To celebrate the 350th anniversary of the artist’s death in 1669, the Ackland Art Museum will join other museums around the world commemorating Rembrandt by mounting a special presentation of his drawings from the Peck Collection. The installation celebrates the famous master, whose drawings display his virtuosic flair, keen insight, and eye for detail. It also highlights the generous gift of the Pecks, who recently donated their important collection of 17th-century Dutch drawings to the Ackland. The Peck Collection contains several notable drawings by Rembrandt himself, including the charming Studies of a woman and two children, with the artist’s annotations, and the sublime Noli me tangere, in which the risen Christ reveals himself to Mary Magdalene. Sheldon Peck, an alumnus of the university, along with his late wife Leena, became leading collectors of Dutch drawings over the past forty years. Their gift establishes the Ackland as one of the most important repositories for drawings by Rembrandt and his contemporaries. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is now one of the only universities in the United States where drawings by 17th-century Dutch masters can be studied in such depth. Coming soon will be a major exhibition of the Peck Collection, showing these sheets by Rembrandt as well as those by great number of other artists from the era (opening at the Ackland in Fall 2021).
[Image caption: Rembrandt (1606-1669), Studies of a woman and two children, ca 1640. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina]
[Text from codart.nl]