Two posthumous publications of Chris van Eeghen (1921-2014)

13 October 2015 | The Hague-New York

On the last day of 2014 one of the foremost private collectors of Old Master drawings in The Netherlands (and abroad) died, aged 93. Chris van Eeghen’s collection of drawings by mainly Dutch, Flemish and Italian artists was formed on the basis of his inherited part of the collection of his father and namesake Christiaan Pieter van Eeghen (1880-1968). A rich choice of his father’s collection, which contained around 40 drawings that came from the (now dispersed) collection of his grandmother’s elder brother Johannes de Clercq (1842-1867), was exhibited in Amsterdam in 1935 (Museum Fodor) and 1958 (Rijksmuseum). It is expected that the Van Eeghen collection will be continued, according to family tradition, in whole or in parts, by his children, all of them collectors themselves, with different fields of interest.

In old age Chris van Eeghen was also an active researcher, with a particular interest in the drawings by the 17th-c. Dutch artist Simon the Vlieger. He wrote three substantial articles on this artist for Master Drawings, the third of which has just been published in the latest issue: Christiaan P. van Eeghen, “Simon de Vlieger as a Draftsman, III: His Chalk Landscapes and Their Connections with Works by Anthony Waterloo and Others,” Master Drawings, 53, no. 3, 2015, pp. 313–42. In the same Autumn issue is an obituary, written by Coen Schimmelpenninck van der Oije, chairman of the Amsterdam Print Circle, of which Chris van Eeghen was a respected member. Also posthumously published is the book he wrote with Pieter van der Kuil, Brede rivieren langs hoge hellingen: Het stuwwallandschap van midden-Nederland op zeventiende-eeuwse tekeningen, which was launched in Oosterbeek on 31 August.   

For the Obituary in Master Drawings, 53, no. 3, 2015, p. 391, click here.
For the Book Brede rivieren langs hoge hellingen, click here.