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DR. LEO CATZENSTEIN (1863-1936) Christie's is honoured to offer for sale seventy portrait miniatures from the collection of Dr. Leo Catzenstein. The first and smaller part was sold at Christie's South Kensington on 9 October 2001. Dr. Catzenstein, a highly regarded and successful German physician, lived in the fashionable Theaterplatz in the centre of Hanover. Nicknamed 'the little doctor' because of his height, he was not only a popular figure in early 20th Century Hanover but also a generous patron of the arts and of numerous charities. A benefactor and member of the board of the Jewish Gardening School of Ahlem near Hanover, he contributed actively to the integration of Eastern European Jews who had fled from the pogroms in their home countries. A founder member of the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hanover's famous fine arts club, Dr. Catzenstein started collecting art at an early age, specialising in antique furniture, porcelain and paintings. Portrait miniatures did not interest him until his wife threatened to hang the next commode he bought from the ceiling as even in their thirteen room apartment there was no free space. When he made his public début as a collector of miniatures in one of the first exhibitions of portrait miniatures ever to be held in Germany, in Berlin in 1906, Dr. Catzenstein's participation was still modest. Eight years later, his loans to the legendary Centenary exhibition of German Baroque and Rococo in Darmstadt, 1914, contained important pieces and confirmed his growing connoisseurship in the field of miniatures. Perhaps the pinnacle of his activities as a collector was the Miniatures Exhibition in Hanover organised by the Kestner-Gesellschaft in 1918, after the First World War, where his pieces compared favourably in quality and number to the miniatures lent by German Princely Houses. Numerous significant miniatures were added to the collection in the 1920s, notably his superb Füger (lot 86) bought at the sale of the Huldschinsky collection in 1928. One of his last acquisitions, only one year before his death, was Dumont's splendid miniature of Queen Marie-Antoinette (lot 57) from the Pierpont-Morgan Collection. Dr. Catzenstein died in Hanover on 18 January 1936. His daughter Ellen Catzenstein, a gifted sculptor, had emigrated from Germany because her work had been declared 'entartet'. Risking her life, she returned to Hanover, retrieving her father's most prized possessions and left Germany for good with the miniatures in her suitcase. Shortly after, the Catzenstein home was emptied by the National Socialists. The miniatures collection remained in the family. Now the heir has decided in the new century to offer collectors the opportunity to enjoy these miniatures whose survival is a testimony to the agitated years of modern European history and to the timeless good taste of an eclectic collector. PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF DR. LEO CATZENSTEIN

GEORG FRIEDRICH DINGLINGER (1666-1720)

A young gentleman, facing right in green cloak, lace cravat and pink ribbon, full bottomed curling powdered wig

Details

GEORG FRIEDRICH DINGLINGER (1666-1720)
A young gentleman, facing right in green cloak, lace cravat and pink ribbon, full bottomed curling powdered wig
signed with monogram and dated on the counter-enamel'17GFD15.'
enamel on copper
oval, 15/16 in. (24 mm.) high, gilt-metal mount with outer pierced border

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

Signed enamels by Georg Friedrich Dinglinger, the younger brother of the world-famous Saxon Court goldsmith Johann Melchior Dinglinger, are very rare. Two are in the Royal Dutch Collection, two are in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, and the largest group is in the Green Vaults, Dresden (illustrated in E. von Watzdorf, Johann Melchior Dinglinger, Berlin, 1962, I, pp. 304-316).

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