European

About the AGO's European Collection

The AGO’s Old Master Collection is comprised of three pillars of strength: Dutch painting from the 1600s, Italian painting and sculpture from the 1600s, and French Salon and Impressionist painting from the 1800s. The Dutch painting collection is particularly rich in landscape, still life and portraiture, and includes key portraits by Frans Hals and Rembrandt, landscapes by Albert Cuyp, Jan van Goyen and Salomon van Ruysdael, and still lifes by Hendrick Andriessen, Johannes Fabritius, Frans Snyders, Hubert van Ravesteyn and Jan Weenix.

The Italian collection is particularly strong in Baroque sculpture, in particular two outstanding works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini – Corpus (c. 1655), a life-sized bronze donated by Murray Frum and family in 2006, and a marble bust of Pope Gregory XV (c. 1621) that was given to the AGO by Joey and Toby Tanenbaum in 1997. The AGO also has one of the finest collections of Florentine Baroque bronze sculptures and medals in the world (The Margaret and Ian Ross Collection).

The French painting collection includes academic pictures by Charles-François Daubigny, Eugène Devéria, Jean-Léon Gérôme and James (Jacques-Joseph) Tissot, as well as outstanding examples of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, and Vincent van Gogh.

Henry Moore Sculpture Centre

Part of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Modern and Contemporary department, The Henry Moore Sculpture Centre and Henry Moore Discovery Centre house the world’s largest public collection of the famed artist’s work, comprising 141 sculptures, 77 drawings and 711 prints, most of which were donations from Moore himself. This collection was one of the most important twentieth-century gifts to a public museum by an internationally celebrated artist, and has been a major attraction at the Gallery for more than 35 years.