Collection History

Since its establishment, the museum's history had been shaped in a critical way by the activities of private collectors, two of whom have furnished the institution with its double-barrelled name. The Utrecht-born lawyer F.J.O. Boijmans bequeathed his collection tot the City of Rotterdam in 1847, so laying the museum's foundations. In 1958 the museum acquired the collection of the shipping magnate D.G. van Beuningen, also a native of Utrecht. This was such a milestone that the museum's name was changed to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

The museum is indebted to many other private collectors, whose varied interests have informed its diverse collections and whose passion means that ours is the only museum in the Netherlands that contains paintings by the Van Eyck brothers, Titian, Bosch, Bruegel the Elder, Dalí and Magritte.

In the post-war period the museum has had increasing funds to pursue its own acquisitions policy, but it continues to profit from the generosity of private collectors. In 1981 Mr. and Mrs. Van Beuningen-de Vriese endowed the museum with a vast collection of pre-industrial domestic artefacts and the museum has recently benefited from its partnership with H+F Patronage in acquiring an outstanding installation by the video artist Pipilotti Rist.

F.J.O. Boijmans (1767-1847)

Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans was an avid collector of paintings, drawings, prints and porcelain. Indeed he often allowed his appetite for quantity to overschadow his eye for quality. When the City of Rotterdam took charge of his collection in 1847, it immediately sold many pieces because of their poor quality. Another considerable portion of the collection was lost in a fire at the museum in 1864 with the result that only 127 paintings remain form Boijmans' original collection. The confident 'Self-portrait' by Carel Fabritius is one of this undoubted highlights.

D.G. van Beuningen (1877-1955)

The shipping magnate Daniël George van Beuningen was one of the members of Rotterdam's elite upon whom the museum could rely for financial support for important acquisitions in the 1920s and 1930s. Van Beuningen also amassed his own large collection of master pieces including Bruegel's famous painting 'The Tower of Babel' (c. 1563). Following his death in 1955, his heirs offered the collection to the museum on the condition that the City of Rotterdam pay the inheritance tax. Thus the museum gained 189 paintings, 17 drawings, 30 sculptures, 5 pieces of silverware and the second part of its double-barrelled name.