Cornelis Pieter Meulendijk (1912-1979) Cornelis Pieter Meulendijk (1912-1979) Philippe Bourgoin Over a period of about forty years, this now famous collector put together an impressive collection of African, Oceanic and Asian art. In an article titled Cornelis Pieter Meulendijks primitieve kindren (Cornelis Pieter Meulendijks’ Primitive Children), published in Het Rotterdamsch Parool on March 2, 1968, its author Bert van Polen describes Meulendjik as “the greatest collector of primitive art in the Netherlands”. The Meulendijk villa, located in the Rotterdam-Hillegersberg district, was overflowing with treasures. Romantic paintings, and masks and sculptures occupied the shelves and walls, while shields and weapons filled the staircases. It was a necessity for this enthusiastic aficionado to be surrounded by these objects and he even went so far as to dust them himself! He visited museums, cultivated relationships with the main players in the art market specializing in the field, and participated in exhibitions through loans of his objects. Cornelis Pieter Meulendijk surrounded by masks and sculptures from Oceania. © Private Coll. TAC Tribal Art Community. His parents ran a bicycle shop. His eclectic father was also a gymnastics teacher, gave dance lessons and worked in the construction industry. Meulendijk had been intent on becoming a zoo veterinarian when he was a youth, and his first encounters with tribal art took place at the Blijdorp zoo, which had been in existence since 1857 near the family home on Rotterdam’s Hofplein. The zoo boasted a modest museum with a number of stuffed animals and a small ethnographic collection, partly assembled by Swiss zoologist and photographer Johann Büttikofer (1850-1927), who was director of the zoo from 1897 to 1924. Büttikofer is known for his research trips to Liberia (1879-1882 and 1886-1887), a little-known region at the time, and to Borneo (1893-1894), in the company of geologist and biologist Gustaaf Adolf Frederik Molengraaff (1860-1942) and physicist Anton Willem Nieuwenhuis (1864-1953). At the weekly market in Goudsesingel, Meulendijk discovered three books on the travels of Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904). The many illustrations in them inspired him, despite his young age, to organize an exhibition on Africa at his school. Thus was born a real passion for this vast continent, even if the trade in exotic objects in the Netherlands at the time was mainly in objects from its colonies: the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and the western part of Papua New Guinea (now Irian Jaya, or West Papua), then known as Dutch New Guinea. He brought home various ethnographic objects and weapons from his visits to Brussels and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. These constituted the beginnings of a collection that would be lost in the Second World War, when the Lutwaffe bombed Rotterdam on May 14, 1940, in an attack that destroyed much of the city’s historic center. Cornelis Pieter Meulendijk surrounded by masks and sculptures from Oceania. © Van Bussel. After the war, Meulendijk set up an accounting and tax consultancy firm. This flourishing business enabled him to satisfy his consuming passion for objects from Africa, the South Seas, Asia and the Americas. His collection grew steadily and began to include some remarkable pieces. He simultaneously assembled a comprehensive reference library, which he used to document his acquisitions. In the early 1960s, he forged a special relationship with dealer and collector Loed van Bussel (1935-2018), who was well-known for being a tenacious object hunter. Since German was his second language, van Bussel had been able to establish relationships with leading German dealers and collectors like Ernst Heinrich (1896-1972) in Stuttgart, Ludwig Bretschneider (1909-1987) in Munich and Julius Konietzko (1886-1952) in Hamburg. He was also able to work with museums, which at the time exchanged or sold works to round out or complete their collections. The connection between Meulendijk and van Bussel led to many exchanges and to the establishment of an enduring friendship. The latter became his advisor and his main source for Oceanic, as well as African, pieces. Meulendijk’s other suppliers included the painter and art dealer Leendert van Lier (1910-1995) and the London dealer Herbert F. Rieser (1902-1978). In addition to van Bussel and van Lier, the Belgian dealer and collector Jef Vanderstraete (1904-1985) was a frequent guest at Hillegersberg, and so was Lodewijk Groenhuizen (1906-1990), who began collecting Asian art in Rotterdam and later became a dealer in tribal art in Utrecht. Meulendijk also became acquainted with René (1927-2011) and Rita Wassing (director of the Indonesia Museum Nusantara, Delft, which closed in 2013). René Wassing had accompanied Michael Rockefeller (1938-1961) on his expedition to the Asmat of West Papua, during which the latter was killed in 1961. On his return to the Netherlands, Wassing became curator of the Oceania department at Rotterdam’s Museum voor Land-en Volkenkunde (now the Wereldmuseum). In his reference work, African Art: Its Background and Traditions (New York, 1968, Harry N. Abrams), Wassing included 19 objects from the Meulendijk collection. Thanks to his erudition and to Wassing’s support, Meulendijk joined the museum’s advisory board. In those days, it was not uncommon for collectors to exhibit their treasures in museums, and that was considered a form of recognition of the quality of their works. In 1958, J. de Hoog, curator at the Etnografisch Museum in Delft, organized an exhibition devoted to the art of Papua New Guinea in private collections (Nieuw-Guinea, Kunst uit Privé Bezit), in which 58 of Meulendijk’s objects were included. Seven years later, in 1965, a similar exhibition called Indonesië-Oceanië. Kunst uit particulier bezit (Indonesia-Oceania. Art in Private Hands), organized by the Museum voor Land-en Volkenkunde in Rotterdam, once again brought together a group of works held in private hands, but this time from Indonesia and Oceania more generally. The Oceania section featured 97 objects, 58 of which came from Meulendijk’s own collection (11 from New Caledonia, 22 from Polynesia, and 25 from New Zealand). In 1967, a substantial part of his collection of African was exhibited at the same institution and became the subject of a publication called Afrikaanse Sculpturen uit de Collectie van C.P. Meulendijk (African Sculpture from the C.P. Meulendijk Collection). As he sadly died prematurely of a heart attack, Meulendijk’s longstanding dream of setting up a foundation that would have established a long-term loan to the Wereldmuseum never materialized. Meulendijk collected tirelessly throughout his life, and was constantly seeking to expand his knowledge of tribal art. His enthusiasm for these arts reflected his personality and outlook, and his discernment and taste were clearly apparent in the objects offered for sale at the three auctions devoted to his collections. Cornelis Peter Meulendijk surrounded by Buddhist statues and masks from Indonesia. © Het Rotterdamsch Parool, March 2, 1968. Photo Kees Weeda. The Indonesian collection was donated by his wife to the Nusantara Museum in Delft. Of the 563 lots that were sold at auction (Christie’s, London, October 21 & 22, 1980, and Amsterdam, March 20 & 21, 1986), 362 were African, mainly from Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria and the Republic of Congo, 187 were Oceanic, and mostly from Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, and 14 were North American. Some of these artworks are now in North American museums like the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles. References: (Loed van Bussel, personal communications. Tribal Art Community, October 3, 2023, Arnold Wentholt)
