Provenance research on the painting “Badende” by Erich Heckel in the Kunstmuseum Bonn

Research into the provenance of the painting “Badende” (Bathers, 1914) by Erich Heckel, which is in the collection holdings of Kunstmuseum Bonn, concluded that the painting had been in the collection of German–American art historian and museum director Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner (1880–1958) from before July 1929 until 1958. Among other things, a label on the back of the painting makes reference to this. Valentiner had loaned the Heckel painting to the Nationalgalerie in Berlin before 1929, along with three other paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Kaus and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. He got all four paintings back on July 29, 1929. At that point, Valentiner had already been living in Detroit for five years after taking up the position of director of the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1924. Valentiner subsequently took the returned painting “Badende” by Erich Heckel with him to Detroit, together with the three paintings by Kirchner, Kaus and Schmidt-Rottluff that had been given back to him by the Nationalgalerie in July 1929. As clearly confirmed in a list preserved in the Detroit museum, all four paintings were still to be found in Valentiner’s collection in June 1945 and were housed temporarily in the museum’s storage depot after he retired. From February 14 to March 6, 1952, Valentiner loaned the Heckel painting “BATHERS WITH BLUE BACKGROUND” (1914) to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for the exhibition “20th Century Master Movements: German Expressionism”. A label attached to the back of the painting on the stretcher testifies to this. Valentiner died on September 6, 1958, in New York. Following the death of the museum director, the Heckel painting initially went to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh until November 1966. It then had to be handed over to Valentiner’s divorced wife, who had contested the will. In November 1968, the Heckel painting was eventually sold to the Städtische Kunstsammlungen Bonn (today: Kunstmuseum Bonn) via Galerie Wilhelm Grosshennig in Düsseldorf.

In the course of the provenance research, it could not be determined that “Badende” (1914) by Erich Heckel had been confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution or sold in a forced sale. As Andreas Hüneke, the author of the works catalog, correctly states in 2017, the painting from the Kunstmuseum Bonn was located in the Nationalgalerie in Berlin between 1922 and 1929 as a loan. A letter of confirmation from Dr. Valentiner dated July 29, 1929—which is preserved in the central archives of the Berliner Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz—clearly shows that this painting was a loan from Valentiner. He took all four loaned artworks returned by the Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 1929 with him to Detroit. There, these paintings were kept in the museum storage depot at least until 1952. Sale of the Heckel painting to Hugo Simon in Berlin in 1929 must be ruled out because it can be proven that the artwork was still in Valentiner’s collection in Detroit in June 1945. A total of four paintings by Erich Heckel were seized from Hugo Simon’s Paris apartment in May 1942: “Badende Jungen” (Bathing Boys), oil on canvas, 83 x 95 cm; “Ansicht von Gent” (View of Ghent), oil on canvas, 97 x 121 cm; “Bad.” (Bathers), oil on canvas, 57 x 49 cm; and “Badende am Fluss” (Bathers at the River), oil on canvas, 70 x 80 cm. All artworks confiscated from Hugo Simon’s apartment were taken to the Jeu de Paume, Paris, in May 1942, and destroyed in July 1943, according to information in a card file preserved in the Federal Archives in Koblenz, Germany. The painting “Bathing Scene” (1914)—which was displayed as a loan from Hugo Simon in the “Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art” in London in July 1938 with the catalog number 61 and the dimensions 48 x 55 cm according to the exhibition catalog, and which was erroneously equated with the Heckel painting “Badende” (1914) from the Kunstmuseum Bonn by works catalog author Andreas Hüneke in 2017—was also taken from Hugo Simon’s Paris apartment in May 1942 by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce and later destroyed. This painting was entitled “Bad.” with the dimensions 57 x 49 cm in the confiscation lists. The painting “Badende” (1914) located in the Kunstmuseum Bonn, which is from the collection of Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner, has the dimensions 83 x 96.5 cm.

(c) Kunstmuseum Bonn