romantic View / Ein romantischer Blick. Die Sammlung Rademakers“ in the B.C. Koekkoek-House, Cleves (25.09.2011 - 26.02.2012) in English
144 pages with lot's of illustrations in colour
30 x 24 cm
Soft Cover
Release 2011
ISBN 978 90 6153 351 1
Foreword by Denise Vandevoort, Councillor for Culture, Chairman M - Museum Leuven, Benno Temple, director of the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, and Guido de Werd, director of the B.C. Koekkoek-House, Cleves
Texts by Benno Temple, Peter Carpreau, Guido de Werd, Katlijne van der Stighelen, Arnold Ligthart, Jef Rademakers, Anna Rademakers and Jan de Meer
Romanticism is more than an artistic current – it is a way of life, according to Jef Rademakers, well known as a writer and TV producer, but nowadays primarily a dedicated art collector. He has built up a collection of more than a hundred High Romantic paintings by Dutch and Belgian masters. Barend Cornelis Koekkoek, Andreas Schelfhout, David de Noter, Fredrik Marinus Kruseman, Jacob Abels, Basile de Loose and Petrus van Schendel: their works of art were „revolutionary in their time“, Rademakers believes. They were the expression of a changing perspective on life. This radical shift is particularly noticeable in their approach to nature. Before then it was regarded mainly as a „supermarket“ where you could find wood, game and fruit; now it became a work of art in its own right in which the hand of the Creator was revealed. Floods, thunder and lightning, storms, biting wind, bitter cold: no element was neglected in the drive to emphasize the grandeur of creation in contrast to human insignificance. Romantic art was also intended to offer an alternative to the harshness of everyday reality and to make the transitory nature of life bearable.
The Rademakers Collection did not pass unnoticed. Rademakers received a unique invitation to present some 70 works in The Hermitage, the Russian State Museum in St Petersburg. Now the exhibition is travelling on to the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the M - Museum in Louvain, the B.C. Koekkoek House in Cleves and the Sinebrychoff Museum of Art in Helsinki. A Romantic View presents genre paintings, cityscapes and seascapes but, above all, many landscapes and nocturnes that are sometimes haunting in their beauty.