Art: High Art from the Low Countries

Among 17th century masters Rembrandt is matchless

The acquisitive urge, the desire to complete and catalogue a series, shows early in some collectors—and in none earlier than Frits Lugt, the century's greatest scholar and collector of Dutch drawings. In 1892, when Lugt was eight and the other little boys in his native Amsterdam were swapping beetles and cigarette cards, he transformed a room into the "Museum Lugtius" with a sign on the door reading "Open when the Director is at home." By twelve, he started a fully annotated catalogue of Netherlandish drawings and, even...

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