ROTTERDAM, 9 June 2026 – Museum Rotterdam has received two paintings by 17th-century Rotterdam masters Abraham Hondius and Adriaen Verboom from a private collection. The works will become part of the museum’s collection of 17th-century Rotterdam painting and are expected to be shown in the future museum location at Het Steiger.
Image: Callisto and Arcas, Abraham Hondius, c. 1680. Oil on canvas, height 39 cm x width 32.7 cm
The donation adds two very different works to the city collection: a mythological scene by Hondius and a southern-style landscape by Verboom. Together, they show how varied Rotterdam painting was in the 17th century, from dramatic storytelling to imagined Italian light.
Rotterdam masters enter collection
The painting by Abraham Hondius, Callisto and Arcas, dates from around 1680. Hondius was born in Rotterdam around 1625 or 1630 and died in London in 1691. He is best known for lively hunting and animal scenes, often painted with warm colours, movement and action.
This donated work is unusual within his oeuvre because mythological scenes are rare in his work. Callisto and Arcas depicts a story from Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid, in which Callisto and her son Arcas are transformed into the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.
The painting was already shown in 1994 in the exhibition Rotterdam masters from the golden age (Rotterdamse Meesters uit de Gouden Eeuw). Its return to Museum Rotterdam through this donation strengthens the museum’s ability to tell the story of Rotterdam’s own artists from that period.
The second painting is by Adriaen Verboom, who was born in Rotterdam around 1628 and died in Amsterdam around 1670. Verboom specialised in woodland landscapes and belonged to a relatively small group of Rotterdam painters who were inspired by southern, Italianate landscapes, even though he never travelled south himself.
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Travellers in an Italianate landscape, Adriaen Verboom, c. 1665. Figures by Johannes Lingelbach. Oil on canvas, height 75 cm x width 66 cm.
Italian light from Rotterdam
Verboom’s Travellers in an Italianate landscape dates from around 1665. The painting shows travellers with donkeys moving through a hilly landscape with tall trees and a ruin, under clouds lit by warm evening light.
The figures in the painting were added by Johannes Lingelbach. His studies of the donkeys are kept at the Fondation Custodia in Paris.
Liesbeth van der Zeeuw, curator at Museum Rotterdam, says the two works show the breadth and quality of Rotterdam painting in the 17th century. “These paintings show the enormous versatility and high level of Rotterdam painting in the 17th century and make clear what an important role the city played in the art world of that time.”
To bring that versatility into sharper focus, Van der Zeeuw has recently written several blog articles about themes and subjects linked to 17th-century painting. The articles can be found on the museum website under Crash course Rotterdam Old Masters (Stoomcursus Rotterdamse Oude Meesters). The blog articles are in Dutch.
New works for Het Steiger
The donation comes at an important moment for Museum Rotterdam. The museum recently received the keys to its new location at Het Steiger, marking another step towards the development of Rotterdam’s new city museum.
The two paintings are expected to receive a place in the future presentation of the collection in the new museum building. In that setting, they will connect Rotterdam’s 17th-century art history with the museum’s next chapter in the city centre.
