SOVIETS LOAN DUTCH, FLEMISH WORKS

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands —  Peter the Great and Catherine the Great had an eye for art, and stocked up on Dutch and Flemish Old Masters. Many of those paintings haven’t been seen outside the Soviet Union for more than two centuries--until now.

After a decade of negotiations, the Soviet Union is giving the Netherlands a look at a few works from the Hermitage museum’s extensive collection of Dutch and Flemish art.

On exhibit here at the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, the 41 paintings on loan from the Leningrad museum include works by 17th-Century masters Rembrandt, Rubens, Ruisdael and Van Dyck.

Once the Winter Palace of the czars when Leningrad was known as St. Petersburg, the Hermitage has a major section devoted to Dutch and Flemish art--a passion of contemporary Soviet art lovers, according to museum art historian Paul Donker Duyvis.

“It’s just strange to realize that someone far away in Russia has such a beautiful collection of Dutch art,” said Duyvis, who visited the Hermitage in preparation for the loan exhibit.

“When I saw the 24 Rembrandts together, the Russian curators saw me looking and smiling and asked, ‘Do you regret they are all here, and not in Holland?’ ” he said in a recent interview.

“But they bought the paintings at a very early period, and have a real interest in Dutch art,” he continued. “They didn’t steal the paintings like Napoleon did, or like the English with the statues in the Parthenon.”

The Hermitage collection was started by Peter the Great, who ruled from 1682-1725 and was known as the father of modern Russia. A giant of a man whose primary goal was to open up his country to Western influences, Peter bought his first Dutch painting--a Rembrandt--when he visited the Netherlands in the early 1700s.

The most zealous of collectors, however, was his grandson’s wife, Catherine the Great, who ruled from 1762-96.

“She was really incredible, in every field,” Duyvis said, adding that the Empress of All the Russias “bought like a madwoman.”

“She bought complete collections at sales and auctions, sending ambassadors to buy for her.”

The paintings were spared the usual wear and tear many Old Masters undergo as they are traded from one private collector to another because they were maintained in the royal and later in the Soviet state collections. “The Russians love and take very good care of their art,” Duyvis said.

“The quality of the collection is something which is really incredible. The major part of it has been in the Hermitage museum since its foundation in the 18th Century.”

Duyvis said the Hermitage’s Dutch and Flemish collection was further swelled by the addition of privately owned paintings confiscated by the state after the 1917 revolution.

The “Masterpieces From the Hermitage, Leningrad” exhibition was arranged as part of a cultural exchange program between Leningrad and Rotterdam, two port cities which have a Sister City relationship. The exhibition ends July 14.