Henry B. Simms
Henry Bernhard Simms (* 1861 ; † 1922 ) was a German entrepreneur and art collector. Due to the worldwide export of beer from his Hamburg trading house, he was one of the wealthy citizens of the city. As a collector, he maintained close contact with numerous artists at home and abroad and created one of the most important collections of modern painting of his time. The focus of this collection included larger groups of works by Max Beckmann and Lovis Corinth , but he also owned early works by Pablo Picasso .
Life
Henry B. Simms was the first of three sons of Frederick L. Simms and his wife Antonia, nee. Hermans. He was the older brother of Frederick R. Simms (* 1863; † 1944), the British industrialist and automobile pioneer . Little is known about the youngest brother Robert T. Simms (* 1865). Even the English-born grandfather was a merchant in Hamburg and brought the family to prosperity and respect.
Henry B. Simms began his professional career in his father's company and attended the commercial branch in Sydney at the age of 19 . Through his acquaintance with the director of the Münchner Hofbräu , he became the general agent for the worldwide export of Hofbräu beer. Corresponding contracts with the Pilsener Urquell and Löwenbräu breweries followed . Henry B. Simms' successful trading company resided in an office building at Grosse Bleichen No. 12. By marrying the also wealthy shipowner's daughter Gertrud Sauber , he was one of the wealthiest citizens of the Hanseatic city.
The Simms couple had four children: Karl Frederic (Bubi) Simms (1896 - December 28, 1915), Gertrud (Trudel) Simms (October 29, 1898 - December 16, 1974), Henry (Henne) B. Simms (* October 29, 1901; † November 3, 1956), Herbert H. Simms (* July 2, 1903, † December 2, 1962).
From 1896 to 1902, Simms lived with his family in an apartment in Hamburg-Uhlenhorst , Bassinstrasse 1, today Am Feenteich 1. Alfred Lichtwark , the first director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle , lived in the same house and encouraged Simms to collect art. In the period that followed, Simms undertook several educational trips to Munich, Florence, Venice and Rome and acquired his first works of art. He also devoted himself intensively to studying art history and was soon a member of the Kunstverein in Hamburg and the Society of Hamburgischer Kunstfreunde .
Around 1906 Simms commissioned the architect George Radel to design a villa. A representative residence was then built on the property at Heilwigstrasse 29 at the corner of Benedictstrasse and Abteistrasse in Hamburg-Harvestehude , which should offer enough space for the extensive art collection. The painter Arthur Illies , who gave etching lessons to his wife Gertrud , created several large-format wall paintings in 1907 based on Art Nouveau that adorned the stairwell. The painter Max Beckmann , whom the collector met on Heligoland in 1912, was one of the frequent guests in the Simms house . The following year he created the portrait of the Simms family . Another family portrait comes from the hand of Lovis Corinth , whom Simms invited to his vacation home in Klobenstein in South Tyrol in 1910 . The painting Terrace in Klobenstein is now part of the Hamburger Kunsthalle collection. In the same year Corinth also created the portrait of Henry P. Simms ( Museum for Art and Cultural History Dortmund ).
When Alfred Lichtwark began to invite artists to Hamburg to paint cityscapes, it was Simms who persuaded the French Auguste Herbin to visit the Hanseatic city. In 1910, Simms may also have brought about contact between Lichtwark and Corinth, who painted pictures from Hamburg and the portrait of Professor Eduard Meyer for the Kunsthalle . Simms also brokered portraits to Corinth privately, for example to his brother-in-law Albert Kaumann ( portrait of Albert Kaumann , Hamburger Kunsthalle (loan); Mrs. Else Kaumann on the garden bench , Kunsthalle Kiel ; Morgensonne , Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt ). His daughter Jeanne - again through Simms' agency - was portrayed by Max Beckmann in the summer of 1913.
From 1905 to 1910, Simms wrote the book My Pictures and some notes on how my collection came about through his work as a collector . On the occasion of the company's 25th anniversary, Simms published the book for friends and business partners. The edition was 500 pieces. In a diary-like narrative style, he passes on his memories and thoughts on art and artists. In the second part of the volume he adds a representative cross-section of his collection in picture panels. The book is an important source for the reconstruction of his collection.
The grave of the Simms family is located in the Ohlsdorf cemetery (grave location AH 17, 9-32) on the Westring in a rhododendron clearing between the Jenisch and Gundlach mausoleums. It is adorned with a copy of the Pietà by Michelangelo , made in Rome in 1910 with papal permission by F. Tannenbaum and expensively brought to Hamburg, first burial after the tuberculosis death of the eldest son Karl in 1915.
The Simms Collection
Graphic works by Dürer and Rembrandt were among the first art acquisitions made by Simms . During his early trips to Italy, he bought small bronze figures based on ancient models and visited German artists living in Rome, such as the painter Otto Greiner and the sculptor Joseph von Kopf . There Simms met the young Georg Kolbe in 1895 , from whom he purchased three watercolors. Years later, Kolbe's sculpture Crouching Woman ( Georg Kolbe Museum ) came into his possession. The direct contact to artists also determined his collecting activities later.
The model for the collector Simms was initially the collection of Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack in Munich ( Schack Collection ). In Bavaria he got to know painters such as Leo Putz , Franz von Stuck , Wilhelm Trübner , Richard Pietzsch , Karl Haider , Thomas Theodor Heine , Fritz von Uhde and Max Feldbauer , of which works found their way into his collection. Simms bought paintings from painters such as Arnold Böcklin and Wilhelm Leibl as well as from Ferdinand Hodler , whose paintings, female standing figure and portrait of Mathias Morhardt (both now private collection) were in his collection. He owned the graphic cycle Brahms-Phantasie from Max Klinger .
In Hamburg, Simms also maintained close contact with artists and bought their works. In addition to Illies, of whom Simms owned 14 Alstertal pictures, this group included Valentin Ruths , Friedrich Schaper , Arthur Siebelist and Julius von Ehren . Groups of works by Lovis Corinth and Max Beckmann formed a focus of the Simms Collection. Corinth's Girl with Bull (Hamburger Kunsthalle) was added to his collection in 1903, which in 1910 already had 14 paintings by the artist. These included, for example, the pictures Black Shadows , The Violin Player ( Chemnitz Art Collections , private loan), Perseus and Andromeda , Matinée ( Saarland Museum ) , Modellpause ( Galerie Neue Meister ), Kalla and Lilacs with bronze figures ( Von der Heydt Museum ) and the portraits of the Family and the collector himself.
A total of 15 paintings by Max Beckmann were on view in the Simms Collection, including four portraits of his first wife Minna Beckmann-Tube. Her portrait of Minna with a pink-violet background is now in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Other Beckmann pictures in the collection included the construction of the Hermsdorf water tower ( Städel ), the water tower near Hermsdorf ( Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin ), still life with red roses (private collection) and a portrait of Max Reger ( Kunsthaus Zürich ).
The Paris-based art critic Wilhelm Uhde established contact between Simms and Auguste Herbin in 1907, from whom the collector put together a block of no less than 26 works. Through Uhde he also acquired a landscape painting by Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley , as well as a painting Waterfall by Gustave Courbet . He was also one of the first collectors in Germany to acquire works by Pablo Picasso with the painting Girl in Flowers and the Gouache Garçon à la collerette .
The exact size of the Henry B. Simms Collection is no longer known today. In 1918 he loaned 169 paintings from his collection for an exhibition in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. In 1930, 68 paintings by the deceased were put up for auction; the family sold further paintings after the death of his wife Gertrud. The whereabouts of the other works is unclear.
- Pictures from the collection
Henry B. Simms: My Pictures , published 1910
Valentin Ruths: Spring in the forest near Aumühle
Max Slevogt: Self-Portrait in Front of the Easel (around 1898)
Lovis Corinth: The Violin Player (1900)
Lovis Corinth: Girl with a Bull (1902)
Lovis Corinth: Model break (1909)
Lovis Corinth: Terrace in Klobenstein, Tyrol (1910)
Ferdinand Hodler: The Woodcutter (1910)
literature
- Henry Simms: My pictures and some notes on how my collection came about . Hamburg 1910.
- Dagmar Lott-Reschke: You lovely art, thank you, Henry B. Simms - merchant and collector. In: Ulrich Luckhardt, Uwe M. Schneede (eds.): Private treasures, about collecting art in Hamburg until 1933 . Christians Verlag, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7672-1383-4 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Henry B. Simms in the catalog of the German National Library
- Doris Blum: The man who longed for beauty. In: The world. May 9, 2001. (welt.de)
- Henry B. Simms website
Individual evidence
- ↑ The whereabouts of the picture are unknown. A black and white illustration can be found in Ulrich Luckhardt, Uwe M. Schneede (Hrsg.): Private Treasures, About collecting art in Hamburg until 1933. 2001, p. 64.
- ↑ Ulrich Luckhardt, Uwe M. Schneede (Ed.): Private Treasures, About collecting art in Hamburg until 1933. 2001, p. 66.
- ↑ Grave details at henrysimms.jimdo.com , fredriks.de and at Barbara Leisner, Heiko KL Schulze, Ellen Thormann: The Hamburg main cemetery in Ohlsdorf. History and tombs. Hans Christians, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-7672-1060-6 , p. 90, cat. 557.
- ↑ The pictures Les Bords de l'Oise by Alfred Sisley and Die Seine bei Argenteuil by Claude Monet are not included in the respective catalog raisonnés. The whereabouts of the pictures is unclear, black and white images can be found in Ulrich Luckhardt, Uwe M. Schneede (ed.): Private Treasures, About collecting art in Hamburg until 1933. 2001, p. 66.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Simms, Henry B. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Simms, Henry Bernhard (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur and art collector |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1861 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1922 |