Johann Georg Christian Daems

Johann Georg Christian Daems (* 1774 in Mengeringhausen ; † July 10, 1856 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German merchant and art collector.

Life

Johann Georg Christian Daems came to Frankfurt via Offenbach, probably in 1792, with his Dutch father, his Frankfurt mother and the two younger brothers . He completed an apprenticeship in a Frankfurt shop for English woolen goods. After another apprenticeship in Hamburg and Bremen took George and his brother Carl August Friedrich Daems (1776-1837) in 1797 in Frankfurt Spezereiwarenhandlung her uncle Christian Gottlob Friedel (1736-1797) in the lane in which they, with coffee, spices Dutch smoking tobacco and other consumer goods traded. Georg and Friedrich Daems ran their business together until 1834 and lived with Friedrich's family in Fahrgasse. Georg Daems also devoted himself to his growing art collection. On the Zeil , the most magnificent street in the city, Daems finally bought a representative house in an art-loving neighborhood. Across the street lived the Morgenstern family of painters and art dealers and the descendants of the collector Johann Valentin Prehn (1749–1821). Johann Georg Grambs (1756–1817) had previously kept his art collection on the Zeil, and the »Museum Society« had also met here for a number of years. Johann Georg Christian Daems, who remained unmarried and had no children, directed the whereabouts of his collection of paintings early on. In his will of 1845 he bequeathed his collection to the city of Frankfurt. When Georg Daems died on July 10, 1856, he left the children of two nieces two houses, capital of 150,000 guilders and other "art objects and movables". The administration of this inheritance was taken over by the specially established "Georg Daems'sche Erbstammstiftung", whose proceeds Daems also used to secure the descendants of his heirs.

The Daems painting collection

The painting collection of Johann Georg Christian Daems comprised 328 paintings as well as an unknown number of copperplate engravings and hand drawings. While the family pictures and the works on paper remained in the family after the collector's death, 220 of his paintings became the property of the city.

The composition of Daems's painting collection in the Frankfurt Historical Museum reflects the Frankfurt art taste of that time. The paintings are by Dutch, Flemish and Frankfurt artists from the 16th to 19th centuries, few from Italian or French schools. The preferred motifs of Johann Georg Christian Daems were landscapes, which made up almost half of the collection. Overview landscapes, river areas and mythological scenes in the open air, as well as depictions at different times of the day and also pictures of the lake, cattle and hunting items found the interest of the collector. Still lifes are also available in their most common variants: bouquets, pieces of fruit and animals, the " laid table " and a cartouche are represented here, as well as genre pictures with scenes from rural or bourgeois life and also some predominantly male portraits. Georg Daems took a liking to architectural images such as church interiors, ruins and palace pieces. Cityscapes of Rome, Frankfurt, Antwerp and Venice were just as much a part of the collection as sacred and secular history pictures . The first indications of Georg Daem's collecting activities come from 1816. In that year he acquired several paintings from the art dealer and restorer Johann Ludwig Ernst Morgenstern and his son Johann Friedrich Morgenstern and also commissioned restoration work. Further purchases in the Frankfurt art trade can be traced back to 1834. The household book of the collector could provide information on this, but its location is unknown.

The donation of the collection

Georg Daems initiated the donation of his painting collection eleven years before his death when he wrote his will in 1845 in favor of the city of Frankfurt. In 1853 Daems offered his collection specifically for the foundation of a municipal gallery. After an appraisal by inspectors from the city library, the Grand Council accepted the donation. Finally, an exposed location was found for the collection, the well-known Ariadneum in Seilerstrasse. A tourist attraction could be seen there for many years - the famous Ariadne on the Panther by Johann Heinrich Dannecker from the sculpture collection of the banker Simon Moritz von Bethmann . The Daems painting collection and 60 other pictures from the collections of the Frankfurt Museum Society , the city library, the Prehn and Bager families were open to everyone one year after Daems' death. For the exhibition of this city's first collection of paintings, the art dealer Felix Constantin Bottinelli prepared a catalog sorted by school based on the information provided by the collector. A comparison of the catalog with the inventory of the Historisches Museum Frankfurt shows that most of the collection has been preserved to this day. The municipal paintings were exhibited on Seilerstraße for ten years until they were finally transferred to the newly founded Frankfurt Historical Museum in the Saalhof in 1867 . They can be seen there again since 2012.

literature

• Janine Burnicki, grateful recognition. The art collection of the merchant Johann Georg Christian Daems (1774-1856) . In: Frankfurter Collectors and Donors, Schriften Historisches Museum Frankfurt , Volume 32, Frankfurt 2012, pp. 139–154.