The Singer Laren museum has received a substantial donation and the financial means for a new museum wing. The gift includes the entire private collection of artworks by Els and Jaap Blokker: the Nardinc Collection. Five new rooms with the works will open next week. The couple lived among their paintings for forty years.
A portrait of both collectors hangs at the entrance of the new Nardinc wing. Jaap was painted by Piet van den Boog and Els was captured by top photographer Erwin Olaf. She beams at the museum visitor. “It moved me when I saw us hanging next to each other,” said widow Els Blokker-Verwer (1947) in conversation with news hour.
She never gives interviews, but now that her life’s work is presented, she makes an exception.
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Widow Els Blokker with the portraits of her and her husband
news hour
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“This is really a collection of ours, brought together with love and dedication over forty years. I always looked to see if a painting touched me and my husband looked more to see if it fit into the collection. He thought this donation was a good initiative. ” Plans for a private museum had already been shelved and other dreams for the future came to an end when Jaap Blokker passed away in 2011.
‘House Nardinclant’
The Nardinc collection is named after their previous Laren house ‘Huize Nardinclant’, where the couple started collecting. It concerns a total of 117 works by 41 different Dutch top artists from around 1900, all modernists. The great favorite of the couple was Jan Sluijters, with over forty paintings the core of the collection. “He lived in Villa Vita Nuova on the Hilversumseweg in Laren, which still exists,” Blokker says.
From the villa, Sluijters painted his view ‘Laren’s landscape with cyclists’. It is a sun-drenched work with brightly colored dots and surfaces through which three cyclists ride relaxed. Very common now, but then bicycles were something new. In 2022, the exit of the A1 crosses Sluijter’s lovely landscape of the past.
The collection also includes work by Kees van Dongen, Leo Gestel, Jan and Charley Toorop, among others. The paintings hang in the room by theme. Varying from ‘nudes’ and ‘portraits’ to simply ‘party’.
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Jan Sluijters, Laren’s Landscape with Cyclists, ca. 1910-1911, oil on canvas
Singer Laren, donation Nardinc Collection
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Jan Sluijters, Summer in Laren with tram ‘De Gooische Moordenaar’, 1910, oil on canvas, 41 x 50 cm
Singer Laren, donation Nardinc Collection
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Jan Toorop, ‘Evening’ (before the strike), c. 1888-1889, oil on canvas, 67 x 79 cm
Singer Laren, donation Nardinc Collection
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Kees Maks, Dance Party with Sotomayor, ca. 1927, oil on canvas, 159 x 230 cm
Singer Laren, donation Nardinc Collection
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Kees Maks, Madeleine-Bastille Omnibus, ca. 1902, oil on canvas, 79 x 106 cm
Singer Laren, donation Nardinc Collection
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“A feast of recognition”, Blokker calls it enthusiastically. She remembers exactly where everything hung at home. “The Kees Maks hung in the stairwell.” A photo of Blokker’s former entrance hall shows Mak’s Spanish dancer the residents on the landing danced happily to the left, a stately self-portrait of Carel Willink with his wife and Jo Koster’s grave ‘Girl with a sun hat’ hangs behind the stairs.
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The entrance hall of Jaap and Els Blokker in their former home in Laren
news hour
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In the museum room with lavish nudes, Blokker explains that all those paintings hung in the sleeping ward. “We deliberately kept them out of sight so as not to shock our visit. Because there is more space here, all the paintings come out much nicer than in my home.”
When curator Roby Boes, specially appointed to manage the Nardinc Collection, came home to Els Blokker about three years ago, her jaw dropped. “Is this real?” I thought. The amount was huge! Moreover, there are also beautiful, but less well-known names such as Mommie Schwarz and the female artists Jo Koster and Else Berg.”
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