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PROPERTY FROM THE STIFTUNG FÜR KREBS UND SCHARLACHFORSCHUNG Josef Karl Paul Otto Krebs was born in Wiesbaden on 23 March 1873. After finishing his university studies, he became an extremely successful entrepreneur by developing his steam boiler company, Strebel, into a world-wide business. Economic success enabled Krebs to build up one of the great private art collections in Germany before the Second World War -- a collection that was indeed private in the sense that it remained largely hidden from the public, to be enjoyed by Krebs and his guests during visits to his country house in Holzdorf, near Weimar in Thuringia. Otto Krebs the art collector emerges as a man of great taste, assembling a group of outstanding works of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in the 1920s and 1930s. Fascinatingly, Krebs seems to have acted without advisers; he made his purchases through the leading art dealers of his time, M. Goldschmidt in Frankfurt (close to his business in Mannheim and his main residence in Heidelberg) as well as Paul Cassirer, Alfred Flechtheim and Justin Thannhauser in Berlin or the Galerie Arnold in Dresden. Krebs seems to have made his main purchases up until about 1930, later acquisitions or sales were made to improve the quality of the collection. His focus on French works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had become typical for grand-bourgeois collecting in Germany since the late 19th century, when art collectors like Otto Gerstenberg and Eduard Arnhold began to bring their outstanding picture galleries together. From the mid-1930s, the Krebs collection was stored in a strong-room in Holzdorf; it remained there throughout the war and after the collector's death in 1941. For the integrity of the art collection itself, its locality was decisive: when US troops withdrew from Thuringia in the summer of 1945, Holzdorf became one of the headquarters for the Soviet Military Administration. With the exception of the works included in this sale, the Krebs collection was subsequently transferred to the then Soviet Union. It has remained at the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg ever since and was first shown publicly in 1995, when the Hermitage produced the groundbreaking exhibition 'Hidden Treasures Revealed'. The following works from the Krebs collection are sold to benefit the Stiftung für Krebs und Scharlachforschung, a foundation involved in cancer and scarlet fever research. As scarlet fever no longer poses a medical problem, cancer research remains the focus of the foundation's work. All proceeds from the foundation's capital benefit ongoing research at Heidelberg University, as will the proceeds from this sale.

Constantin Emile Meunier (1831-1905)

Le semeur

Details

Constantin Emile Meunier (1831-1905)
Le semeur
signed 'C.Meunier' (on the top of the base); inscribed with the foundry mark 'VERBEYST FONDEUR.BRUXELLES.' (on the back of the base)
bronze with green patina
Height: 92½ in. (235 cm.)
Conceived circa 1896

Provenance

Otto Krebs, Mannheim and Gut Holzdorf near Weimar, and by descent.
Nationalised as part of the land reform under the Soviet Military Administration in Thuringia after 8 May 1945.
Transferred as state property by the Staatliche Kunstkommission (Ministerium des Innern) to the administration of the Nationalgalerie Berlin (East) in 1952.
On loan to the MTS [machine and tractor station], Isseroda, Thuringia, until 1953 when transferred back to the Nationalgalerie Berlin (East) in exchange for Rudolf Löhner's sculpture Junger Traktorist.
Property of the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin from 1990 until restituted to the Stiftung für Krebs - und Scharlachforschung on 30 April 2008.

Literature

Nationalgalerie Erwerbungen, Berlin, 1961 (illustrated n.p.).
P.K. Schuster (ed.), Die Nationalgalerie, Cologne, 2001, no. 351, (illustrated p. 304).
F.C. Brader, 'Meisterwerke im Verborgenen. Die Sammlung Otto Krebs', in A. Pophanken & F. Billeter (eds.), Die Moderne und ihre Sammler. Französische Kunst in deutschen Privatbesitz vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik, Passagen - Deutsches Forum zur Kunstgesichte, vol. III, Berlin, 2001, p. 299.
B. Maaz (ed.), Nationalgalerie Berlin, Bestandskatalog der Skulpturen, vol. II, Das XIX. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 2006, no. 1448 (illustrated p. 909).

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.

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Lot Essay

Born in Etterbeck in Belgium, Constantin Meunier was a painter, illustrator and sculptor who became one of the principal social-realist artists of the 19th Century. He studied first under his older brother Jean-Baptiste Meunier, before transferring to the Académie de Bruxelles. Meunier first exhibited in plaster at the Brussels Salon of 1851 but was persuaded by his mentor, the artist Charles de Groux, to dedicate himself to painting. He devoted himself at first to historical and religious subject matter but, from as early as 1880, Meunier found himself drawn to the daily life of the working class and from 1884 dedicated himself solely to politically charged representations of the proletariat, endowing them with a noble and timeless aura.

The present work almost certainly betrays the influence of Auguste Rodin and in particular, the monumental work conceived in 1885, Les Bourgeois de Calais. With a political and historical bent not unlike the motifs favoured by Meunier, Rodin's Bourgeois display the same monumentality, solidity and sheer presence of Le semeur.

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