Ger Luijten Channeling the Spirit of Frits Lugt

Frits Lugt built his collection like an edifice, black stone after white chalk, red chalk after charcoal, to ensure its coherence and stability. With patience, awareness, expertise and passion, he put together one of the world’s finest private collections of drawings. His other ideals were sharing and enthusiasm. In 1947 he and his wife created the Custodia Foundation in Paris. Ger Luijten has been the director since 2010, opening up this immense heritage to other art forms. Dutch 16 th and 17 th -century drawings are the foundation’s cornerstone. Do you still manage to find beautiful old drawings? Valuable 17 th -century Dutch drawings—by that I mean works on paper that bring real added value to the collection—are rare, very expensive and eat up our budget. We can only buy two or three a year. Sometimes we do, such as in 2012, when we acquired Samuel Van Hoogstraten’s magnificent Self-portrait at a Window , which he drew when apprenticing with Rembrandt. But mostly I prefer works from other schools, often paintings and drawings, because, as Lugt said, a drawing is the straightest line to an artist’s mind. This intimacy can be felt…