Foreign Graphic Arts Collection
The Foreign Graphic Art Collection comprises more than 11 000 works created between the 15th century and the beginning of the 21st century. The collection clearly demonstrates the developmental characteristics of Europe’s most historically significant art schools and features works by a range of outstanding, internationally recognized masters.
The most voluminous part of the holdings consists of German, Italian, French, English and Russian art, which is thematically expanded by Asian art objects, broadly representing Japanese and Chinese art. The collection also includes select works by artists from North and South America. This extensive collection offers insight not only into the diversity of graphic art styles but also into historical development of techniques. It includes graphic sheets that showcase a wide spectrum of printmaking methods, from woodcuts and traditional copperplate engravings to lithography, as well as several hundred drawings and watercolours.
The origins of the graphic art collection date back to the Baltic German physician Nikolaus von Himsel (1729–1764). During the 18th and 19th centuries, the repository was expanded through collections formed by Heinrich von Offenberg (1752–1827), Reinhold Philipp Schilling (1819–1888), the Hollander family, the Riga Art Society (Kunstverein zu Riga), and other art patrons. Like the foreign painting collection, it consists predominantly of works acquired from 19th century private collections. The largest donation received by the City of Riga was made between 1868 and 1869 by Reinhold Philipp Schilling, whose collection numbered more than 600 graphic sheets. Over the years, the repository has been continually augmented through substantial and artistically significant gifts and acquisitions, including 17th-19th century Japanese colour woodblock prints and 17th to early 20th century traditional Chinese ink and watercolour paintings on silk and paper scrolls.
The collection brings together series of works by master artists, with Western European graphic art forming its core. The most significant and numerically largest sub-groups consist of German, Italian, French, Dutch, Flemish, British and Belgian graphic works. Among the notable Wester European artists represented in the collection are Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685), Jacques Callot (1592–1623), Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), and Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828).
Works from the Foreign Graphic Arts Collection are periodically displayed in temporary exhibitions. Meanwhile, graphic works and paintings from Japan, Chine and India can be experienced in the Asian Art Gallery.