Old Masters from Kyiv

23 June 2025
Tentoonstelling Oude Meesters Uit Kyiv in Den Haag in Museum Bredius

Abraham Bredius (1855-1946), Rembrandt expert, museum director and founder of Museum Bredius, was on a tour of Eastern Europe when he met the collectors Bohdan (1849-1917) and Varvara (1852-1922) Khanenko in Kyiv in 1897. Enthusiastically, he wrote down his findings about the Dutch and Flemish Masters in the couple’s art collection in two notebooks, which are preserved at the RKD. Thanks to Bredius' notes, fourteen paintings from the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts will be on display at Museum Bredius in The Hague from 21 June to 28 September.   

Poster exhibition Old Masters from Kyiv in The Hague

In search of Rembrandt 

The main purpose of Bredius' two-month trip through Eastern Europe was to find unknown paintings by Rembrandt for the major Rembrandt exhibition that was to take place in Amsterdam in 1898 to mark the inauguration of Queen Wilhelmina. The then director of the Mauritshuis did not identify Rembrandt paintings in the collection of lawyer and sugar industrialist  Bohdan Khanenko and his wife, but he did find two works that he believed could be linked to the master. About a small painting portraying a young woman, he noted: ‘very fine and beautiful, oddly signed R......dt f. Could be a R[embrandt]’ and about a larger work portraying a  man in oriental attire: ‘Rembr[andts] father life-size, hanging high, with large turban, could be R[embrandt]’. Apart from these paintings, Bredius saw many other interesting works of art in the Khanenko collection, a selection of which can be admired at Museum Bredius this summer. 

Klaes Molenaer, Boerderij aan een sloot, rechtsonder gesigneerd K molenaer, The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts, Kyiv
Klaes Molenaer, Farmhouse by the Water, signed lower right 'K molenaer', The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts, Kyiv.

Cooperation The Hague – Kyiv 

The exhibition at Museum Bredius was realised in close cooperation with RKD curator Suzanne Laemers, also member of the Board of Museum Bredius. When in late 2023 she discovered that Abraham Bredius had been in Kyiv, she took the initiative to translate his notes on the Khanenko collection into English and inform her Ukrainian colleagues of this source previously unknown to them. This resulted in an intensive collaboration between the RKD, Museum Bredius and The Khanenko Museum in Kyiv.  

Detail van een pagina in een van Bredius’ notitieboekjes waarin hij de entreehal van de ‘Gallerie Chanenko, Kiew’ beschrijft: ‘Vorstelijke entrée met ruiter in harnas op een levensgr.[oot] mooi gebeeldh.[ouwd] houten paard, hellebaarden enz. Kostelijk!’
Notebook of Abraham Bredius, 1897, collection RKD, The Hague.

The paintings from the Khanenko collection are on display together with works from the Bredius collection, showing that both collections stem from the same passion for Dutch and Flemish Masters. Both museums eventually transformed into public museums as well. At the same time, the exhibition calls attention to the war in Ukraine and the urgent need to protect cultural heritage under threat. 

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated visitor's guide with more information about Bredius' notebooks, which are also to be seen at the exhibition, the collector's couple Khanenko and the works on display. 

More information about visiting the exhibition Old Masters in Kyiv in The Hague can be found on the Museum Bredius website.