German Master Drawings From The Koenigs Collection: Return of a Lost Treasure

Published with Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

This publication presents 139 drawings and three prints from a recently rediscovered portion of the Koenigs Collection--one of the world's most important pre-war private collections of drawings, assembled in 1920-1930 by the Haarlem-based art collector Franz Koenigs (1881-1941). In 1940, part of the collection fell into the hands of German occupiers, and after WWII ended, they were taken by the Red Army as spoils, and were eventually rediscovered in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in 1993. The 142 images reproduced here (50 of which have never before been published) have now been reunited with the greater part of the Koenigs Collection. Includes works by old masters: Jost Amman, Sebald Beham, Lucas Cranach, Hans Holbein the Elder and the Younger, Hans Baldung Grien, Adam Elsheimer, Wolf Huber, Augustin Hirschvogel and others. In his introduction, Dr. Albert Elen, Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, describes the history of the Koenigs Collection and highlights some of the masterpieces.