Could this Van Gogh have come from Nazi Germany? – The Art Newspaper

A Peasant Girl digging (summer time 1885) is among the many least identified Van Gogh work in UK public collections. An necessary early work, it’s usually on show on the College of Birmingham’s Barber Institute. Subsequent month it is happening a uncommon mortgage to Charleston, the Sussex house of the Bloomsbury Group. The Van Gogh would be the spotlight of the exhibition Inventing Publish-Impressionism: Works from the Barber Institute of Advantageous Arts (8 March–2 November). 

Nonetheless, a query mark hangs over the provenance of A Peasant Girl digging as a result of it’s recorded as having come from Germany, however the particulars of its proprietor there stay unknown. This has given rise to issues that the work may probably have belonged to a Jewish collector who confronted persecution through the 1933-45 Nazi interval.

Discovery

A Peasant Girl digging was a post-war Van Gogh discovery, a most uncommon occasion on condition that unknown genuine work solely flip up each 20 years or so. It first surfaced in 1957 at London’s Marlborough Advantageous Artwork. The gallery then listed its earlier proprietor merely as “personal assortment, Germany”.

When the 1970 version of Jacob Baart de la Faille’s Van Gogh catalogue raisonné—the definitive catalogue of the artist’s work—was printed, A Peasant Girl digging was recorded within the literature for the primary time. Earlier than “personal assortment, Germany”, the work’s provenance entry within the catalogue listed an earlier proprietor: Hendrik Enno van Gelder (1876-1960), a Dutch artwork historian and museum director. 

Van Gelder’s son, Jan Gerrit (1903-1980), was additionally an artwork historian and occurred to be one of many seven editors of the de la Faille catalogue. He will need to have been conscious that his father had as soon as owned A Peasant Girl digging and bought it. Though the 1970 catalogue recorded his father’s identify, the id of the German personal proprietor was not given.

The Barber Institute has been fairly open about this provenance hole, and would welcome any additional data. Thus far there have been no claims for A Peasant Girl digging, and we should always stress there isn’t any proof that the Van Gogh was topic to a Nazi-era pressured sale or looting.

Nonetheless, till proof is discovered to clarify when and the way the Van Gelder household bought the portray, and the id of the German collector who bought it’s found, questions will stay.

The Nationwide Gallery misses out

A Peasant Girl digging dates from the summer time of 1885, when Vincent was dwelling along with his dad and mom within the southern Dutch city of Nuenen. He was then studying the best way to paint, making quite a few footage of the hard-working peasants. Van Gogh additionally made a drawing of a lady in the same pose to the portray, with a wider view of a farm.

After the portray A Peasant Girl digging was exhibited by Marlborough Advantageous Artwork in 1957, it was purchased by Gillian Solomons (later Sinclair-Hogg, she died in 1997). We are able to reveal that in July 1959 she provided the Van Gogh on mortgage to the Tate, however solely on a really short-term foundation, which was unacceptable. In February 1961 she re-offered the image for six months, and on this foundation that the Tate trustees accepted and displayed it.

Nonetheless, in June 1961, Solomons knowledgeable the Tate that owing to “a very unexpected change in her circumstances” she wanted to promote the portray. Presently Tate had handed over duty for late-Nineteenth century acquisitions to the Nationwide Gallery, so the provide to buy the work was handed on to them.

What transpired subsequent on the Nationwide Gallery gives an interesting perception into mid-Twentieth century attitudes in the direction of Van Gogh’s artwork. The gallery’s archivist, Nicholas Smith, has discovered necessary documentation from this time, which he has revealed for us.

Smith’s investigation tells us that Martin Davies, the Nationwide Gallery’s keeper, was proven A Peasant Girl digging with a colleague on 26 July 1961. He reported again to the gallery’s chairperson, John Witt, that the image can be “welcome as a present, however [we] weren’t very enthusiastic, I’m certain to say, about the opportunity of buying it”. 

Davies described the portray as “clearly an immature work, the place maybe the painter has not full mastery of the method he was growing, and although it’s clearly fascinating for the research of Van Gogh’s improvement, it appeared to us hardly of ample significance to be a purchase order”.

Commenting additional, Davies added: “In elements the drawing appeared to us reasonably tough; however alternatively the image has appreciable weight, which makes it carry properly on the wall, and the color is undoubtedly curious and fascinating.”

Davies responded to Solomons a couple of days later that his trustees “couldn’t ponder the acquisition”. After additional correspondence together with her, in August 1961 he defined that “your image which, fascinating and useful as it’s, doesn’t totally exemplify Van Gogh’s most authentic contributions to portray”.

In October 1961 A Peasant Girl digging was bought to the Barber Institute for £10,000. Because the portray goes on show at Charleston its current monetary worth stays extremely confidential—however it could actually be value hundreds of thousands.

The Barber Institute is at present closed for constructing work and is because of reopen subsequent yr.

Different Van Gogh information

The New Orleans-based M.S. Rau gallery shall be unveiling a Van Gogh nonetheless life on the Tefaf artwork truthful in Maastricht (13-20 March). Nonetheless life with two Sacks and a Bottle (November 1884), like Peasant Girl digging, was additionally painted in Nuenen. It has solely hardly ever been exhibited: the final time was within the Dutch metropolis of ’s-Hertogenbosch, in 1988. The worth at Tefaf: $4.75m.