Rijksmuseum Acquires Rare Van Uylenburgh Drawing Book

A Three-Century Family Treasure

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has received an exceptionally well-preserved 17th-century drawing book as a donation from the prominent Van Eeghen family, the museum announced. The book, which has been in the safekeeping of the Van Eeghen family for more than three centuries, contains approximately thirty drawings, many of which depict biblical scenes. Its preservation is remarkable: many of the drawings have been executed on blue paper, and because the book has rarely been exposed to light, its colors remain strikingly vivid after four hundred years.

The work is attributed to Rombout van Uylenburgh, a Dutch painter who became an artist for King Sigismund III Vasa at the Polish royal court in Krakow before settling in the port city of Danzig. Well-known during his lifetime as a painter of grisailles, van Uylenburgh fell into obscurity after his death around 1627. The Van Eeghen Drawing Book was only attributed to him around two decades ago, when its provenance was traced back to the artist's workshop by C.P. van Eeghen in 2013. The donation continues a long-standing family tradition of cultural philanthropy by the Van Eeghen dynasty, one of the Netherlands' most prominent families, whose history of public giving dates back generations.

The condition of the drawings is exceptional for works of this age. Blue paper, a relatively expensive material in the early 17th century, was prized for its tonal qualities and was typically used for studies intended to be seen as finished works rather than preliminary sketches. The fact that the book remained closed and protected from light for centuries has preserved the original color saturation in a way that is almost unprecedented for Dutch drawings of this period. Most comparable works have faded significantly from exposure, making the Van Eeghen Drawing Book a rare witness to the actual visual qualities that 17th-century artists and collectors would have experienced.

The Rembrandt Connection

Rombout van Uylenburgh's significance extends well beyond his own artistic output through his family's deep connections to the Dutch Golden Age. His brother Hendrick van Uylenburgh was an influential art dealer who helped launch the careers of Rembrandt, Govert Flinck, Ferdinand Bol, and other painters. Hendrick employed painters in his own studio and, in 1631, welcomed Rembrandt into his Amsterdam house, where the young artist worked as chief painter of the studio. The Rembrandt House Museum now occupies the property adjacent to Hendrick's former home on the Jodenbreestraat.

The family connection deepened further when Rombout's niece, Saskia van Uylenburgh, married Rembrandt in 1634. The Van Uylenburgh network was instrumental in establishing Rembrandt's early career in Amsterdam, providing him with studio space, connections to wealthy patrons, and access to a well-functioning art dealership that could place his work with collectors across the Dutch Republic and beyond. Hendrick's son Gerrit van Uylenburgh eventually took over the family business, though the enterprise collapsed in 1675 following accusations that he had sold forged art to Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg.

The Uylenburgh family role in Rembrandt career was not incidental. Hendrick studio on the Jodenbreestraat served as Rembrandt base of operations during the most productive period of his early Amsterdam years, and the dealer connections that Hendrick provided gave the young painter access to a network of patrons that would have taken years to build independently. When Rembrandt married Saskia in 1634, he was effectively marrying into the art establishment of the Dutch Republic. The drawing book now at the Rijksmuseum is one of the few surviving physical artifacts from this network, making it valuable not only for its artistic merit but for what it reveals about the material culture of a 17th-century artist workshop.

The drawing book thus represents a rare surviving artifact from a family that played a central but often underrecognized role in shaping the Dutch Golden Age.

The Uylenburgh family's story is in many ways the story of how the Dutch art market actually functioned in the 17th century. The canonical narrative of the period centers on individual geniuses, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals, working in isolation. The reality was more complex: artists operated within networks of dealers, patrons, family alliances, and workshop systems that managed production, distribution, and reputation. The Uylenburghs were at the center of this infrastructure. Hendrick's studio was not merely a space where painters worked but a commercial enterprise that trained artists, produced paintings on commission, and placed works with collectors throughout Europe. The survival of Rombout's drawing book provides a tangible connection to this broader ecosystem that made the Dutch Golden Age possible.

What the Drawing Book Reveals

The Van Eeghen Drawing Book offers scholars a rare opportunity to study a coherent body of drawings from a single workshop during the early 17th century. Most surviving drawings from this period have been separated from their original contexts, scattered across collections, or lost entirely. The fact that this book remained intact, in family hands, for over three hundred years makes it an exception to the usual pattern of dispersal. The biblical scenes that dominate the book reflect the devotional and narrative conventions of the era, while the use of blue paper suggests a well-resourced workshop with access to premium materials.

The attribution to van Uylenburgh, made only in 2013, highlights how much remains unknown about the broader ecosystem of 17th-century Dutch art. The canonical narrative centers on a handful of famous names, but the infrastructure that supported them, including dealers, family networks, workshop assistants, and regional painters like Rombout, remains poorly documented.

The use of blue paper in the drawing book also merits attention. Blue paper was produced by coating cheaper paper with a blue-gray pigment, creating a mid-tone surface that allowed artists to work in both light and dark media. The technique was popular in Italy and spread to Northern Europe in the late 16th century. The fact that van Uylenburgh had access to blue paper in Krakow and Danzig suggests trade connections that linked the Baltic region to Mediterranean paper markets. For conservators at the Rijksmuseum, the preservation of the original blue coloration provides a rare opportunity to study how 17th-century blue paper has aged when protected from light, compared to the faded examples that dominate most museum collections.

Each new acquisition of this kind reshapes the field's understanding of how the Dutch Golden Age actually functioned as an industry, not merely as a sequence of masterpieces. The Rijksmuseum's research department has indicated that the drawing book will be made available for scholarly study, potentially enabling new attributions and a fuller reconstruction of the Uylenburgh workshop's output.

Display and Future Research

The Van Eeghen Drawing Book is now on display at the Rijksmuseum, where it will remain until November 29. The museum plans to make the book available for scholarly study after the public display period, allowing researchers to examine the drawings in detail and potentially identify additional works by van Uylenburgh in other collections. Taco Dibbits, the general director of the Rijksmuseum, emphasized that the donation enables the institution to introduce the public to an artist whose surviving body of work is extremely small.

The donation also raises interesting questions about the role of private families in preserving cultural heritage. The Van Eeghen family kept the drawing book for over three hundred years, protecting it from the wars, floods, and institutional disruptions that scattered so many comparable archives. The decision to donate the book to the Rijksmuseum rather than sell it at auction, where it would likely have fetched a substantial price, reflects a particular model of cultural philanthropy that has deep roots in Dutch civic life. The Netherlands has a long tradition of families donating significant works to national museums, and the Rijksmuseum collection has been substantially shaped by such gifts over its two-century history.

The acquisition also reflects the Rijksmuseum's broader strategy of building its collection through both purchases and donations that fill gaps in the narrative of Dutch art history. The museum has been particularly active in recent years in acquiring works by artists who have been overlooked by traditional art-historical canons, including women artists and regional painters whose contributions were significant in their own time but faded from view in subsequent centuries. The Van Eeghen Drawing Book fits squarely within this effort, bringing a forgotten but historically connected figure back into public view through a family's centuries-long act of stewardship. For visitors to the Rijksmuseum, the drawing book offers a rare chance to see Dutch Golden Age draughtsmanship at its most intimate, in a format that has survived against considerable odds to reach a public audience four centuries after it was first committed to paper by a painter whose own career had been all but forgotten by the history books.

The decision to display the book rather than immediately sequestering it for study reflects the Rijksmuseum conviction that public engagement and scholarly research should proceed in tandem. Visitors who see the drawing book in person may well include scholars who will contribute to its future interpretation, and the visibility of the work may prompt other families with similar archival materials to consider donation rather than private sale.