Living for Art is the life story of the eminent Dutch collector, art dealer, researcher and author Frits Lugt (1884-1970). Between 1901 and 1915 he worked for an Amsterdam auction house, which flourished thanks in no small measure to his efforts. In 1915 he started to collect paintings, drawings, prints and antiquities on his own account. While he collected great masters like Rembrandt, Dürer, Rubens, Van Dyck and Watteau, he did not neglect other artists and acquired some outstanding works by less well-known names. He also published a number of standard works on art history that are still as valuable today as they ever were.
Living for Art is the story of Lugt’s search, not to say hunt, for works of art, and an account of his personal life – his family, his friends, and his relations with art collectors and museums in Europe and America.
In 1947, Lugt put his collection into a trust, the Fondation Custodia. Less than ten years later, in association with the Dutch state, he set up the renowned Institut Néerlandais in Paris. This book draws up the balance sheet of the life of an art collector whose passion and dedication created from nothing a unique public collection of enduring worth.
