Boijmans loans 15 Chabots to the Chabot Museum

Next month will see Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam transferring 15 paintings by Henk Chabot to the adjacent Chabot Museum on a long-term loan. “Together we are making the Museumpark into a robust cultural location.”

The collections of the two museums were brought together in 2019 and 2020 in two exhibitions that were part of the ‘Boijmans Next Door’ project. This cooperation is being continued with a long-term loan of 15 paintings by the artist Henk Chabot from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s collection. This significant addition means that the Chabot Museum can present a broader, more multifaceted picture of this prominent Rotterdam painter and sculptor. The works will be shown in an exhibition at the Chabot Museum later this year.

Sandra Kisters, Head of Collections and Research, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen: “We are keen to keep the art collection as visible as possible. As Rotterdam’s art museum we believe that collaborations like this, with fellow institutions in Rotterdam, are also very important. Together we are making the Museumpark into a robust cultural location.” 

Jisca Bijlsma, Director of the Chabot Museum: “A splendid selection of monumental paintings that are typical for the different periods within Chabot’s oeuvre, and is thus an important complement to our core collection of works from the war years.

This means we can further strengthen our strategy as a museum for international Expressionism. We greatly appreciate the cooperation as immediate neighbours.”

Chabot in the Boijmans collection

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is the steward of 22 paintings, two sculptures and an important collection of 18 drawings by Henk Chabot. The lion’s share of the works that are now being loaned out were selected from the estate of the artist’s widow, Antonia Chabot-Tolenaars, in 1955 by the then director of Museum Boijmans, J.C. Ebbinge Wubben. The paintings range from works of the early 1930s that Chabot painted with tempera and crayon on a thin canvas, such as Near the Honingerdijk (1931), to works from his final years, such as the magisterial Grazing Cows (1948) with its intense reds.

The 15 paintings that are being transferred on May 1 are a complement to the three paintings by Chabot that Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen previously loaned to the Chabot Museum. These paintings display the artist’s familiar themes, as often described by Chabot himself: ‘I paint people, animals and polders.’

Henk Chabot

Painter and sculptor Hendrik (Henk) Chabot (1894–1949) was a prominent Dutch expressionist artist who lived and worked in Rotterdam. His probing depictions of landscapes, animals and figures continue to fascinate today. Chabot’s close engagement with the events of his era is also reflected in some of his most famous works, such as Fire of Rotterdam (1940) and Summer (‘Peace’) (1945), all of which are masterpieces of a concentrated force of nature.

On show in the Chabot Museum this autumn

The Chabot Museum for international Expressionism has resided in an icon of Nieuwe Bouwen architecture that is situated in Rotterdam’s bustling Museumpark since 1993. In the light-filled, open spaces of one of the city’s most beautiful villas you stand face to face with the monumental works by Chabot, his contemporaries and modern-day kindred spirits. This autumn the museum will present the new loans in the context of its own collection. The stories behind the paintings will be explored in depth and illuminated from various perspectives, in conjunction with artists, writers, musicians and dancers, thus staging an intimate but world-class art experience.

Because of its large-scale renovation, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is currently closed but far from shut down. The museum has active programmes in the city, the country and on the international stage. The doors of the refurbished and modernised Rotterdam museum building are expected to open in 2026. In late 2021 the museum’s 151,000 or so artefacts will be unveiled in the world’s first publicly accessible art depot. The advent of Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen magnifies the Museumpark’s attraction as an international art platform.