Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum Receives Gift of Important Dutch Landscape Prints from the Light-Outerbridge Collection

Collection Complements Museum’s Significant Holdings of Dutch Drawings and Prints, Provides Enhanced Opportunities for Teaching and Research

Cambridge, MA - December 22, 2000 - The Harvard University Art Museums announced today that the Fogg Art Museum has acquired more than 660 16th-and 17th-century Dutch landscape prints from the Light-Outerbridge Collection. This significant acquisition builds upon the Fogg Art Museumís leading collection of Dutch drawings, making the Fogg the principal center for the study of Dutch landscape works on paper in the United States. More than half of the entire collection was given to the Fogg Art Museum by Richard Light, continuing the tradition of Harvard alumni and scholars expanding the collections of the Art Museums through gifts. The Fogg acquired the remaining works in the collection through its Richard Norton Memorial Fund and other gifts.

The Light-Outerbridge Collection was formed over the past quarter century by Robert McKenzie Light, an important dealer in Old Master and modern prints and drawings who has long-standing ties to the Art Museums. The Light-Outerbridge Collection explores landscape art as it developed in late 16th-century Flanders and Holland, and as it matured into what is known as the Dutch Golden Age. The Collection features rare first-state etchings and many complete sets of prints, which are of particular importance for teaching and research initiatives.

"Robert Light has been a longtime friend of the Art Museums and we are deeply grateful for this gift of more than half of his extraordinary collection to the Fogg Art Museum," said James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "Bob’s support of our role as a center for teaching and research will provide important new resources for studying the evolution of printmaking in Dutch centers of creativity. His generosity will ensure that Harvard students have unparalleled opportunities to explore Dutch landscape works on paper."

The Light-Outerbridge Collection features a number of rare and important prints and many complete sets of prints, which will provide new opportunities for teaching and scholarship at the Art Museums. These rare works include one of only three known complete first-state sets of Willem Buytewech’s landscape etchings as well as three etchings by Jan van Brosterhuisen. A first-state set of Claes Jansz. Visscher’s Pleasant Places in the Surroundings of Haarlem, which offers insight into the creation of a new vision of the Dutch landscape, as well as early states of etchings by the great landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael are also among rare works in the Collection.

Landscape prints were often conceived of in series of time-honored concepts such as seasons or months, or in series that represented a walk-through of an actual landscape. Other series focused on important occasions. The Light-Outerbridge Collection features a diverse range of series including Geertruyd Roghman’s Thirteen Landscapes with Villages near Amsterdam, her father Roelandt Roghman’s Eight Views of the Hague Woods, and eleven prints by Salomon Savery recording the visit of Marie de’ Medici to Amsterdam in 1638. Jan van de Velde’s many sets of landscapes and ruins as well as Herman Swanevelt’s Diverse Landscapes in and near Rome are also showcased in the Collection.

"The Light-Outerbridge Collection builds upon the Fogg’s holdings of Rembrandt landscape etchings and the George and Maida Abrams Collection of Dutch drawings, giving Harvard a collection of Dutch landscape works on paper unparalleled in the United States," said Marjorie Cohn, the Carl Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints. "Bob’s generous gift will present exceptional opportunities for exploring this important group of works through teaching, scholarship, and programming."

In 1990 Robert Light placed his collection, then numbering about 525 prints, on deposit at the Fogg Art Museum. He has made significant additions since that time. Works from Light’s collection have been featured in several exhibitions at the Fogg, notably The Made Landscape: City and Country in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Prints (1992), From Lowlife to Rustic Idyll: The Peasant Genre in 17th-Century Dutch Drawings and Prints (1997), and Lifeworld: Portrait and Landscape in Netherlandish Prints, 1550-1650 (1999-2000). Light’s works have also played a significant role as resources for teaching and research, and they are regularly requested by visitors to the Agnes Mongan Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

Robert Light attended Oberlin College. He intended to enter the Conservatory, but became interested in the study of art history through Prof. Wolfgang Stechow, an eminent authority on 17th-century Dutch landscape art. After receiving his A.B. in 1950 and enrolling in Harvard Law School, Light crossed the campus and began graduate study at the Fogg Art Museum, specifically to work with Jakob Rosenberg and Agnes Mongan. Light was drafted before finishing requirements for a graduate degree, and after service in Korea he returned to Boston to start a career as an art dealer, selling prints for the Childs Gallery. Two years later he became an independent dealer.

Helen Willard, a former assistant to Agnes Mongan, introduced Light to his life's partner, Donald Graham Outerbridge. Outerbridge, a painter and art photographer, came to the United States from Bermuda and also attended Harvard (Class of 1946), graduating in 1948 after service in World War II. Outerbridge had a well-developed knowledge of art history and philosophy of art appreciation, fostered by a constant study of museum collections in the course of building his Museum Color Slides Company. At the time of his death in the fall of 1988, a substantial portion of the Company’s inventory was left to the Fine Arts Library at Harvard. It was Outerbridge who encouraged Light to start assembling the collection of Dutch landscape etchings, and therefore the collection was given the title "Light-Outerbridge Collection."

Robert Light remains active as a dealer and is a member of the Art Dealers Association of America; the Private Art Dealers Assoc., Inc.; the International Fine Print Dealers Assoc.; and the Chambre Syndicale d'Estampe, Dessin et Tableau. He has served at various times on the boards of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Music Academy of the West, the Santa Barbara Symphony, and others. Currently he is a member of the Visiting Committee to the Harvard University Art Museums and a board member of the Ojai Music Festival. He is President of Esperia Foundation, a public, non-profit foundation established by Light and Outerbridge to support classical music in the greater Santa Barbara area. Light and Outerbridge also endowed a fund in honor of Agnes Mongan, dedicated to the support of the Drawings Department at the Fogg Art Museum.

The Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums is one of the nation’s leading arts institutions. It is distinguished by the range and depth of its collections, its groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of its staff. For more than a century, it has been the nation’s premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and is renowned for its seminal and ongoing role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.
The three Harvard University Art Museums – the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum – are all outstanding institutions in their respective fields. The Fogg also houses the Straus Center for Conservation, a leader in the research and development of scientific and technology-based analysis of art, as well as the US headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, an ongoing excavation project in western Turkey. The 150,000 objects in the Art Museums’ collections range in date from ancient times to the present and come from Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Each Museum also has an active program of special exhibitions that promotes new scholarship in its areas of focus.

As an integral component of the Harvard University community, the Art Museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study and to their lives at and after Harvard. The Art Museums welcome the public to experience the collections and special exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs.

The collections are divided among ten curatorial areas (Ancient and Byzantine Art and Numismatics: Architecture and Design; Asian Art; Busch-Reisinger Museum; Drawings; Islamic and Later Indian Art; Modern and Contemporary Art; Paintings, Sculpture and Decorative Arts; Prints; and Photographs) and are encyclopedic within those areas. Developed with an emphasis on their value for teaching and research, these holdings are a uniquely broad and rich resource that is continually enhanced through gifts and acquisitions. Together, the holdings of the three museums comprise one of the finest university art collections in the world, with resources rivaling those of many major public museums.

The Straus Center for Conservation is the oldest fine arts conservation treatment, research, and training facility in the US. The Center specializes in the conservation of paintings, sculpture, decorative objects, historic and archaeological artifacts, and works of art on paper. Its team members are pioneers in developing new applications of digital imaging in conservation. The Center is also equipped with a comprehensive range of analytical services.

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