Page 62 - Studio International - May 1966

Art prices current

Lyonel Feininger by George Savage

If my memory serves me well no really important outside the sale-room where price becomes com- prevent the expropriation of some of Feininger's
oil-painting by Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) has mon property. Certain paintings are already being work, although his American citizenship probably
appeared in the international sale-rooms for a negotiated on the Continent for much higher prices mitigated the worst impact of Nazi viciousness.
considerable time. The few available have been than those at which they could be bought in the Nevertheless some of his paintings appeared, like
negotiated privately, and the principal market for London sale-room. those of so many other artists of his time, in the
his work has been the Continent of Europe and the Lyonel Feininger is usually regarded as an Lucerne sale of 1939, the catalogue of which was
United States. American, and he is so described in the sale- entitled Paintings and Sculptures of Modern Masters
It is always difficult to estimate the price-levels catalogues of the PARKE-BERNET GALLERIES. This, from German Museums. Doubtless the total included
on which important works change hands in Con- however, is only partly true. Although an Ameri- would have been greater, but a few Museum Direc-
tinental Europe, short of an appearance in one of can citizen, born in that country, he spent the tors, warned by events elsewhere, removed some
the sale-rooms, because systems of taxation put a greater part of his life in Europe, returning to New modern paintings from the walls of their galleries
premium on secrecy. In one case known to me a York in 1937 when, like so many others, he re- and concealed them.
man possessing a solitary Picasso was so badgered moved himself from the reach of Nazi persecution. Today the balance has been corrected. Feininger's
by the tax-collector that he sold it. The tax-man, As early as 1930 the Minister for Popular Educa- work is well represented in every German public
with the characteristic dummheit of officials in every tion, Frick, visited the Weimar Museum with the collection of importance, especially in the Wallraf
country, had been keeping an eye on international object of appraising its contribution to the culture Richartz Collection in Cologne, the Folkwang
price-levels, and found it difficult to conceive that of the Third Reich. Soon afterwards came a Museum of Essen, the Kunstmuseum of Düsseldorf,
any Picasso could possibly be worth less than directive to whitewash Schlemmer's frescos, and the Landesgalerie of Hanover, and the Galerie des
$100,000. This, of course, is the reason for the seventy modern works, including those of Feinin- Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts in Berlin, and here
words 'Collection particulière' which appears on ger, were removed from the walls. much of his finest work is preserved.
so many illustrations of paintings in Continental As late as 1933 Feininger received the support of Lyonel Feininger studied in Hamburg and Berlin
possession. Life is easier if the tax-man does not Dr Schardt of Berlin's Kronprinzpalais who, in in 1892 and 1893, journeying in the latter year to
know that you possess a painting important enough defiance of the party line and the taste of the Paris, where he remained until 1906. In 1911 he
to appear in a coffee-table book. Führer for Spitzweg and the German romantics, first became acquainted with early Cubist experi-
Fortunately this form of persecution has not yet regarded the art of the German naturalistic and ments during the course of a stay in Paris when he
made its appearance in either England or the romantic schools as unrepresentative, preferring met Robert Delaunay. In 1913, at the invitation
United States in the advanced form in which it is instead the art of the Romanesque and early of Franz Marc, he exhibited in Berlin with the
known on the Continent. Nor does it assume such Gothic periods as more truly in accord with the Blaue Reiter School.
importance in the case of demonstrably minor German spirit. To this he related the Expression- Feininger's connexion with the Bauhaus at Wei-
works, the possession of which does not suggest ists, as well as the painters of the Blaue Reiter and mar, where Walter Gropius was heading a new
great wealth. We can, therefore, make some esti- the Brücke schools. Among the paintings hung in school devoted to bringing together once more the
mate of price-levels which is likely to be reasonably support of his contention those of Feininger had artist and the craftsman, began in 1919. Feininger,
in accord with facts, although—one suspects—as a prominent place, and several private galleries one of the masters of the new school, had already
product of increasing severity of taxation, paint- courageously held exhibitions about the same time developed a poetic form of Cubism, with under-
ings may, in time to come, tend to be negotiated in Berlin and elsewhere. All this was insufficient to tones of Futurism, remarkable for a prismatic

Le Mariage Breton, 1937, 27 1/4 x 47 in., by Rouault, sold by Sotheby & Co. for £14,000 ($39,200) in a sale which also included
Pissarro's Route de Louveciennes, effet de neige, 1872, 18 x 21 3/4 in. £28,000 ($78,400), Monet's Falaises a Pourville, 1882,
22+ x 31 in. £32,500 ($91,000) and Matisse's Femme dans un fauteuil, c. 1919, 20 3/4 x 14 3/4 in. £15,000 ($42,000).
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