Quentin Buvelot

Early curatorial work and collection catalogues, 1998–2007

Buvelot joined the curatorial staff of the Mauritshuis during the 1990s. One of his first major projects at the museum was Rembrandt by Himself, an exhibition devoted to Rembrandt's self-portraits that was organized with the National Gallery in London and shown in London and The Hague in 1999–2000. Buvelot co-edited the accompanying catalogue with Christopher White; its contributors included Ernst van de Wetering, Volker Manuth, Marieke de Winkel and Edwin Buijsen.^[2]

During the following years, he worked on exhibitions and publications combining collection cataloguing with focused studies of artists and collectors. With Hans Buijs he organized A Choice Collection: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Paintings from the Frits Lugt Collection at the Mauritshuis in 2002. He subsequently edited the exhibition catalogue Albert Eckhout: A Dutch Artist in Brazil and contributed to Portraits in the Mauritshuis, 1430–1790, published in 2004. In the same year, he compiled the museum's English-language summary catalogue, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis: A Summary Catalogue.^[2]

Buvelot was the principal curator and author of the monographic exhibition Frans van Mieris 1635–1681, held at the Mauritshuis in 2005–2006 and subsequently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The catalogue included essays by Otto Naumann and Eddy de Jongh, as well as contributions addressing individual paintings, drawings and Van Mieris's working methods. He later collaborated with Rudi Ekkart on Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals, shown at the National Gallery in London in 2007 and at the Mauritshuis in 2007–2008.^[2]

Senior curator and monographic exhibitions, 2008–2011

Buvelot became senior curator of the Mauritshuis in 2008.^[9] That year he organized an exhibition devoted to the still-life painter Adriaen Coorte. Its accompanying publication, The Still Lifes of Adriaen Coorte, included an oeuvre catalogue and contributed to the reassessment of an artist whose surviving paintings are generally small in scale and frequently depict isolated arrangements of fruit, nuts, shells or asparagus.^[2]

His subsequent projects included Jacob van Ruisdael Paints Bentheim in 2009 and a major exhibition devoted to Philips Wouwerman, organized with the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Kassel and shown in Kassel in 2009 and at the Mauritshuis in 2009–2010. Buvelot edited the Wouwerman catalogue with the museum's former director Frederik Duparc. In 2010–2011, he organized Made in Holland, presenting works from the private collection of Eijk and Rose-Marie de Mol van Otterloo. Rather than arranging the accompanying book solely by artist, Buvelot grouped the paintings by genre in order to place landscapes, portraits, still lifes, history paintings and scenes of everyday life in relation to one another.^[2]

Closure, international tours and reopening, 2012–2016

The Mauritshuis closed for renovation and expansion in 2012. During the closure, substantial selections from the collection travelled internationally. Masterpieces from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis was shown in Tokyo and Kobe in 2012–2013, while Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis toured the United States from January 2013 to January 2014. The American tour brought over thirty paintings to the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, followed by a smaller selection at The Frick Collection in New York. Buvelot and Lea van der Vinde were among the principal authors and organizers associated with the touring exhibitions and their publications.^[10][2]

The renovated and expanded Mauritshuis reopened on 27 June 2014. For the reopening, Buvelot organized Mauritshuis—The Building and published a study of the seventeenth-century building, its changing interiors and its former garden. The project connected the history of the museum's collection with the architectural and decorative history of the house constructed for Johan Maurits.^[11][12]

Buvelot then collaborated with Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, on Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer. Drawn from the Royal Collection, the exhibition examined seventeenth-century Dutch representations of domestic interiors, village life, taverns, courtyards and other scenes of everyday activity. It was presented at the Queen's Gallery in London, the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh and the Mauritshuis between 2015 and 2017.^[13] In 2016, he also contributed to Genre Paintings in the Mauritshuis, a scholarly collection catalogue prepared with Ariane van Suchtelen and other members of the museum's staff.^[2]

Collection research and international partnerships, 2017–2020

In 2017, Buvelot curated Slow Food: Dutch and Flemish Meal Still Lifes 1600–1640 together with Ariane van Suchtelen and Charlotte Rulkens. The exhibition examined the development of the meal still life through paintings by artists including Clara Peeters, Floris van Dijck, Nicolaes Gillis and Pieter Claesz. Buvelot edited the catalogue, which included contributions on the foods, utensils, tableware and patterns of consumption represented in the paintings.^[14]

His article “Rembrandt in the Mauritshuis: Work in Progress”, published in 2017, surveyed the changing attribution, conservation and technical examination of paintings assigned to Rembrandt and his workshop in the museum's collection. It discussed research surrounding works including Saul and David, whose restoration and reattribution had involved an international team of curators, conservators and technical specialists.^[15]

In 2018, Buvelot co-curated Prized Possessions: Dutch Paintings from National Trust Houses with Rupert Goulding and David Taylor. The exhibition assembled Dutch seventeenth-century paintings preserved in historic houses administered by the British National Trust, including works whose customary display within domestic collections had limited their availability for international museum exhibitions.^[16]

His research during this period also extended to the historical movement of collections. In 2020, he published a study of paintings removed from the stadholder's picture gallery in The Hague and transported to Paris following the French invasion of the Netherlands in 1795.^[2]

Recent projects, 2021–present

Buvelot collaborated with Bernd Ebert and Cécile Tainturier on the first comprehensive monograph and catalogue raisonné devoted to Jacobus Vrel. Published in 2021, the volume combined archival investigation, close visual analysis, dendrochronology and other forms of technical examination in an effort to reconstruct Vrel's small and poorly documented oeuvre. Several works by Vrel had historically been attributed to Vermeer or to Pieter de Hooch.^[17]

The research led to Vrel, Forerunner of Vermeer, the first monographic museum exhibition devoted to the artist. It was presented at the Mauritshuis in 2023 and subsequently at the Fondation Custodia in Paris. The exhibition brought together Vrel's quiet domestic interiors and street scenes, including the only dated painting currently known from his oeuvre, Woman at the Window of 1654.^[18]

In 2022, Buvelot curated Manhattan Masters, organized to conclude the Mauritshuis's bicentenary year. The exhibition presented ten Dutch paintings from The Frick Collection, including Rembrandt's large Self-Portrait of 1658, alongside works by Vermeer, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael and Aelbert Cuyp. It marked the first occasion on which the Frick lent this group of paintings to a European museum.^[19]

Buvelot produced the 2025 exhibition Facing the Storm: A Museum in Wartime, which examined the Mauritshuis during the German occupation of the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945. Using paintings, empty frames, photographs, film, sound recordings, archival documents and personal accounts, the exhibition addressed the evacuation and protection of the collection, the museum's proximity to the political centre of the occupation authorities, Nazi cultural policy and the experiences of the family of museum manager Mense de Groot, who lived in the building's basement during the war.^[20]