The book The Thannhauser Gallery: Marketing Van Gogh (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de) by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam examines the history of one of the leading galleries for modern art between 1908 and 1959. Heinrich Thannhauser and his son Justin bought and sold numerous Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works of art, including over 100 paintings and drawings by or formerly attributed to Vincent van Gogh.
The leading gallerist when it comes to promoting the work of Van Gogh was Paul Cassirer, whose life, art gallery and contribution to the art market in general has been the subject of numerous publications. By contrast, the notable impact of the Thannhauser art-dealer family has been largely neglected. The present publication fills that void.
The book The Thannhauser Gallery: Marketing Van Gogh traces the history of the Thannhauser family and galleries, the notorious Wacker Affair (a forgery scandal of the 1920s and its impact on the Thannhauser art business), the many facets of the art trade, the legacy of the Thannhauser galleries, the family’s role in the promotion of works by Van Gogh as well as modern art in general, an analysis of the detailed Thannhauser client index.
The catalogue The Thannhauser Gallery: Marketing Van Gogh covers 107 works by Van Gogh or attributed to him that Thannhauser purchased, traded or had on consignment. The book is the fruit of a decade of research by Monique Hageman, in collaboration with Nora Koldehoff, including contributions by Stefan Koldehoff, Chris Stolwijk, Megan Fontanella, Renske Suijver and the Zentralarchiv des internationalen Kunsthandels (ZADIK) in Cologne.
This book is the brainchild of the German journalist, researcher and arts editor Stefan Koldehoff, whose idea was embraced by the ZADIK director Günter Herzog as well as the former Van Gogh Museum’s Head of Collections Chris Stolwijk, now General Director of the RDK — Netherlands Art Institute in The Hague.
The galleries run by the Thannhauser family in Munich, Berlin and Lucerne were among the most influential in the art world. In 1937, Justin Thannhauser was forced into exile by the Nazis, first to Paris, then to New York City. Justin Thannhauser retired (with his wife Hilde) to Switzerland, where he died in Gstaad in 1976.
In her essay regarding “The Thannhauser Legacy”, Megan Fontanella gives us some details about the family business. Justin’s father Heinrich Thannhauser initially worked as a clothing merchant, later owned a lighting business, before opening the Moderne Kunsthandlung Brakl & Thannhauser in Munich in 1905, in partnership with the Hungarian-born Franz Josef Brakl. Although the core business was the promotion of Munich based artists connected to the Secession, as early as in 1908, in collaboration with the Berlin dealer Paul Cassirer, Brakl & Thannhauser presented a major Van Gogh retrospective. In November 1909, Heinrich parted ways with Brakl and established his own Munich gallery, the Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser.
Justin Thannhauser briefly joined the Moderne Galerie from 1912 to 1914. In 1916, he returned from the First World War with both an Iron Cross and a lifelong asthmatic condition. He studied in Berlin, Florence and Paris. Among his tutors in philosophy and art history were Henri Bergson, Adolph Schmidt and Heinrich Wölfflin. His friendships with leading modern art dealers included Paul Cassirer and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Therefore, he was well prepared to further develop the family business.
Already in 1909 and 1911, the Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser had organized the premier exhibitions of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München as well as Der Blaue Reiter. In 1913, they mounted one of the first major Picasso exhibitions in Germany, largely with the help of the Paris stock of their friend Kahnweiler, who lent 29 paintings and a group of etchings, as well as 13 Picassos sent by the art dealer Alfred Flechtheim; other works came from German private collections.
In other words, although the book The Thannhauser Gallery: Marketing Van Gogh focuses on the relation with the works of the famous Dutchman, the Thannhauser family’s impact on the trade, reception and promotion of modern art went far beyond Vincent van Gogh.
The cousin of Justin Thannhauser, Siegfried Rosengart, the son of Heinrich’s sister, helped open the Lucerne branch of the gallery. Justin himself remained in Switzerland from 1919 to 1921, with the Galerie Thannhauser in Lucerne officially opening in March 1920. Because of his father’s declining health, Justin was forced to return to Munich, leaving Siegfried Rosengart sole in charge of the Lucerne business; the Galerie Rosengart became a completely independent entity only in 1937. Last, but not least, in 2002, Siegfried’s daughter Angela established the fabulous Rosengart Collection Lucerne with its focus on modern art, which includes notably major works by Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso’s late period.
The Swiss city of Winterthur is famous for its art collectors and collections. Among the works by Vincent van Gogh still in Winterthur is one which went through the hands of Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser in Munich. In the book presented here (pages 124-125), the painting is entitled Yellow Flowers (Gelbe Blumen), which surely is how, around 1916, the art dealers had named it. However, today it is known as Les pissenlits (the French name of the type of flowers depicted). Its dimensions are 35.5 x 57 cm (in the catalogue 35 x 57 cm). Most notably, the book states that the oil on canvas was made in 1890, whereas the records of the Kunstmuseum Winterthur clearly state that it dates from 1889. In the book, we can read under provenance that Vincent van Gogh sent Gelbe Blumen to his brother Theo. After his death in 1891, his widow Jo van Gogh-Bonger (Amsterdam) sold it to the art dealer Paul Cassirer in Berlin, who bought it together with ten other paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. On June 22, 1916 Kunstsalon Paul Cassirer sold it to Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser in Munich, which bought it together with another Van Gogh entitled Landschaft mit Mühle (cat. 11). On July 29, 1916 Thannhauser sold Les pissenlits to A.S. Mohr & Søn in Bergen for Otto Nyquist, together with a Gauguin entitled Landschaft mit Kühen. Between 1928 and 1930, Les pissenlits was acquired by Oskar Federer in Ostrava. So far the book. I know from the Kunstmuseum Winterthur that Les pissenlits ended up in the museum collection in 1973 as a bequest from the industrialist (Sulzer) Herbert Wolfer and his wife Charlotte Wolfer-de Armas.
1890 instead of 1889, that’s the only error I found — without actively trying to find mistakes — in this valuable new book which sheds light on a little known area of the marketing of Vincent van Gogh’s groundbreaking works of art by a family of art dealers who saw many major works going through there hands; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City acquired its first Van Gogh, Cypresses, from Justin Thannhauser in 1949.
Added on January 31, 2018: The Van Gogh Museum maintains that Van Gogh painted Les pissenlits in 1890 and not in 1889. Maybe the Swiss Kunstmuseum Winterthur made a mistake.
This article is based on: The Thannhauser Gallery: Marketing Van Gogh. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, hardcover, October 2017, 328 pages. Order the book from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de.
The Thannhauser Gallery: Marketing Van Gogh. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Hardcover, October 2017, 328 pages. Order the book from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de.
