Berlin Museum Spotlights Dealer Who Brought Impressionism To Germany

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie is presenting“Cassirer: Breakthrough of Impressionism,” an exhibition that focuses on Paul Cassirer, the dealer credited with introducing Impressionism to Germany. The exhibition features works connected to Cassirer, including Edgar Degas's Miss La La (1879), Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Lise with a Parasol (1867), and Max Slevogt's 1901 portrait of Cassirer's daughter, Suzanne Aimée Cassirer. These pieces highlight Cassirer's role in bringing French Impressionist art into German collections, including many now held by the Nationalgalerie, and in supporting German avant-garde artists.

The exhibition and its accompanying catalog examine how art moved across borders and changed hands, challenging the notion that esteemed museum collections are separate from the financial transactions and circumstances of their acquisition. Impressionism marked a shift from traditional art academies and state collections as primary arbiters of taste to private collectors and critics, making art dealers crucial to the movement's eventual success. Cassirer, though less renowned than his French counterpart Paul Durand-Ruel, was the leading dealer of French Impressionism in Germany around the turn of the 20th century. Durand-Ruel himself noted that Cassirer was solely responsible for introducing these paintings across the Rhine.

Cassirer initially co-founded the Kunstsalon with his cousin Bruno in 1898, taking full control of operations in 1901 after their split. His gallery, located in the fashionable Tiergarten district, featured an opulent interior designed by Art Nouveau architect Henry van de Velde. Cassirer displayed paintings in relatively sparse, single-row arrangements, a departure from the popular salon-style hangs of the era. He exhibited works by artists such as Monet, Manet, Cézanne, van Gogh, and Edvard Munch, driven by both a passion for art and a desire for profit, as encapsulated by a contemporary caricature's quip,“from Monet and Manet to money.”

A strategy of Cassirer's involved repeatedly exhibiting unsold works to familiarize the public with new styles. This approach culminated in the largest-ever exhibition of van Gogh's work in 1914, featuring 151 pieces. The current Nationalgalerie exhibition, however, displays only 2 van Gogh works, underscoring a historical divergence between what Cassirer promoted and what the state chose to collect. For example, van Gogh's Boulevard de Clichy (1887), shown at Cassirer's gallery in 1905 and 1908, is displayed near German Impressionist Curt Hermann's Snow-Covered Roofs (1908/09), highlighting the influence of French art on German works.

The growing French influence, however, sparked opposition among German artists advocating for a conservative nationalist art. In 1911, landscape painter Carl Vinnen authored a“Protest by German Artists” against the influx of French art, garnering 140 signatures. Cassirer responded by participating in a“Reply to a Protest by German Artists,” organized by internationalism-sympathetic artists Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Three years earlier, Hugo von Tschudi, then head of the Nationalgalerie, had been removed from his position for acquiring French art via Cassirer, as Kaiser Wilhelm II increasingly asserted control over national collections to promote German nationalism. This historical attempt to align museums with patriotic objectives resonates with contemporary pressures on museum exhibitions in the US to conform to state priorities.

Cassirer's life ended tragically by suicide during divorce proceedings. Nevertheless, his legacy in German art endures, not only through the exhibited works but also by demonstrating the value of transparency in the development of museum collections and the explicit and implicit motivations that shape them.

We previously reported:

A new exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris explores Paul Cézanne's profound and enduring influence on artists from his lifetime through subsequent

Major exhibitions featuring Paul Cézanne, Taryn Simon, and René Magritte have opened at the Grand Palais, Guggenheim, and Gagosian respectively.

The Jewish Museum's upcoming exhibition will highlight the underrecognized contributions of women, especially Jewish women, to the Wiener Werkstätte.

Source: ARTnews

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