The Museu Calouste Gulbenkian

I love museums. When I visit somewhere, my attention is always drawn to the city's art collections. The collection can be as enormous and bustling as the Louvre in high season or as small, quiet and contemplative as the Brandywine River Museum (Chadds Ford Pennsylvania); regardless of the size of the town or the facility, art museums beckon. Over the years I've been able to visit many of the major museums and collections in the world. From New York and North America to Europe and Asia, significant art collections have become fairly familiar to me. (Another of my blogs is devoted to some of the museums I've visited.)

These days then, it's rare for me to visit a new museum but during a recent visit to Lisbon we discovered the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, a marvel of a museum, particularly since the entire collection, eclectic and magnificent, was accumulated by a single man. Everyone these days knows about J. Paul Getty, the American oilman who endowed the Getty in Los Angeles. But Mr. Gulbenkian was more wealthy and more widely accumulative than J. Paul Getty, if that is actually possible. To my surprise, Mr. Gulbenkian was an early oilman too--a petroleum engineer--and ethnic Armenian. He moved from Turkey in the early 20th century during repression of ethnic Armenians and became a naturalized British citizen. Later he was a resident of Paris and Lisbon and he eventually died in 1955. A quiet man, his collection reflects his interests, which were obviously wide, including antiquities (Egyptian, Greek, Roman), textiles (Chinese and Japanese) and carpets (Turkish, Persian, Caucasian) as well as ceramics, tiles, Islamic books and manuscripts, illuminated Gospels, Japanese and Chinese porcelains, many significant European paintings by masters such as van Eyck, Ghirlandaio, Mabuse, Hals, Rubens, Rembrandt, Rodin, Renoir, Degas and others. He loved the Venetian genre painter Guardi and owned 19 of them, displayed in a single room all their own. In all, his collection of European masters is the equal of the Frick, though smaller.

A few highlights:

The first is an Egyptian burial item, a sarcophagus. This "cat with kittens" dates to about 600 BCE and is remarkable in several ways. First, this particular scene of a cat with kittens is unusual in ancient Egyptian art. Second, unlike many other more stylized works of its culture, this one is more lifelike and hence more appealing. The rectangular base contained a mummified cat, sacred to the goddess Bastet. Like so much in succeeding galleries, the execution of the piece is sublime.

The Gulbenkian is remarkable because it's chronologic arrangement allows progression through centuries of civilizations of various peoples, locations and traditions. The ancient world is represented by Egyptian and Greek items but also Roman ones and Mesopotamian antiquities as well.

In one of the early galleries we found this low relief, showing the unbelievable craftsmanship of Egyptian artists. This dates from around 300 BCE and according to the museum is only a study or preparatory piece for a portrait of a pharaoh. This would have been made about the time of the death of Alexander and the installation of Ptolemy, one of his generals, as pharaoh. Study or not, the work is exquisitely detailed and has survived two millennia with only a few scars. The Egyptian collection is only something like 50 pieces, but each in its own way is simply exquisite, as is this one.

There are some amazing items in the collection of antiquities, including a collection of Greek coins and Roman medallions that is unparalleled in the world. The medallions are particularly fine and are the only gold medallions from the Roman era that have been discovered. These date from just after the time of Alexander the Great and tell the story of his life. The golden disc to the right is a particularly fine example of the collection. Mr. Gulbenkian was an avid collector of coins and many are on display.

A major strength of the Gulbenkian is a large collection of  Islamic art. The arts and crafts of the Islamic east are too-often neglected or shuttled aside, but here there is an extensive group of items dating from as long ago as the 12th century and as recent as the 18th. Mr Gulbenkian collected textiles, rugs, manuscripts, ceramics, and pottery from the Ottoman world (he was born in Turkey but was Armenian), including Persia, Syria and Egypt.
Rugs dating to the 16th century are shown in their entirety, rolled out.

Probably the most striking of the Islamic arts group is a cup or tankard of white jade. The museum guidebook says that it's the only one of it's kind. It dates from a time when its owner Ulugh Beg was a prominent government official. There is an equally beautiful handle, which was added later. This is known to have belonged to  Beg because of the inscription encircling the mouth of the cup. Later it belonged to a Mogul emperor.

A sequence of tiles salvaged from an Islamic building. The Gulbenkian features a number these beautiful tiles, installed as part of the museum walls. They are from several periods, as early as the 14th century and late as the 18th. These have been installed into the wall plaster, flush with the surface, as they would have been in an Islamic building or mosque. Many show beautiful repetitive patterns and motifs.

There are many examples of Chinese and Japanese porcelain and hard stone pieces, dating from as early as the 14th century. These were acquired by Mr. Gulbenkian as beautiful items without much regard to historical or artistic significance. Nonetheless they're well worth seeing and comprise a truly beautiful set of rooms. There are jars and pots of all sorts in many of the familiar shapes. The hand work and craftsmanship are simply beyond superior. There are matching sets, as shown to the right, that contain similar or identically-painted scenes, all in the same beautiful tradition.

Mr. Gulbenkian compiled his collection in the early and middle parts of the 20th century, probably always intending to donate the lot to a museum. Certainly his acquisitions of European art and crafts could support that, given his strong interest in other cultures and traditions. Still, the Gulbenkian Founders Collection is quite strong in European works. The first surprise was a pair of heads by Rogier van der Weyden, of all painters. These are fragments of a larger work, but still have the hand of the master--a real surprise but both beautiful, one St. Catherine and the other St. Joseph. There are also works by Mabuse, Ghirlandaio, and Carpaccio, among early masters. 

Later Dutch and Flemish painters including Hals, Rembrandt, vanDyck and Rubens are well-represented.  Here is "Portrait of Sara Hessix," ca1626, by Franz Hals. It hangs near a large painting, "Portrait of an Old Man," by Rembrandt, dating from about twenty years later. There are two small paintings by Rubens--therefore more likely to be by his own hand--in the same room as well as a fine van Dyck.

There are 19th century and 20th century works on display in the collection as well. Here is one of Rodin's justly famous Burghers of Calais. 
I've seen similar copies but this is actually the original, owned by Rodin and acquired in 1917 after his death, from his studio. It is Jean d'Aire, the largest of the group, carrying the keys to the city as he marches off to be a hostage.




In sum we spent around three hours in the Founder's Collection, as the original 6400 items are called. Only a thousand or so are on display at any one time, according to the guidebook. And we spent too little time with his period French furniture, his amazing silver collection, and several other collections (coins, medallions, and others).

We did spend quite a while in a small room completely full of beautiful Art Nouveau jewelry  by Lalich, who was a a close friend of Mr. Gulbenkian. The item that attracted my eye and that of nearly everyone else is a jaw-dropping brooch in the form of a dragonfly, once worn by Sara Bernhardt onstage. It was a delightful finish to an amazing smorgasbord of art and craftsmanship.



The architecture and surrounding gardens make a fine and leisurely finish to a satisfying and engaging visit to the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian. It is a delightful place from top to bottom, start to finish, and inside to outside. The architecture is top-rate and the cafeteria food was even good. Highly recommended.