Christian Tetzen-Lund

Christian Tetzen-Lund (born January 17, 1852 ; died March 7, 1936 ) was a Danish entrepreneur and art collector . In the first decades of the 20th century, he was one of the first collectors in Scandinavia to own works of modern painting from France and presented this collection to the public.

Life

Christian Tetzen-Lund belonged to the Danish upper class. His former house, Palægade No. 6, is in one of the expensive residential areas in central Copenhagen. He also owned a summer villa in Julebæk near Hellebæk . As an entrepreneur, he ran a successful wine wholesaler and also held a managerial position for the Den Danske Landmandsbank in Copenhagen. Shortly after 1900 he retired from professional life and from then on devoted himself mainly to collecting art.

He had already started building up his art collection years earlier. While old master paintings were initially the focus of his interest, works by young Scandinavian artists were soon added. The collection included works by Danish painters such as Harald Giersing , Jais Nielsen , Svend Johansen , Jens Ferdinand Willumsen , Edvard Weie , Sigurd Swane , William Scharff , Axel Salto , Olaf Rude , Albert Naur , Vilhelm Lundstrøm , Niels Lergaard , Karl Larsen , Niels Hansen , Kræsten Iversen , Helge Jensen , Viggo Johansen , Oluf Høst , Aksel Jørgensen and Ernst Goldschmidt . Tetzen-Lund also owned works by the sculptors Kai Nielsen , Jean René Gauguin , Einar Utzon-Frank and Johannes Bjerg . He also collected pictures by the Norwegian painters Henrik Sørensen , Per Krohg , Ludvig Karsten , Jean Heiberg , the Icelandic Jón Stefánsson and the Swedes Karl Isakson , Isaac Grünewald , Sigrid Hjertén , Leander Engström , Einar Jolin and Birger Simonsson .

Through his job, Tetzen-Lund came regularly to France, where he attended various exhibitions, including the Paris World Exhibition in 1878. In France, he initially acquired works by artists of the 19th century. These included, for example, paintings by impressionist artists such as Landscape near Pontcharra by Armand Guillaumin (today: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek ), Jeune fille au chapeau de paille and Portrait de jeune femme by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (both Barnes Foundation ) and Femme à mi-corps by Édouard Manet (private collection). In the field of late impressionism , Tetzen-Lund brought together several important works, including the paintings Arbres et maisons ( Musée de l'Orangerie ), Portrait de Madame Cézanne (Barnes Foundation), Marronniers et ferme du Jas de Bouffan and Quatre baigneuses ( by Paul Cézanne ) both private collection). There was also the watercolor painting Still Life with Watermelon and Pomegranate ( Metropolitan Museum of Art ). The collector owned the paintings Park in Asnières in Spring and Winkel in Park Voyer d'Argeson in Asnières (both private collection), Restaurant de la Sirène in Asnières ( Ashmolean Museum ), Female nude on a bed (Barnes Foundation), by Vincent van Gogh , The novel reader (private collection), evening hour (after Millet) ( Menard Art Museum ) and stairs in Auvers with two figures (private collection). Further works were Portrait of a Breton Woman (private collection) and cowherdess (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek) by Paul Gauguin, as well as Fight between Gorilla and Indians ( Virginia Museum of Fine Arts ) and Exotic Landscape ( Norton Simon Museum ) by Henri Rousseau .

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  Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
  Portrait de jeune femme

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  Edouard Manet:
  Femme à mi-corps

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  Paul Cézanne:
  Arbres et maisons

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  Vincent van Gogh: Restaurant de la Sirène in Asnières

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  Paul Gauguin: cowherdess

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  Henri Rousseau: Exotic Landscape

In 1910, Tetzen-Lund sold his holdings of older art and concentrated on collecting contemporary works. Especially from 1916 onwards he bought works of French art on a large scale. Due to the First World War , he was able to benefit from low prices. In the short period from 1916 to 1919, Tetzen-Lund acquired 20 works by Pablo Picasso and twelve works by Henri Matisse alone . Ten pictures by Matisse came from the collection of siblings Michael and Sarah Stein. In 1921, Tetzen-Lund was able to acquire Picasso's Girl with the Mandolin (Fanny Teller) ( Museum of Modern Art ) from the collection of the German art dealer Wilhelm Uhde , which had been confiscated in Paris . As early as 1917 he had bought Picasso's paintings Still Life with Violin and Grapes (Museum of Modern Art) and Still Life with Door, Guitar and Bottles ( Statens Museum for Kunst ) through the art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler . He thus became one of the earliest collectors of works of Cubism in Scandinavia.

The group of paintings by Henri Matisse included the works Blick auf Collioure ( Metropolitan Museum of Art ), Promenade dans les oliviers (private collection) and Portrait de Madame Matisse (Statens Museum for Kunst). There is also a group of Matisse paintings that are now in the Barnes Foundation: Le Bonheur de Vivre ( Joy of Life ), Le Madras rouge , Le Rifain assis , Les Trois sœurs à la sculpture africaine , La Villa Bleue , Femme couchée (Mlle Matisse) . Other well-known pictures in the collection are Adrienne ( National Gallery of Art ) by Amedeo Modigliani , Artillery , (Metropolitan Museum of Art) by Roger de La Fresnaye , Village à travers les arbres (Statens Museum for Kunst) by Maurice de Vlaminck and Nautre morte ( Statens Museum for Kunst) by Moise Kisling . There were also 23 works by André Derain , including Le cheval rouge (private collection) and L'italienne assise (Statens Museum for Kunst). Other works in the collection come from artists such as Edvard Munch , Fernand Léger , Gino Severini , Jean Metzinger , Giorgio de Chirico , Georges Braque , Marie Laurencin , Henri Ottmann , Robert Lotiron and Othon Friesz .

From 1917 onwards, Tetzen-Lund opened his art collection to the public once a week. The visitors were mainly young artists from Scandinavia, who were able to get an impression of contemporary art movements in France. Other collectors also came to visit, such as the Dane Johannes Rump , who was particularly interested in Matisse's works. The art writer and editor of the magazine Der Sturm Herwarth Walden was one of the visitors from Germany .

In 1922 the Landmandsbank collapsed, which led to one of the biggest banking crises in Denmark. Tetzen-Lund lost large assets and was forced to sell parts of his art collection, which was no longer publicly accessible from 1924. He wrote directly to the American collector Albert C. Barnes and offered him works from his collection. He finally bought some works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse through the Paris art dealer Paul Guillaume , which today belong to the collection of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. In 1925 Tetzen-Lund had large parts of his art collection auctioned. Through the art collector Johannes Rump, some works from the collection came to the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. Another auction took place in Copenhagen in 1934. Since the bids were not very high, Tetzen-Lund bid for several pieces and kept these works. After his death in 1936, the remainder of the collection was auctioned off.

literature

• Lennart Gottlieb: Tetzen-Lunds samling-om dens historie, indhold og betynding , article in Kunst og Museum, 19th year, 1984, p. 42.
• Kasper Monrad: Christian Tetzen-Lund. The Merchant with the Sharp Eye and Unlimited Ambition in Kasper Monrad: Henri Matisse: Four Great Collectors . Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen 1999, ISBN 87-7551-142-8 .
• Hubert van den Berg, Marianne Ølholm: A cultural history of the avant-garde in the Nordic countries 1900-1925 . Rodopi, Amsterdam 2012, ISBN 978-94-012-0891-8 .

Web links

• Auction catalog of the Tetzen-Lund Collection May 19, 1925
• Short biography of Christian Tetzen-Lund on the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York