Andries Bonger was very proud of his collection of works by Odilon Redon, he left several items to various museums and placed his letters from Redon in the Rijksmuseum. His widow testified to the fact that, while he did his best to interest museums in it during his lifetime, he did not make any great effort to keep his overall collection intact. Perhaps it was too closely linked to him as a person for that: when he was no longer around, the added meaning similarly dissipated. Bonger’s widow and his later heirs bequeathed and sold several Redons in the Netherlands and abroad from 1946 onwards. The Kröller-Müller Museum acquired the folding screen Redon designed for the collector, for instance, while the Rijksmuseum Twente received a decorative panel and the Haagsch Gemeentemuseum (now Kunstmuseum Den Haag) acquired Still Life with Lemon and Pepper along with virtually the entire holdings of graphic work. Over the years, several works were bought by museums in Japan or auctioned at Sotheby’s New York and purchased by private individuals. In 1996 the heirs offered for sale what remained of Bonger’s collection: some one hundred pieces, fifty of them by Redon, among which were many of his finest works. Under the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, the collection was purchased by the Dutch state and placed on permanent loan to the Van Gogh Museum in accordance with the heirs’ wishes, providing the museum with one of the most remarkable collections of Redon’s work.
In 2007 Fred Leeman completed an extensive manuscript on Bonger and his collection for the Van Gogh Museum. This was included only in part, however, in the exhibition catalogue Odilon Redon and Emile Bernard: Masterpieces from the Andries Bonger Collection that was published in 2009. His descriptions of the works have been used as a departure point for the present entries, supplemented by a wealth of new information. Since 2007, numerous comprehensive catalogues have been published and several important primary sources have become accessible, such as Bonger’s letters to Redon, the account books and contemporary reviews. The annotated correspondence between Redon and Bonger, published in 2022, has been especially elemental for grasping the subtleties in the relationship between artist and collector. Virtually all the works by Redon in the Van Gogh Museum have been examined technically by René Boitelle and Harriet Stratis. Extensive research has also been carried out into the original frames and mounts of the works in the collection. The insights revealed by these fresh studies have been incorporated in this essay and the entries. All works are depicted in their original frames.