 |
Home |  |
Actuele collectie |  |
Taxatie |
 |
Ets-tekeningen |  |
Verkocht |  |
Restauratie |
Welcome to the website of Van Driel Art Dealer & Gallery
A summary
On this page we want to explain briefly the contents of our website. Although according to the great Chinese philospher Confucius a picture tells a thousand words - and there are many pictures on our site - some of the texts in Dutch needed a short summary in English for our foreign visitors.
The homepage (Welkom, meaning Welcome) and the 3 underlying pages (Verleden (Past), Heden (Present) and Visie (Vision)), give background information about our company, Van Driel Art Dealer & Gallery, its website, its history, its owners and its vision.
The art dealership and gallery were established in Rotterdam in 1991 by Ron and Marja van Driel in an old three-storey-high building, which Ron himself restored and which now consists of the main gallery on the second floor, the reception room on the first floor and the exhibition space in the basement. Ron's love for art started when he as a young man visited auctions and private art collections with his father, an avid collector of Dutch master painters. His father also taught him what to look for in art, especially paintings.
Nowadays Ron and Marja are very busy; buying and selling art, framing and restoration, research, visiting auctions and museums, supporting art writers and more. Regularly they organize an exhibition in their small, but wonderful basement art gallery, usually of work of an artist they themselves admire.
The relationship between an art dealer and his customers must be based on trust, according to Ron's vision. Therefore he always researches and collects as much information as possible about the origin of a painting, to be able to show this to a potential buyer.
This part of the website does not need many words. The pictures tell it (almost) all.
"Actuele collectie" leads to hundred plus pages of beautiful paintings.
"Consignatieverkoop" shows even more paintings, for which Ron intermediates between seller and buyer.
"Kleinantiek" is the Dutch term for smaller objets d'art, i.e. glass, pottery and porcelain, small wooden and bronze statues.
"Taxatie". Ron is also a well-known and respected valuer of paintings, for which he also uses the enormous archive of documents his father assembled and which is still growing.
"Inkoop". Each day paintings are offered to Ron. But often he has to disappoint people, because he only buys paintings and other objects of art of the highest quality or of well-established artists.
On these pages extensive information is given about two expertises of Van Driel: restoration & framing. Both are done in the studio at the back of the building by experts in their fields and with use of materials of the highest quality. Ron is always researching new methods to preserve, for instance old etchings and drawings.
As said Ron often organize exhibitions in their art gallery. The underlying pages of this section of the site lead to exhibitions of the past with information about the artists. They vary from the international known "harbour" painter Marius de Jongere to Peter Breedijk, an important representative of Dutch magical realism, to Dutch artists Peter van Berkel (flowers and landscapes), Piet Middelhoek (abstract) and Machiel Hagedoorn (drawings). In 2008 Ron opened the gallery to local artists; this year (2009) visitors are welcome to the exhibition of the impressionistic paintings of Rotterdam by Dordrecht based artist René de Jong.
It was Ron's father who started an extensive art-historical research, first of the so called Rotterdam harbour painters, but soon after that of every important Dutch and international painter he could find material on. All these documents - letters, pictures, photos, articles - are kept in folders which can be viewed by writers and students (a request by mail or telephone is obligatory). To show art lovers how much documentation there is, Ron decided to put lists of the names of the artists in the folders - from many countries - on this website (notice the navigation on the right side of the homepage of the section on art-historical research).
Here we publish the latest news about our business and the weblog of Ron van Driel.
This part of course gives information about how you can reach our business (address, opening hours). We are situated in the south of Rotterdam, on a main road which leads in and out of the city and can also easily be reached from the centre of Rotterdam.