This book presents highlights from the collection of Maida and George Abrams, arguably the finest private collection of Dutch seventeenth-century drawings in the world. The works range from studies by renowned masters - including Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jacques de Gheyn II, Hendrick Goltzius, Hendrick Avercamp, among others - to drawings by lesser-known draftsmen whose contributions are essential to understanding the art of the period.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Haarlem's thriving art community made the city an important center of artistic activity, second only to Amsterdam in influence. Inventories from this period serve as key implements in describing collectors' tastes, and they also provide information about the social habits of living among and displaying luxury goods. This book transcribes for the first time a selection of one hundred twelve important documents discovered by author Pieter Biesboer in the notarial archives of Haarlem. It also contains indexes by artist and subject, as well as a list of more than thirty-five hundred documents in which art objects are listed, found in the Archiefdienst voor Kennemerland in Haarlem. Biesboer's introductory essay provides an in-depth survey of the history of collecting in Haarlem during the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. The inventories of citizens, patricians, merchants, artists, and silversmiths are included, along with the inventories of the Convent of Saint Jan, the Prinsenhof, Saint Elisabeth's Hospital, the Old Men's Almshouse, the Orphanage, and other almshouses. Together they present a comprehensive look at commissioned paintings for public buildings and institutions by artists such as Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, Frans Hals, Johannes Verspronck, and Cornelis Holsteijn. In addition to paintings, Biesboer catalogues a small number of drawings, porcelain, lace, sculpture, and jewelry.

Through history artists have often worked on both sides of a piece of paper. But they rarely had the option to decide which side to display. With the 20th century, however, this changed. An interesti ng Fogg Art Museum show from which this catalogue is derived was the first to display the front and back of great works. Described are paper

Time and Transformation brings together a variety of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings and works on paper in a major examination of themes dealing with the transformative effects of time and circumstance. The Dutch were fascinated with this idea and the variety of motifs used to convey it. Included are images of local landscapes with medieval structures left in ruins in the wake of the Spanish wars, depictions of rustic cottages and farmhouses, Dutch Italianate landscapes with Roman ruins, and representations of accidental ruins caused by flood or fire. Non-architectural imagery, such as vanitas still lifes and depictions of ruined trees encourage broader thinking on the meanings and associations of images of the fragmentary. Among the artists included are Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan van Goyen, Abraham Bloemaert, Willem Kalf, Gerard Dou, and Bartholomaus Breenberg.