Sitting man with stick

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Seated man with a stick (Amedeo Modigliani)
Sitting man with stick
Amedeo Modigliani , 1918
Oil on canvas
126 × 75 cm
Privately owned

Sitting man with stick (French: Homme assis (appuyé sur une canne) ; English: Seated Man with a Cane ) is the title of a painting by Amedeo Modigliani . The work, dated 1918, is painted in oil on canvas and is 126 cm high and 75 cm wide. The portrait most likely shows Georges Ménier (1880–1933), owner of the Menier chocolate factory , seated and leaning on a walking stick . The painting comes from the last creative period of the artist and is in private ownership. It has been the subject of a legal battle since 2011about the return of Nazi-looted art . Its value was 25 million US dollars or estimated (2016) to 30 million US dollars (2020).

title

In French , the portrait is referred to as Homme assis (appuyé sur une canne) , sometimes the brackets are omitted or the article L 'is placed in front. Seated Man with a Cane has established itself as the English title of the picture . The title in German fluctuates, the painting is called "Sitzender Mann mit Stick", "Sitzender Mann mit ein Stick" or "Sitzender Mann (leaning on a stick)".

description

The picture shows a man dressed in a black three-piece suit, with his legs slightly apart, who looks in the direction of the viewer and - as is often the case with Modigliani - appears lost in his thoughts. He supports his touching hands on the round handle of a brown walking stick. He is holding a pipe in his left hand . His clothes include a light-colored shirt and a brown Homburg . The flat face is characterized by a double chin, a Menjou mustache over the pursed lips typical of the artist, a narrow nose, narrow black eyebrows and Modigliani's almost pupil-free almond eyes . The rounded head has clearly visible ears. The picture is not carried out as a full-body picture, the body is cut off from the edge of the picture below the knees ( knee piece ). In some places on the clothing and the background, the canvas shimmers through. The latter is divided into large, clearly delimited areas in brown, light gray and blue-gray. The artist's signature can be found in the upper right corner.

According to the Institute Restellini , a Geneva- based institution that is working on a new catalog raisonné by the artist, the person shown by Modigliani is very likely Georges Ménier (April 19, 1880 - February 1, 1933), a French chocolate manufacturer and composer who frequented Parisian artistic circles.

Position in the factory

The painting belonged to the large group of portraits, a subject that Modigliani kept coming back to since 1908 - around 90 percent of his oeuvre are portraits. Often recurring elements appear in its design: elongated and usually oval face shapes (the seated man with a stick is an exception here); The eyes, nose and mouth are schematized. "Everything is reduced to a very clear, 'simple' form of expression."

In the picture, influences of his mentor Paul Cézanne can be seen, among other things in the picture perspective , the painting technique and the earthy color palette as well as in the artistic reintegration of disparate structures and visual sensations of subjects. The design of the background with its flatly applied abstract colors, like some other works from this creative period, is a reminiscence of Henri Matisse .

Simonne Ménier, wife of Georges, was portrayed by Modigliani in 1919, around the same time.

Provenance

The creation of the work is dated to 1918. It is conceivable that it was subsequently owned by Georges Ménier. Even Roger Dutilleul is specified as an early owner.

Before 1930 it came into the possession of Oscar Stettiner (1878–1948), a Paris-based Jewish art and antique dealer with a British passport . His gallery was on avenue Matignon , a cross street to avenue des Champs-Élysées . In November 1939, a few weeks after the start of the Second World War , Stettiner fled a feared attack by the Wehrmacht to La Force , a village in the Dordogne near Bordeaux . His family owned a house there. After the invasion of France by German troops in May 1940 and the beginning of German occupation , the Germans confiscated the private property of Szczecin and the inventory of his gallery and aryanized this property through sales organized by an administrator appointed by the Germans. On July 3, 1944, a month and a half before the liberation of Paris , the Seated Man with a Stick was sold for 16,000 francs . The buyer was the gallery owner John Van der Klip, who, according to him, sold the painting to Mariage Eu de Saint Pierre a little later. The new owner then allegedly sold the picture to an unknown American officer in October 1944 for 25,000 francs. Despite the intervention of the courts, Oscar Stettiner did not succeed in getting the Modigliani painting back into his possession before his death.

It remained for decades lost until it in 1996 at a auction of Christie's in London reappeared. The seller remained unknown. In terms of provenance , the auction catalog stated that the painting had been acquired anonymously in Paris between 1940 and 1945. The buyer is a "J. Livengood ”who later inherited it. The painting went to an unknown buyer for $ 3.2 million.

In 2008 the picture was put up for sale again, this time at Sotheby’s in New York . The auction catalog mentioned that the work may have come from Szczecin's holdings.

Litigation

In 2009 an employee of the Canadian provenance researcher James Palmer stumbled upon the possible identity of the picture Seated Man with a Stick and the work, which in the French court files on the failed Stettiner restitution as "a painting signed by Modigliani (portrait of a man)" was conducted. Shortly afterwards, Palmer found a photo from 1930 in Venice that showed twelve Modigliani portraits as part of the then Biennale di Venezia : ten showed women, two showed men. According to a document in the restitution documents, Stettiner had submitted a Modigliani picture for this art exhibition. This was also confirmed by the exhibition catalog of the Biennale at the time.

As a result, Philippe Maestracci, the only living grandson of Oscar Szczecin, began a lawsuit against the Helly Nahmad Gallery New York in 2011 before the United States District Court, Southern District of New York . In 2005 this gallery showed the seated man with a stick . Prior to the filing of the lawsuit, requests for information and interviews by letter had received no response.

In court, the representative of the gallery, celebrity attorney Aaron Golub, stressed that the gallery had never been the owner. He produced a letter from Christie's that the painting had been sold in 1996 to International Art Center SA , which turned out to be a mailbox company based in Panama . The gallery lawyer also asserted that there was no receipt that Oscar Stettiner had ever bought the picture - an argument with which Jews affected by Aryanization and their descendants are often confronted, despite their escape, the Holocaust and World War II The burden of bookkeeping and archiving as complete as possible .

Maestracci subsequently extended his lawsuit to Helly Nahmad personally, to David Nahmad - his extremely wealthy father, art dealer and investor - and to the International Art Center . The plaintiff assumed that this mailbox company is controlled by the Nahmads because Aaron Golub represented both the Nahmads and the mailbox company. Above all, there was a statement from a former employee of the Nahmad Gallery : She had written invoices for both the gallery and the International Art Center .

In 2016, the evaluation of the Panama Papers by the International Network of Investigative Journalists confirmed that the International Art Center was owned by the Nahmads. At the same time, the French daily Le Monde, which is part of the research network, determined the provenance of the painting between 1944 and 1996. John Van der Klip had never sold the picture Seated Man with a Stick . It stayed in his family until 1996. One of his three daughters had married Edwin Livengood and with him a son named John Livengood. This John Livengood and his aunt Maud Van der Klip were the anonymous sellers in 1996. The widow of John Livengood, who died in 2016, confirmed that David Nahmad was the buyer. In the course of the legal disputes, the whereabouts of the painting became known beforehand: a warehouse belonging to the Nahmad family within the building of Ports Francs et Entrepôts de Genève SA , which functions as a free port in Geneva and to which the authorities have no access.

David Nahmad then claimed that the work Maestracci had requested was different from what he, Nahmad, acquired in 1996. In 2020 another piece of evidence was found , a handwritten note in French: “Modigliani. Stettiner family. Stolen. Wanted in America ”. It was in a file on the painting, which also contained a photocopied photograph of the portrait of a Seated Man with a Cane . Another note on the file stated that the case had been processed in April 1950. A former Sotheby’s employee revealed in the New York court case that he had been aware of this file and its contents since 2008.

There was no court decision or agreement between the parties to the dispute by January 2021.

Exhibitions

The seated man with a stick has been part of exhibitions several times:

In addition, the painting is said to have been on view in the Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris after 1996 .

Painting by Bernard Boutet de Monvel

Bernard Boutet de Monvel: Portrait of Georges Menier, Avenue du Bois (1925)

In 1925, the French artist Bernard Boutet de Monvel (1881–1949) also made a portrait of Georges Menier. In this oil painting, the wealthy industrialist - he owned Chenonceau Castle , among other things - is sitting on a garden chair , wearing a top hat and holding a cigar in his right hand. He crossed his legs and a stick is on his right thigh. The sitter is under a tree on Avenue du Bois (now Avenue Foch ) in Paris. This work is now in the Musée d'Art et d'Industrie in the northern French city of Roubaix .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georges Ménier (1880-1933). Retrieved July 5, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b The million dollar picture without an owner. In: tagesschau.de . April 13, 2016, accessed May 15, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b Catherine Hickley: New evidence cited in restitution claim for Panama Papers Modigliani. In: The Art Newspaper. January 9, 2020, accessed May 16, 2020 .
  4. ^ Katharina Mutz: Trade in looted art. How the Panama Papers exposed crooked art deals. In: srf.ch . April 3, 2017, accessed May 15, 2020 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Katrin Langhans, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, Kia Vahland: Panama Painting. In: panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de. April 9, 2016, accessed on May 15, 2020 (article in the context of Panama Papers. The secrets of dirty money , an international research on the Panama Papers , printed in the Süddeutsche Zeitung ). Here as a PDF.
  6. ↑ Simonetta Fraquelli: A Personal Universe: Modigliani's Portraits and Figure Paintings . In Simonetta Fraquelli, Norman Rosenthal (exhibition curators): Modigliani and His Models . Royal Academy of Arts, London 2006, pp. 31–43, here p. 32, ISBN 978-1-903973-81-3 .
  7. ↑ Céline Giraud: L'Homme Assis de Modigliani: Le retour d'une oeuvre spoliée en 1944. In: deuxieme-temps.com. July 12, 2016, accessed May 18, 2020 (French).
  8. ↑ a b Simonetta Fraquelli: A Personal Universe: Modigliani's Portraits and Figure Paintings . In Simonetta Fraquelli, Norman Rosenthal (exhibition curators): Modigliani and His Models . Royal Academy of Arts, London 2006, pp. 31–43, here p. 35, ISBN 978-1-903973-81-3 .
  9. ↑ Christian Herchenröder: The one with the almond eyes. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . March 24, 2018, accessed May 15, 2020 .
  10. ↑ For details of his life, see the information in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France , accessed on May 15, 2020.
  11. ↑ Nicholas Forrest: Institut Restellini Identifies Sitter in Panama Papers Modigliani. In: lootedart.com. Commission for Looted Art in Europe, April 10, 2016, accessed May 15, 2020 .
  12. ^ A b c d e Nathaniel Herzberg: "Panama papers": a clearer picture on the hidden Modigliani. In: Le Monde. May 27, 2016, accessed May 15, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Simonetta Fraquelli: A Personal Universe: Modigliani's Portraits and Figure Paintings . In Simonetta Fraquelli, Norman Rosenthal (exhibition curators): Modigliani and His Models . Royal Academy of Arts, London 2006, pp. 31-43, here p. 31, ISBN 978-1-903973-81-3 .
  14. ↑ Drunk, dissolute, ingenious. In: Deutsche Welle . April 23, 2009, accessed on May 16, 2020 (Interview by Günther Birkenstock with Susanne Kleine, project manager of a Modigliani exhibition in the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany . The quote is from Kleine).
  15. ↑ a b c d Sotheby’s: Amedeo Modigliani, Homme assis (appuyé sur une canne). In: Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale. November 03, 2008 7:00 PM EST New York, No. 26 (auction catalog). November 3, 2018, accessed May 17, 2020 .
  16. ↑ For the provenance, see basically Katrin Langhans, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, Kia Vahland: Panama Painting. In: panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de. April 9, 2016, accessed on May 15, 2020 (article in the context of Panama Papers. The secrets of dirty money , an international research on the Panama Papers , printed in the Süddeutsche Zeitung ). Here as a PDF.
  17. ↑ See Laurent Valdiguié: Deux Modigliani pour une énigme au coeur des Panama Papers. In: Le Journal du Dimanche . June 12, 2016, accessed May 16, 2020 .
  18. ↑ a b Christie's: Lot 15. Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). Homme assis (appuyé sur une Canne). In: Sale 5619. Impressionist & Modern Paintings, Watercolors & Sculpture I. London, June 25, 1996 (exhibition catalog). June 25, 1996, accessed May 17, 2020 .
  19. ^ A b Adviescommissie Restitutieverzoeken Cultuurgoederen en Tweede Wereldoorlog (Restitutiecommissie): Stettiner. In: restitutiecommissie.nl. February 15, 2015, accessed on May 16, 2020 .
  20. ↑ a b c CBC News: The Mystery of the Modigliani Masterpiece - the fifth estate . YouTube , uploaded to the CBC News channel , April 8, 2016.
  21. ^ Nathaniel Herzberg: "Panama papers": les documents révèlent le véritable propriétaire d'un Modigliani disparu. In: Le Monde. April 7, 2016, accessed May 17, 2020 (French).
  22. ↑ site of his company Mondex , accessed on May 16, 2020th
  23. ↑ a b Jennifer Maloney: After Finding Lost Painting, a Roadblock. In: The Wall Street Journal . October 27, 2014, archived from the original on April 14, 2016 ; accessed on May 17, 2020 (English).
  24. ^ A b c The Black Box of the Art Business. In: reddit.com. 2018, accessed on May 16, 2020 (video, presented on the Reddit website. See there from minute 30:42.).
  25. ↑ On Golub see Christian Viveros-Fauné: 10 of the Art World's Most Powerful Lawyers. In: Artnet . April 29, 2016, accessed May 16, 2020 .
  26. ^ Instead of many examples, that of the Old Synagogue in Freiburg ; see Julia Wolrab: Scientific documentation of the research on the history of the Old Synagogue in Freiburg from a property law perspective. In: freiburg.de. October 8, 2019, accessed May 16, 2020 .
  27. ^ The Role of Freeports in the Global Art Market. In: artsy.net. July 14, 2017, accessed May 17, 2020 .
  28. ↑ Graham Bowley, Doreen Carvajal: One of the World's Greatest Art Collections Hides Behind This Fence. In: The New York Times . May 28, 2016, accessed May 17, 2020 .
  29. ↑ For this free port see the entry Geneva Freeport in en.wikipedia.org.
  30. ↑ Olga Kronsteiner: Why an art dealer pardoned by Trump is not an orphan. In: The Standard . January 30, 2021, accessed February 11, 2021 .
  31. ^ Sotheby's: Bernard Boutet de Monvel. Portrait de Georges Menier, avenue du Bois. In: Collection Boutet de Monvel, April 5, 2016 - April 6, 2016, Paris. Retrieved May 17, 2020 (French).
  32. ↑ Image description based on an auction catalog by Sotheby's (2016) , accessed on July 6, 2020.
  33. ↑ See the information from the Center Georges-Pompidou on the painting, accessed on February 25, 2021.


This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 27, 2021 .