The sorcerer

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The sorcerer (Carl Spitzweg)
The sorcerer
Carl Spitzweg , 1875/1880
Oil on canvas
29.8 x 21.9 cm
Georg Schäfer Museum , Schweinfurt

The sorcerer , also magician and dragon , is the title of two paintings by Carl Spitzweg , which were created in oil on canvas in 1875 and 1880 . One painting is now in the Georg Schäfer Museum in Schweinfurt , the other is the property of the heirs of the collector Leo Bendel. The images are almost identical in terms of motif and differ in size and color.

Image description

In the lower half of the picture, in the middle of a dark rocky landscape, stands the sorcerer, around whom six or seven skulls are arranged in a circle. In the pose of a schoolmaster or trainer, he has raised his staff. In front of him, a not-too-large dragon rises with an open mouth, clinging to a boulder with his front paws, around which his serpentine tail is also wrapped. The wings stand out black against a glowing red glow that penetrates from the underground, probably a crevice. Thick, lead-gray smoke curls above it, behind which a sunlit fairytale castle is visible next to a towering column, not unlike Neuschwanstein Castle , the construction of which had started in 1869. The artist's signature, the S with the stylized pointed weck , can be found in the lower left corner of the picture.

reception

Ursula Seibold-Bultmann sees the dragon in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung as Fafnir from Nordic mythology and the painting as a swipe at “the Wagner enthusiasm of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and [...] Michael Echter's Nibelungen murals from the Munich residence (1864). ”In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Lisa Zeitz praised the sorcerer and Spitzweg's painting Justitia as“ two particularly beautiful paintings with the typically quiet humor of Carl Spitzweg. ”

Provenance

The smaller of the two paintings with the dimensions 29.8 × 21.9 centimeters has the catalog raisonné number 1394 and was handed over to the Georg Schäfer Museum in Schweinfurt with the collection of the industrialist Georg Schäfer and has been exhibited there since 2000.

The larger painting has the dimensions 47.1 × 26.2 centimeters and the catalog raisonné number 1395. It was owned by Leo Bendel , general representative of the tobacco companies Ermeler and JOB Zigarettenpapier , in Berlin at the beginning of the 1930s . After the seizure of power of the Nazis Bendel was released in 1935; he and his wife Else had to sell furniture and works of art below their value in order to raise funds for emigration . Bendel sold the sorcerer on June 15, 1937 for 18,000 Reichsmarks to the Heinemann gallery in Munich. This process is legally to be regarded as a loss of property due to persecution , the picture is therefore considered Nazi-looted art . On August 12, 1937, the wife of the baking powder manufacturer August Oetker , Caroline "Lina" Oetker, bought the painting for 28,000 Reichsmarks. In 1968 it came to Rudolf-August Oetker through succession ; it has been owned by the Kunstsammlung Rudolf August Oetker GmbH since its foundation . In June 2006, the Bendel heirs turned to the Kunstsammlung GmbH and suggested a discussion to negotiate a “fair and just solution” in accordance with the Washington Declaration . However, the Kunstsammlung GmbH declined any discussion. In October 2016, the Oetker Group announced that the art collection would be examined for any looted art and that the sorcerer would probably also be returned after an exhibition of goldsmithing from the Oetker collection in Toulouse in July caused a sensation due to the unclear origin of the art objects would have.

In November 2019, the Rudolf-August Oetker GmbH art collection returned the painting to the descendants of the Jewish collector Leo Bendel. The restitution was preceded by a long international search for the rightful heirs of the original owner who had been murdered by the National Socialists.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Seibold-Bultmann, Ursula: Kissed bagatelle. Neue Zürcher Zeitung , June 13, 2002, accessed on August 11, 2010 .
  2. ↑ Zeitz, Lisa: On the trail of pictures. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 2008, accessed on August 1, 2010 .
  3. ^ Works by Spitzweg , accessed on November 28, 2011
  4. ^ Lost Art Internet Database. (No longer available online.) Magdeburg Coordination Office , 2010, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved August 12, 2010 .
  5. ↑ Neue Westfälische: Talks rejected / Oetker does not want to negotiate with heirs because of Spitzweg's Jewish property , article from February 6, 2009 , accessed on November 28, 2011
  6. ↑ Four works in Oetker's collection, possibly looted art , Neue Westfälische, October 27, 2016, accessed on February 22, 2017
  7. ↑ À Toulouse, la collection d'un ancien nazi exposée à la Fondation Bemberg soulève des questions , Le Quotidien de l'Art, Sarah Hugounenq, July 6, 2016
  8. ↑ Press release - Kunstsammlung Rudolf-August Oetker returns paintings by Carl Spitzweg to the descendants of the Jewish collector Leo Bendel , oetker-gruppe.de, November 20, 2019, accessed on December 20, 2019
  9. ↑ Jüdische Allgemeine: The company is returning another painting to the descendants of persecuted Jewish owners , juedische-allgemeine.de, November 20, 2019, accessed on December 20, 2019

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