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Artist or Maker: Hans Thoma (German, 1839-1924)
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Provenance: Oscar Hermes, Munich, 1909.
Ottmar Strauss, Cologne, 1922; Sale, Hugo Helbing, Frankfurt am Main, 22 May 1935, lot 180 (unsold).
Kunsthaus Ludwig Brettschneider, Munich, from whom acquired by Reichsleiter NSDAP Martin Bormann via an agent on 5 February 1943 (RM 60.000).
Removed from the NSDAP Parteizentrale to the storage space at the salt mines in Bad Aussee (Aussee number 7704), circa 1944-1945.
Removed from Bad Aussee to the Munich Central Collecting Point (CCP), arrival date 29 October 1945, exit date 10 June 1949 (according to Munich property card, Munich number 12884).
Transferred to the Bayerischen Staat and subsequently handed over to the Bayerischen Gemäldesammlungen on 10 April 1957.
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Neue Pinakothek, Munich, inv.no. 12579, until 2004.
Restituted to the Heirs of Ottmar Strauss, 2004.
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Exhibited: Berlin, National Galerie, Thoma-Ausstellung: Gemälde von Hans Thoma aus Deutschem Privatbesitz, 1922, no. 175.
Munich, Haus der Kunst, München 1869-1958: Aufbruch zur modernen Kunst, 1958, cat.no. 389.
Salzburg, Salzburger Kunstverein, Der Wassermann, 125 Jahre Salzburger Kunstverein, 1969, cat.no. 88.
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Literature: H. Thode, Thoma, Des Meisters Gemälde in 874 Abbildungen, Stuttgart/Leipzig, 1909, p. 477, ill.
C. Lenz (ed.), Deutsche Künstler von Marèes bis Slevogt. Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Neue Pinakothek München, III, Munich, 2003, p. 175, no. 12579, ill.
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Notes: PROPERTY FROM THE OTTMAR STRAUSS COLLECTION, RESTITUTED TO THE HEIRS
Ottmar Strauss was born on May 19th, 1878 in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine, the youngest of eight children of his father Emanuel's marriage to Sara, née Baum. His father Emanuel was a successful ironmonger and scrap metal became the underlying theme of Ottmar Strauss' highly successful business career that started at the renowned company Nathan Pelzer Wwe. in Cologne-Rodenkirchen. Here the young Strauss met another young merchant, Otto Wolff. On 25 June 1904, the two founded the Eisenwarengrosshandlung Otto Wolff, a business that they led to an enormous commercial success during the first decades of the 20th Century. Parallel to his business career, Ottmar Strauss discovered that his talent for organisation was also useful for a career in government, as an administrator and a loyal civil servant in the last years of the Kaiserreich and the young Weimar Republic. He was named a Geheimer Regierungsrat in 1919, and continued to live and work between Cologne, Berlin and Weimar, as one of the successful assimilated German-Jewish industrialists.
One of the outward signs of Strauss' success was his affluent life-style, suitable for a man of his wealth and social standing. Collecting art was obviously part of this, and his collections were remarkable both for their wide variety of artistic styles and periods as well as their size. Since there is no indication that Strauss was advised by an art dealer or museum curator like many of the wealthy industrialists of his era, we can assume that he acquired his art collection on his own on the German art market. Ottmar Strauss and his wife Eva Emmy, held an open house at their home in Cologne for artists, curators and connoisseurs.
The art collections were displayed in his villa in the affluent Marienburg quarter in Cologne, on the Bayenthalguertel. He also owned a palatial country house on the Heisterberg in the vineyards overlooking the Rhine near Bonn. Haus Heisterberg was destroyed in the Second World War. The interiors of both houses must have been magnificent. An inventory drawn up in 1931 lists the present lot as one of the 19th and 20th century paintings that hung in the master bedroom.
The story of Ottmar Strauss' dissimilation from German society after 1933, that turned the successful business man and highly regarded civil servant into an outcast because he was Jewish and how persecution by the Nazis led to his professional and personal ruin, has been reconstructed by historians. The Strauss collection was dispersed in three sales at Hugo Helbing in Frankfurt am Main in 1934 and 1935. Ottmar Strauss died in the hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich on 25 August 1941. He had been an emigrant since 29 December 1936.
Hans Thoma visited the Lago di Gardo and its surrounding region for the first time in 1897, when he stayed with the arthistorian H. Thode in his house on the lake. He returned to the regioin in the spring of 1905. In the present lot, Thoma takes up his favourite theme of the symbolism of human life and its relationship with nature once again. The cycles of life and the seasons are symbolised by the ploughteam and the flowering meadow against the backdrop of dormant vines at dusk.
Christie's charge a premium to the buyer on the final bid price of each lot sold at the following rates: 23.8% of the final bid price of each lot sold up to and including € 150,000 and 14.28% of any amount in exces of € 150,000. Buyers' premium is calculated on the basis of each lot individually.
