Rijksmuseum Acquires Masterpiece Design Drawing with Fantasy Dolphin by Johannes Lutma

A “mysterious masterpiece.” This is how Reinier Baarsen, Professor of Decorative Arts and Crafts before 1800 in Leiden, describes the old design drawing that the Rijksmuseum recently acquired at his instigation.

On a light brown sheet of paper, only half an A4 in size, the side view of a gun helmet with spikes has been drawn with gray and white chalk. The Haarlem auction house Bubb Kuyper offered the drawing last year. According to the auction catalog it was an anonymous seventeenth-century drawing of a helmet in the shape of a fantasy dolphin. Target price 1,500 to 2,500 euros.

Baarsen, who stepped down as curator of applied arts at the Rijksmuseum on 1 December, recognized the hand of Johannes Lutma (ca. 1584-1669) in the drawing. Lutma was a silversmith active in Amsterdam, renowned for his salt cellars and jugs in lobe style. This is a whimsical, fluid way of designing with shapes derived from nature, which was popular in the Netherlands in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Together with Rembrandt and furniture maker Herman Doomer, Baarsen considers silversmith Lutma to be one of the most important artists active in Amsterdam at the time. The “big three,” as he calls them, no doubt knew each other. Rembrandt portrayed both Lutma and Doomer.

Apart from stylistic grounds, Baarsen could also attribute the drawing (purchased for 6,250 euros thanks to an anonymous donor) to Lutma because of the watermark. Four drawings by Lutma and his collaborators in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York have exactly the same watermark. Baarsen: “Watermarks were regularly replaced at the time. It is therefore an important support for the attribution of this drawing to Lutma.”

The Rijksmuseum has various silver showpieces by Lutma in its collection. But this purchase is only the second design drawing by his hand that the museum is acquiring. A total of five such drawings are now known. Baarsen: “There are probably more. This find makes you hungry.”

The professor can only guess at the purpose of the helmet design. Soldiers or militiamen in Amsterdam did not wear such fanciful helmets with spikes and lobes. Baarsen: “Did Lutma draw a helmet for a play or masquerade, made of papier-mache? Or was it a model for a painter of a mythological image? What I do know is that it is an amazing, surprisingly modern drawing.”

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam started collecting design drawings in 2013. Baarsen experienced how important the role of the drawing is in the design process at Victoria & Albert, where he previously worked. The London museum has been collecting design drawings for a long time. No design without design drawings, he says. “A drawing is often the best way for a designer to communicate an idea.”

On his advice, a special acquisition fund, the Decorative Art Fund, was set up by private benefactors to the Rijksmuseum Fund. Over the past decade, this has led to the acquisition of 1,300 design drawings. The Design Museum Den Bosch made an exhibition of these acquisitions, all dating from the period 1500-1900. An exhibition that can be seen until next Sunday and will then travel to Fondation Custodia in Paris.