Siegfried Bing

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Exposition La Maison Bing - L'Art Nouveau (Brussels)
Exhibition poster 2005

Siegfried Bing (outside of Germany better known by his Jewish name Samuel Bing ; born February 26, 1838 in Hamburg ; † June 9, 1905 in Vaucresson , today the Hauts-de-Seine department , France ) was a Franco-German art collector and dealer.

Life

Coming from an internationally active Hamburg merchant family, Siegfried Bing was one of the most important collectors and dealers of Asian art objects. He is considered the founder of Japonism in Europe.

In Paris he had been with the family company Bing et Renner , which also ran a ceramics factory, from 1854 , and Leuiller fils et Bing from 1863 , in 1876 he was naturalized in France. In 1868 he married his second cousin Johanna Bair (1847–1882), whose brother Martin Michael Bair became a partner in the first German trading house in Tokyo in 1870 . Around this time, Bing became increasingly enthusiastic about Japanese curiosities and ceramics, which he imported through Leullier fils from 1875 onwards. But it was not until his big "shopping trip" in 1880 and 1881, which took him to India, China and Japan, and the establishment of a purchasing branch in Yokohama under his brother August Bing (1852–1918) that he became the leading importer of East Asian art. By securing the sources of supply, he now had the opportunity to supply renowned museums in Europe and the USA with Japanese and Chinese arts and crafts products. From 1888 to 1891 he also published the monthly magazine Le Japon artistique: documents d'art et d'industrie .

In 1894, Bing was commissioned by the French government to compile a report on the state of American art (La Culture artistique en Amerique, Paris, 1896). In 1895 the focus of his work changed. He founded a gallery in Paris called the Hôtel de l'Art Nouveau (or Maison de l'Art nouveau), in which he showed works by the Belgian artists Henry van de Velde and Georges Lemmen , as well as colored glass based on designs by Edouard Vuillard , Paul Ranson , Pierre Bonnard , Henri-Gabriel Ibels , Felix Vallotton and Toulouse-Lautrec , which were carried out by Louis Comfort Tiffany in America.

The exhibition was controversially discussed and criticized by the press. In his gallery he also sold fabrics and wallpapers by William Morris , silks from Liberty & Co. in London and beautiful metal lamps by the English Arts and Crafts designer William Arthur Smith Benson . He also offered paintings by James McNeill Whistler . He also provided artistic solutions for the aestheticization of living spaces - today one would say interior designer or interior designer.

Siegfried Bing founded his own workshops for the manufacture of furniture and jewelry around 1897/99. They were the culmination of his efforts to revitalize French design with the highest quality standards. He also made the designs created by his artists available to other workshops so that they could be produced in greater numbers.

When Bing exhibited the jewelry made in his workshop in the Grafton Galleries in London in 1899, it was not well received by the public or the press. At the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 he opened his own Art Nouveau Bing pavilion . Here he was able to show his ideas to a broader public.

A large part of Siegfried Bing's estate was auctioned off by his son and sole heir Marcel Bing in 1909.

One of the main merits of Bing was that he introduced Europe and America to East Asian art and thus decisively shaped the image of East Asia in these countries. He became the namesake for the new Art Nouveau movement , which was to gain world significance in its diverse currents.

Publications

  • Introduction to the auction catalog Collection Hayashi. Designs, estampes, libres illustrés du Japon réunis par T. Hayashi ancien commissaire général du Japon à l'exposition universelle de 1900 , here: La Gravure japonaise . Auction on June 2-6, 1902.

literature

  • L'Art nouveau - la Maison Bing (exhibition catalog). Stuttgart: Belser 2004. ISBN 3-7630-2441-7 .
  • Miyajima Hisao: Siegfried Bings visit to Japan . In: Bulletin of the Study of Japonisme. (1982), pp. 29-33
  • Johanna Heinen: S. Bing and the art mediators of German-Jewish origin for modern French art at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century . Master's thesis (maîtrise) “Art History” at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris (ENS), Univ. Paris 1 Sorbonne-Panthéon June 2005.

Bings Collection of Japanese Art

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henry van de Velde: Siegfried Bing, Henry van de Velde, Maison de l'Art nouveau pp. 101–111. Retrieved April 18, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Bing, Siegfried
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bing, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Franco-German art collector and dealer
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 1905
Place of death Vaucresson , today the Hauts-de-Seine department , France