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Two long-lost works by Adolph Menzel return to the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett
Press release from 07/10/2006
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has today received back two major gouache paintings by the Berlin artist Adolph von Menzel (1815-1905), which were thought to have been lost for over sixty years. The works were identified following a tip-off from Christie's auction house, where they were to be sold: Research had revealed that the paintings could have come from the old holdings of the Royal National Gallery in Berlin. Experts from the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, which owns the most extensive Menzel collection in the world, established beyond doubt that the two sheets on offer were indeed the missing works from its own holdings.
"Bauernhof in Hofgastein" (1874) and "Schmiede zu Gastein" (1879) were created during Menzel's stays in the Austrian spa town of Hofgastein. He visited the resort in the summer months of 1872-74 and 1879, when he was at the height of his artistic powers. Menzel's contemporaries already praised the extraordinary quality of his works. In 1881, the Königliche Nationalgalerie Berlin, whose collection of drawings is now part of the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett, acquired the two opaque colour paintings. They were lent to the Reich Chancellery in 1934. Since the Chancellery was looted after the end of the war, the gouaches, like many other works from the holdings of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, were considered missing. Until Christie's enquiry in September 2004, there was no indication of the whereabouts of the two sheets. They are preserved in relatively good condition and are an outstanding addition to the excellent Menzel collection in the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett.
The works
When Menzel painted "Bauernhof in Hofgastein" in 1874, he was a guest in the house of his Berlin friend Magnus Herrmann, who was one of his earliest admirers and collectors, as he had been in the two preceding years. The merchant, banker and art collector owned a country house in Hofgastein, which he lived in with his family during the summer months. Menzel and his sister's family used the so-called "gardener's house", in which he had a large studio set up, as accommodation during his stays in 1872-74. During this time, Menzel mainly created studies of the town and its surroundings. The "Farmhouse in Hofgastein", executed in pictorial form, cleverly directs the viewer's gaze from the studio window across gardens and farmhouses into the Gastein valley. It is one of Menzel's rare "pure" landscape paintings, especially in his later work, and already fascinated his contemporaries: in 1895, Menzel specialist Lionel Donop enthused about the "picture from Hofgastein, where everything seems to glow with light and natural freshness. You can breathe in the Alpine air, the flowers in the garden are freshly blooming, a damp mist lightly veils the blue mountains."
During his later stay in Hofgastein in 1879, Menzel chose a different theme. After his observations of the rural population and their habits, he shifted his focus to the subject of labour. In 1875, he had completed one of his major works, "Eisenwalzwerk", which was also dedicated to this theme as an impressive depiction of factory labour. In "Schmiede zu Gastein", on the other hand, he focussed on traditional rural craftsmanship. The interior painting, which is particularly impressive due to its masterful mastery of chiaroscuro, can therefore be seen as a smaller counterpart to the older work. Like "Bauernhof in Hofgastein", it is a particular highlight, as it is not of the sketch-like character so often found in Menzel's work, but is executed in a pictorial manner.
Losses of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
The Second World War and the period of German occupation caused considerable losses to the collections of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Numerous works were destroyed, many were confiscated by the Russian trophy commissions and a number are still missing today, although the nature of the loss cannot be specified. For decades, it was not possible for the Berlin museums to systematically record and document this due to the division of the collections into East and West.
In 1995, the first volume of the "Documentation of Losses" was finally published, analysing the Gemäldegalerie's collection. Since then, four further volumes (Nationalgalerie, Museum of Indian Art, Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Collection of Classical Antiquities) have been published, which have already resulted in a number of restitutions. No catalogue yet exists for the Kupferstichkabinett, which, with 110,000 hand drawings and around 550,000 prints, is one of the best and most extensive collections of graphic art in the world, but the two Menzel pictures have been published repeatedly in relevant catalogues raisonnés, studies and catalogues.
The volumes of the "Documentation of Losses" are available from the online shop of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Images of the works "Bauernhof in Hofgastein", gouache and watercolours on paper, 32.2 x 24.6 cm (catalogue raisonné Tschudi 603) and "Schmiede zu Gastein", gouache and watercolours on paper, 41.9 x 28.8 cm (catalogue raisonné Tschudi 621) can be ordered by e-mail.
