Feb 2, 2021

Lies Provenance Researchers Told

This post aims to collect, little by little, published provenances that have been proven to be false, and, where possible, to specify their authors and publishers.

Why try to identify lies in provenances?

Lying about the fate of artworks owned by Jewish collectors who were persecuted by the Nazis inserts false information into the historical record of the Holocaust.

For a provenance researcher to do this deliberately is, in my opinion, a grave act of immorality which facilitates Holocaust denial.

For a provenance researcher to do this "accidentally" is evidence of incompetence, which should be sanctioned and not rewarded by employers and funders.

Readers are invited to add examples of published false provenances in the comments.

***

False Provenances Concerning Ownership during the Nazi Era by Artist

Gustav Klimt

Edgar Degas, Landscape with Smokestacks

(read Simon Goodman's The Orpheus Clock on the battle to establish the correct provenance for the Degas looted from his grandfather.)

Marc Chagall

***

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

- Provenance errors by Nazi art collector Kurt Feldhäusser and the Museum of Modern Art in New York ("location mixup")

(why did MoMA’s version carry yet another title, “Sand Hills in Engadine”?...MoMA realized Mr. Feldhäusser had mistaken the hills for ones on an island near Denmark while the museum had mistaken them for hills in Switzerland. -WSJ)

for more examples of Jewish owned art passing under the Nazis through Ferdinand Möller Galerie, Berlin ==> Kurt Feldhäuser, Berlin ==> museums see Fischer, Max lostart.de

urls

***

Paul Gauguin

Faaturuma (Melancholic)

http://web.archive.org/web/20171220174436/https://art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/18445/faaturuma-melancholic

"The Wildenstein catalogue raisonné of 1964 tentatively suggests that a certain “Dr. Hahnloser, Zurich” owned Faaturuma between Vollard and Wolfensberger. The best-known collectors fitting this description are Arthur Hahnloser (1870-1936) and his brother Emil Hahnloser (1874-1940). However, neither began collecting works by Gauguin until after World War I. As Lukas Gloor notes, “an acquisition by Arthur Hahnloser of Faaturumain 1912 would…have been totally out of sync with Arthur’s collecting behaviour at that time” and “an acquisition by Emil Hahnloser of Faaturuma in 1912 would have been a totally isolated affair”; see e-mail from Lukas Gloor, Director, Sammlung E. G. Bührle, to Brigid Boyle, July 23, 2015, NAMA curatorial files.

[5] The Wildenstein catalogue raisonné of 1964 claims that Justin K. Thannhauser owned Faaturuma between Wolfensberger and Stransky, but there is no documentary evidence to support this." - (source: Nelson-Atkins museum online provenance text (December 2017))

***

George Grosz

***

"Le Repos Dans Le Jardin Argenteuil" (Monet’s Garden at Argenteuil)

Claude Monet

Amedeo Modigliani

Pablo Picasso

Thomas Couture

Édouard Vuillard

François Boucher

El Greco

Egon Schiele

André Derain

Paul Klee

Jan van Goyen

Cranach

Renoir

Sisley

Camille Pissarro

Georges Braque

Wassily Kandinsky

Henri Matisse

Gustave Courbet

Gerard T. Borch

Albert Gleizes

Frans Hals

Macchiaioli

Corneille de Lyon

Lucien Adrion

Bernardo Bellotto

Carl Blechen

Van Gogh

Lovis Corinth

Carl Spitzweg

Mondrian

Giambattista Tiepolo

Cornelis Troost

Jean-Louis Forain

Constantin Guys

Adolph von Menzel

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

Émile Vernet-Lecomte

(update ongoing...)

*****

images

Gustav Klimt Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (also called The Lady in Gold or The Woman in Gold) by (Former owner, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Adele_Bloch-Bauer_I

El Greco “Portrait of a Gentleman” Seized by Nazis Returns to Owner’s Family in Artsbeat NYT. (Former owner, Julius Priester)

https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/an-el-greco-seized-by-nazis-returns-to-owners-family/

Edgar Degas “Landscape with Smokestacks” (1890) Landscape with Smokestacks – Friedrich Gutmann Heirs and Daniel Searle

https://plone.unige.ch/art-adr/cases-affaires/landscape-with-smokestacks-2013-friedrich-gutmann-heirs-and-daniel-searle#!prettyPhoto[pp_gal]/0/

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 1917-18 painting ‘Sand Hills in Engadine aka ‘Sand Hills (By Grünau)’ Museum of Modern Art Returns Painting to Heirs of Man Who Fled Nazis, WSJ (Former owner, Max Fischer

https://archive.is/zuHqA

Claude Monet "Monet’s Garden at Argenteuil" (Le Repos Dans Le Jardin Argenteuil) , Settlement Reached on Monet’s Garden at Argenteuil (Former owner, Maria Newman, widow of Henry P. Newman)

Paul Klee “Swamp Legend,” from 1919 After 26 Years, Munich Settles Case Over a Klee Looted by the Nazis in NYT (Former owner, Ms. Lissitzky-Küppers)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/arts/design/after-26-years-munich-settles-case-over-a-klee-looted-by-nazis.html

Jan van Goyen (1595 – 1656), “River Landscape with a Swineherd”, A Goudstikker van Goyen in Gdańsk: A Case Study of Nazi-Looted Art in Poland (Former owner, Jacques Goustikker)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-cultural-property/article/goudstikker-van-goyen-in-gdansk-a-case-study-of-nazilooted-art-in-poland/475F94269B2C9EC44ECD58FE08608D5B/share/2e8a428ee0482f496f214c8c3fe826f32c26bb62#

Jan 26, 2021

Valentin or Buchholz in Provenance Texts of American Museums

Question for art provenance researchers. How many of these artworks display gaps in the provenance for the years 1933-1945?

Which artworks, if any, appear to have the most problematic provenances? Why?

provenance (MoMa 2021) [Unknown private collection, Nice] Before 1928, Galerie Percier, Paris. By February 1949, Paul Chadourne & Colle, Paris.

---

Which art objects have been lent under the Protection from Seizure "Part 6"?

How do the provenances listed in these documents compare with more recent provenances published by the the institutions?

Extremely notable people who do not have Wikipedia pages in English

Notable People who have Wikipedia pages in German but not in English and who played an important role in Holocaust history among other things (update ongoing):

Dav. Friedman(n) a.k.a. David Friedmann was born in 1893 in Mährisch Ostrau, Austria, now Ostrava, Czech Republic. He ventured from this industrial city to Berlin in 1911. He learned the techniques of copper etching and lithography from Hermann Struck and was awarded a scholarship to study art with Lovis Corinth. https://www.jewishgen.org/AustriaCzech/wall-of-fame/friedmann.html

David Friedmann (Friedman), Austrian, Czech, American painter and Holocaust survivor

Wikipedia in German: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Friedmann_(Künstler)

(* 20. Dezember 1893 in Mährisch-Ostrau, Österreich-Ungarn; † 27. Februar 1980 in St. Louis, Missouri) war ein österreichisch-tschechisch-amerikanischer Künstler und ein Überlebender des Holocaust.

VIAF https://viaf.org/viaf/40433639/

Attention, not to be confused with

Zwei Reiter am Strand aus dem Schwabinger Kunstfund (Sammlung David Friedmann, Breslau)

David Friedmann, German Jewish businessman and art collector -(1857-1942)

who also has a Wikipedia page in German but not in English

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Friedmann_(Unternehmer)

David Friedmann (24. Januar 1857 in Rawitsch – 15. Februar 1942 in Breslau) war ein deutscher Unternehmer und Kunstsammler.

(see: https://www.dw.com/en/david-toren-why-wait-so-long/a-18051950 )

****

Wikidata Sparql Queries that might be useful:

Holocaust Victims in Wikidata that do not have English Language Wikipedia Pages

https://w.wiki/vRJ

Dec 31, 2020

Portraits of Murder and Plunder

Amalie Zuckerkandl was at the height of her beauty when Gustav Klimt begin this (unfinished) portrait of her in 1917-8. A member of the Viennese Zuckerkandl family, Amalie was murdered in the Holocaust along with her daughter Nora Stiansy because they were Jewish, and her portrait was stolen by Nazis.

Serena (Szeréna) Lederer was the model for this beautiful portrait by Gustav Klimt. Her family, which was Jewish, was plundered by the Nazis. Serena Lederer died in 1943 as a refugee from Nazism.

This magnificent portrait by Klimt depicts the Jewish Austrian intellectual and feminist Adele Bloch-Bauer. Commissioned by her husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish banker and sugar producer, the painting was looted by the Nazis in 1941, along with numerous other artworks.

Irène Cahen d'Anvers was eight years old when her father, the French Jewish banker Louis Cahen d'Anvers, commissioned this lovely portrait from Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1880. During World War II, the Nazis stole the portrait and murdered Irène's daughter, Béatrice, her ex-son-in-law and their two children because of their Jewish ancestry.

The painter Eduard Einschlag was murdered in the Treblinka concentration camp in 1942, and his estate was confiscated. He painted this self portrait in 1930.

Renoir painted this portrait of the Austrian actress Tilla Durieux (Ottilie Godeffroy, 1880–1971) in 1914 when she was married to the art dealer Paul Cassirer. After Cassirer's suicide she married Ludwig Katzenellenbogen who was deported and murdered in the Nazi Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944 because Jewish.

Selfportrait by the German Jewish painter Ernst Oppler, showing himself as an art collector. Ernest Oppler died in 1929, thus escaping the Holocaust, but many members if his family were plundered and persecuted by the Nazis; his brother, the doctor Berthold Oppler, committed suicide in detention on 6 January 1943 to avoid imminent deportation to a Nazi death camp.

The German Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon looks warily at the viewer in this self-portrait from 1940; her family fled Germany for France after Kristallnacht but, five months pregnant, she was captured and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943.

This brooding self-portrait was painted by the German Jewish artist Felix Nussbaum who died in Auschwitz in 1944.

Getrud Loew was the daughter of Gustav Klimt's doctor, Anton Loew. She was 19 years old when this portait was painted (see full length here). She managed to escape Nazi Vienna in 1939, under her widowed name Gertha Felsöványi.

"Pieces with titles that referenced their Jewish origins, were completely changed. For example, The Portrait of Margaret Stonborough Wittgenstein (a Jew) became Damenbildnis in Weiss (Portrait of a lady in white)." - (Morowitz, Laura. “‘Heil the Hero Klimt!’: Nazi Aesthetics in Vienna and the 1943 Gustav Klimt Retrospective.” Oxford University Press 39, no. 1 (2016): 122-23. cited by Gabrielle Knight in Honors Thesis)

Little is known about Walburga "Wally" Neuzil, the blue-eyed model painted by Egon Schiele in 1912. The portrait was stolen by a Nazi art dealer from the collection of Jewish collector Lea Bondi Jaray when her gallery was Aryanized by Nazis in 1939 and she was forced to flee Vienna as a Jew.

For more reading, see:

Un tableau de Klimt volé par les nazis n'a jamais été restitué à son propriétaire

‘Heil the Hero Klimt!’: Nazi Aesthetics in Vienna and the 1943 Gustav Klimt Retrospective

Leipzig gibt jüdischer Familie ein Stück Geschichte zurück

A Blood-Stained Renoir on Exhibit in Paris

Leipzig Mayor Hand Delivers Nazi-era Art to Painter's Heirs

Case Review: Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation

Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation Case No. CV96-4849

Ein Haus wie ein Museum

Die Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz gibt Kunstwerke aus der Sammlung des von den Nationalsozialisten verfolgten und ermordeten Max Silberberg zurück.

Münchner Kunstfund Bewusst verschleiert

A Tale of Two Portraits, by Rudolf Beran