Henry P. Newman

Henry P. Newman, photograph from 1905

Henry Percy Newman (born January 6, 1868 in Altona , † February 6, 1917 in Berlin ) was a German businessman and art collector . The entrepreneur, who came from a banking family, was one of the leading grain importers in the German Empire. His important art collection included works by the French impressionists and works by contemporary German artists.

Life

Henry P. Newman's ancestors came from England on his father's side and had made their fortune in maritime trade . His father Henry L. Newman (1813-1897), son of an English consul, had been a partner in the Hesse bank (later Hesse Newman ) since 1845 and married the banker's daughter Mary Hesse. From this marriage, Henry P. Newman, born in Altona in 1868, was the second son.

Henry P. Newman began his professional career in his parents' bank and completed his apprenticeship there. In 1896, at the age of 28, he started his own business as a grain trader and merchant banker and headed the grain agency and commission business HP Newman , a company that soon became one of the leading grain importers in the German Empire.

In 1890 he married Maria von Düring, called Mariechen. In 1893 the couple moved into a stately home at 7 Fontenay-Allee. Today, the Hotel InterContinental is located here . At that time, the property extended to the Alster and had its own tennis court. The Newmans received numerous well-known guests in the house, including the poet Richard Dehmel and his wife Ida Dehmel . For their summer stays, the Newmans first used the Newman country house in Nienstedten , before they acquired a plot of land in Hittfeld in 1905 and had the Sunderberg house built there. Here was one of Alfred Lichtwark , then director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle , to Newman's neighbors. Lichtwark was one of Newman's friends and advised him on building his art collection. Together they traveled to Paris, where they visited the Louvre and looked at private art collections such as those of Henri Rouart . Another friendship connected Newman with the painter Leopold von Kalckreuth , who lived in the neighboring town of Eddelsen and who repeatedly portrayed Newman's children.

Henry P. Newman was one of the co-founders of the Hamburg Scientific Foundation and for some time was politically close to Friedrich Naumann's ideas . In 1914 he rose to become an expert in the imperial government on grain issues and advised the war raw materials department under Walther Rathenau . In the course of the First World War, Newman moved more and more into the nationalist camp and repeatedly spoke out in favor of unrestricted submarine warfare . He also donated his own hospital train , which he sometimes accompanied with his wife. Newman died in Berlin in 1917. In 1919 his daughter Leonore married Karl von Fischer-Treuenfeld, who later became the SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Waffen-SS .

Art collection

When building up his art collection, which includes around 40 oil paintings and pastels, Henry P. Newman took advantage of the advice of art hall director Alfred Lichtwark and the expertise of art historian Emil Waldmann . Newman obtained works of French impressionism from the Berlin gallery owner Paul Cassirer . These included a view of the Waterloo Bridge and the garden landscape Le repos dans le jardin, Argenteuil by Claude Monet , the pastel dancer, tying her sandal by Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet's still life nuts and apples in a bowl . The most expensive piece in the collection, Die Badenden , for which Cassirer asked 60,000 marks in 1914  , also came from Manet . Newman then traded Monet's Waterloo Bridge for 40,000 marks and paid the remaining price of 20,000 marks. Other works by French artists in the collection included Moulin de Bonnevaux by Gustave Courbet and Provençal Landscape with a Red Roof and Chestnut Trees in the Park of Jas de Bouffan by Paul Cézanne . Newman also owned the painting Pot with Zinnias by Vincent van Gogh and by Ferdinand Hodler Lumberjack and Forest Interior in Reichenbach . On the recommendation of the Hamburg district court director and art critic Gustav Schiefler , the paintings Seascape and Village Street by Edvard Munch were added to Newman's collection.

Occasionally Newman bought pictures during his travels, for example in 1913 in the modern gallery of Heinrich Thannhauser in Munich, the painting Schimmel im Grünen by Fritz von Uhde . He also owned the study by the same painter ... and will become like the children ... according to Mt 18.3  EU . The other works by German artists in the collection included Landscape near Bernau by Hans Thoma , Snow Painting by Hans Olde and Hemsbach Castle, and View of Frauenchiemsee Monastery by Wilhelm Trübner . Newman was personally known to Ludwig von Hofmann , who visited him in Hamburg in 1904. His paintings Reiter am Strande and Frühling were also part of the collection. In addition, Newman commissioned pictures from young Hamburg artists with whom he was known or friends. He also bought works by these artists in the Hamburg art dealer Commeter . In this way, the Alstertal landscape by Ernst Eitner or Schafe , Duck and the double portrait of Henry Hartwig and Isa Newman by Julius von Ehren came into the collection, but also works by Arthur Siebelist and Julius Wohlers . While Newman resold most of the Hamburg artist's paintings, he kept the paintings of his friend Leopold von Kalckreuth until his death. These included the painter Gamper, playing the cello , evening on the balcony and Eddelsener Garten in May , as well as the relatives portraits of Henry Hartwig Newman , Maria Louisa Newman as a child and Maria Louisa Newman as a young woman .

Newman owned the largest block of works by Max Liebermann . Both were on friendly terms and Liebermann visited the Newman house repeatedly. In 1910 Liebermann created a portrait of his wife Maria Newman, who had been preceded by an oil study the year before. Liebermann began the portrait of Henry Percy Newman shortly before the sitter died in 1917. Other Liebermann works in the collection were Corso on Monte Pincio , garden bench under the chestnut tree , garden in Noordweijk-Binnen , hunter in the dunes near Noordwijk , goatherd in the dunes , the flower terrace in the Wannsee garden to the north-west , the kitchen garden to the north-west and a version of The parrot man and the pastels Unter den Linden and grooms on the beach .

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  Édouard Manet:
  The bathers

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  Claude Monet:
  Le repos dans le jardin, Argenteuil

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  Edgar Degas:
  dancer tying her sandal

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  Vincent van Gogh:
  Vase with Zinnias

• 

  Paul Cézanne:
  Provençal landscape with a red roof

In 1940 Maria Newman stored some of the pictures from the collection in the safe of a Berlin bank as a precaution. In 1945 the safe was looted and several of the works of art have been lost to this day. Other pictures later reappeared on the art market without the heirs being aware of them. Ferdinand Hodler's forest interior near Reichenbach is now in the rectorate of the University of Zurich . Since she acquired the picture in good faith in 1954, the question of ownership remains unresolved to this day. Two other paintings - Degas Dancer and Monet's Garden Picture - were later donated to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. After a financial agreement with the Newman heirs, the paintings were auctioned. The heirs sold further works of art in the decades after the Second World War. For example, Manet's The Bathers ended up in the Museu de Arte de São Paulo . Other pictures, such as Max Liebermann's portrait of Maria Newman , are still owned by the family today.

literature

• Ulrich Luckhardt, Uwe M. Schneede : Private treasures: about collecting art in Hamburg until 1933 . Christians, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7672-1383-4 .
• Stefanie Busold: "Henry P. Newman: Hamburg wholesaler and patron". Hamburg University Press, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-937816-93-7 .

Full text

Web links

• Doris Blum: The man who took aim at art Article in Die Welt from June 6, 2001.