Lempertz gifts the Alte Nationalgalerie a painting by Adolph Menzel
Lost, found, gifted: Kunsthaus Lempertz was able to identify a stolen work by Adolph Menzel from Berlin’s National Gallery, and on the occasion of Lempertz’ jubilee, provides the painting’s odyssey with a happy ending.
On the occasion of it 225th jubilee, the oldest family-owned auction house has now gifted the painting to the Alte Nationalgalerie, supported by the Friends of the Nationalgalerie Association and the art patron and lawyer Peter Raue. The painting is currently being restored in the Alte Nationalgalerie. Kunsthaus Lempertz thus brings the long odyssey of the ‘Ruhender Mann’ to a positive conclusion.
As recently acknowledged by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Adolph Menzel is one of the three most important artists of the 19th century alongside Caspar David Friedrich and Carl Blechen. Menzel’s ‘Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci’ is an icon of painting, which probably most Germans have seen at least in their school textbooks. The painting ‘Ruhender Mann’, created in 1850, most likely shows Ludwig van Beethoven, whom Menzel staged quite similarly to Tischbein’s painting of Goethe resting in the Campagna. Menzel’s ‘Ruhender Man’ is typical of this period and underlines the artist’s outstanding importance. The Nationalgalerie in Berlin honoured him with a major retrospective in 1905, the year of his death, and in 1906 acquired the painting through the art dealer Fritz Gurlitt.
The work remained in the collection of the Nationalgalerie until the Second World War. It was on permanent long to the Museum of Fine Arts in Breslau in 1945, after which all trace of it was initially lost. The turmoil of the post-war period repeatedly opened up opportunities for the unlawful acquisition of goods, as with the Soviet soldiers in Breslau, for example.
After the war, a collector purchased a picture of a resting man from the art trade in Helsinki – the buyer could not have known that the work that fascinated him so much was a painting from the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
Twenty years ago, the picture was offered for sale at Kunsthaus Lempertz by the son of the former buyer. The Menzel Archive in Berlin could not verify its authenticity at the time, and it was only later that Lempertz was able to identify the painting from a catalogue of the Nationalgalerie and thus prove it to be an authentic work by Adolph Menzel from the museum. The consignor’s father had acquired it in good faith in the 1950s. Lempertz did not wish to auction the painting, however, and Professor Henrik Hanstein, head of the auction house, decided to acquire the picture himself.
On the occasion of it 225th jubilee, the oldest family-owned auction house has now gifted the painting to the Alte Nationalgalerie, supported by the Friends of the Nationalgalerie Association and the art patron and lawyer Peter Raue. The painting is currently being restored in the Alte Nationalgalerie. Kunsthaus Lempertz thus brings the long odyssey of the ‘Ruhender Mann’ to a positive conclusion.