Reinhold Vasters

Reinhold Vasters (born January 2, 1827 in Erkelenz , † June 14, 1909 in Aachen ) was a German goldsmith and art forger .

Live and act

Reinhold Vasters, son of a locksmith from Erkelenz, was orphaned at the age of eight and grew up with an uncle. After finishing school, he trained as a "gold worker" in Krefeld. In the meantime, he deepened his skills at renowned workshops in London, Paris and Vienna. He exhibited some of the objects he created during this time at the World Exhibition in London in 1851 and won first prize for nine large national coats of arms that he had made and embossed in gold.

Before 1851, Vasters completed his master craftsman's examination and then moved to Aachen, where he initially set up a "goldsmith 's workshop for church equipment " together with Heinrich Joseph Viethen in the immediate vicinity of St. Peter's Church , from which Viethen left a few years later. In 1855, Vasters married Anna Catharina Josepha Hamacher, the sister of the Düsseldorf history painter Theodor Hamacher . After his wife had given birth to a total of three children over the next three years and suddenly died after the third child in 1859, Reinhold Vasters, as a single early widower, felt obliged to produce as many high-quality art objects as possible, especially in the style of historicism , in order to thereby ensure the family's livelihood. He was helped by the canon and art historian Franz Bock , who moved to Aachen from 1862 onwards and , together with the master goldsmiths August Witte and Martin Vogeno, placed numerous production and restoration orders for him. This brought Vasters the appointment as "collegiate goldsmith". Other clients for liturgical equipment include Vincenz Statz , Hugo von Ritgen , Leopold Pelldram , Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler and Johann Baptist von Anzer . The contact with the art dealer Frédéric Spitzer from Vienna, who ran a lively art and antiques trade in Aachen and Paris , played a special role. Through him, Vasters was able to take part in the art exhibition in the Museum of Applied Art in Vienna in 1865 , as well as the distribution of his future imitations .

Thanks to his excellent skills and his good powers of observation during his sightseeing trips to the various specialist exhibitions, but also through studying the extensive literature he had acquired, Vasters developed a tendency early on to make valuable pieces of jewelry as imitations in the Renaissance style . In doing so, he oriented himself primarily on works and exhibits by Wenzel Jamnitzer , Leone Leoni , Leonhard Kern , Valerio Belli , Vincenz Statz and many others. Later, around 1870, Vasters made an extensive silver collection in the style of the 15th century for Baron Mayer Carl von Rothschild from Frankfurt am Main through the mediation of Rothschild's art expert Ferdinand Luthmer , as well as extensive commissioned work for the French branch of the family Rothschild , in this case mediated by Frédéric Spitzer. He often worked with the workshop of the goldsmith Alfred André, who was a friend of Spitzer's goldsmith, in Paris, where Vasters also had valuable objects made based on his own designs. Vasters always tried to "outdo his role models in order to meet the high demands of his customers." to simulate the respective object. During this time, Vasters developed a lively double life: on the one hand, he was the public and direct contact person in his Aachen residential and workshop building for official domestic and foreign clients, especially for sacred art objects and extensive restoration work on church treasures, on the other hand, mostly contacted via middlemen by well-known art collectors , as manufacturers of valuable collectibles.

Since moving to Aachen, Vasters had been a member of the board of directors of the parish of St. Peter, for which he made two goblets and revised the inventory in 1894/95. Vasters died of a stroke on June 14, 1909, at the age of 82, leaving two children and eight grandchildren.

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  Vessel in the form of a sea monster; Walters Art Museum , Maryland

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  Embodiment of bravery; Walters Art Museum

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  Judith holds the head of Holofernes - obverse; Walters Art Museum

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  Judith holds the head of Holofernes - back; Walters Art Museum

Seventy years after his death, it has now been proven on the basis of the design drawings found in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London that, for example, numerous exhibits of the "Renaissance jewelery" then circulating as well as at least 45 others from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art were made by him came from. This includes, for example, the well-known "Rospigliosi bowl", which was previously assigned to Benvenuto Cellini .

Vasters made a substantial fortune selling his fakes while he was still alive. Just a few years ago, at an auction at Christie's in London, a fantastic mini-temple made by him with a magnificently robed Queen of Sheba fetched a record price of £ 200,000 (20-30,000). His works "suspected" of forgery have meanwhile been combined in a bundle of over 1000 individual parts, although a significantly larger number of his as yet undiscovered and assigned forgeries would have to be distributed among private collectors or in various museums worldwide.

literature

• Catalog of the collection and library of the late Mr. Goldschmied R. Vasters and painter J. Lange zu Aachen . Auction catalog Anton Creutzer, vorm. M. Lempertz , Aachen 1909 ( digitized version ).
• Yvonne Hackenbroch : Reinhold Vasters, Goldsmith . In: Metropolitan Museum Journal . Vol. 19/20, 1984/85, pp. 163-268.
• From forger to artist . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1984 ( online ).
• Miriam Krautwurst: Reinhold Vasters - a 19th century goldsmith from the Lower Rhine region in the tradition of old masters. His collection of drawings in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London . Dissertation University of Trier 2003: PDF
• Matthias Thibaut: Copyist and expert. The Renaissance imitations of Reinhold Vasters , In: Weltkunst Vol. 74, No. 9, 2004, pp. 52–54.

Web links

Commons : Reinhold Vasters  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Reinhold Vaster's work in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
• Reinhold Vaster's work in "The Metropolitan Museum of Art", New York
• Reinhold Vasters vessel