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Press notices

• Eugène Delacroix, REFLECTIONS, Tasso in the Madhouse, ‘In Focus’ Exhibition
• Honoré Daumier at the Römerholz Collection, symposium with presentation of the Römerholz Collection’s Daumiers
• Venite, Adoremus: Geertgen tot Sint Jans and the Adoration of the Kings, ‘In Focus’ exhibition

‘In Focus’ Exhibition at the Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’

Eugène Delacroix
REFLECTIONS
Tasso in the Madhouse

6 September–14 December 2008

Tuesday to Sunday 10 am–5 pm, Wednesday 10 am–8 pm

Continuing the series of ‘In Focus’ exhibitions it initiated in 2005, part of the museum’s ongoing research programme, the Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’ is presenting a small but highly select exhibition of works by the French artist Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863). As the last such exhibition before the second phase in the reconstruction of the museum (15 December 2008–mid-2010), it opens up proThe presentation centres around a jewel among the numerous works by Delacroix in the Römerholz: his Tasso in the Madhouse of 1839. For the very first time, this important painting will be seen together with an earlier version Delacroix painted in 1824, which is now privately owned. A comparison of these two works, and their display, together with a further twenty-five works by Delacroix, one of the leading exponents of French Romanticism, enable us to take a wholly new view of this key work of nineteenth-century art, and of the artist. The thematic diversity of the exhibition also sheds light on the process by which a great artist fashioned an identity for himself on the threshold of modernism.mising new perspectives for the future.
     The presentation centres around a jewel among the numerous works by Delacroix in the Römerholz: his Tasso in the Madhouse of 1839. For the very first time, this important painting will be seen together with an earlier version Delacroix painted in 1824, which is now privately owned. A comparison of these two works, and their display, together with a further twenty-five works by Delacroix, one of the leading exponents of French Romanticism, enable us to take a wholly new view of this key work of nineteenth-century art, and of the artist. The thematic diversity of the exhibition also sheds light on the process by which a great artist fashioned an identity for himself on the threshold of modernism.

The Italian poet Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) entered the Ferrara court of Duke Alfonso II, of the powerful Este family, in 1565, and it was there that he completed his major work, the epic Gerusalemme liberata. In 1579 the Duke had the mentally unstable poet confined to the lunatic asylum of Sant’Anna. Delacroix was fascinated not so much by Tasso’s literary works as by his tragic fate, around which many legends were quick to form. Delacroix saw in this ill-fated genius a reflection of his own struggle for identity as an artist in the social conditions that prevailed following the French Revolution and the Restoration.
     Dating from around 1823 to 1861, the paintings, drawings and prints carefully selected to accompany the two central Tasso paintings are among the works Delacroix produced in small to medium format. For it was in such works, more than in the celebrated gallery paintings, that he was able to pursue his private agenda: his search for heroic figures who reflected, as if in a mirror, his intermittently endangered identity as an artist. Of vital interest to him were the great tortured individualists of literature and the fine arts, such as Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Faust, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and the melancholic artist Michelangelo – figures who, like Tasso and Delacroix himself, represent tragically embattled forms of spiritual creativity.
     In appropriating such figures, Delacroix developed a new and highly individual understanding of mythology, history, religion and nature. The exhibition illustrates these reflections vividly and, through this new perspective, reveals important aspects of the artist’s creative strategies: Delacroix repeatedly fell back on his own or related works, superimposing or paraphrasing them even over long periods of time in ever new approaches. His oeuvre, therefore, for all its thematic and formal diversity, has strong constants that bear witness to an existential threat and sense of tragedy that he never completely overcame.
     We owe the uncovering of this intriguing network of motifs and personal fates to the former head of the Prints and Drawings Collection at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Professor Dr Margret Stuffmann, who has had a long and extensive involvement with 19th-century French art. Her detailed commentaries on all the works provide a wealth of information, analysis and interpretation. Two essays by the noted scholars Norbert Miller and Karlheinz Stierle explore the Tasso theme through Delacroix’s response to Lord Byron, and through Charles Baudelaire’s response to Delacroix. In the fully illustrated exhibition catalogue, Eugène Delacroix’s ‘painterly dialogues’ are visualised in high-quality reproductions.

July 2008

For further information, please contact:
Dr Mariantonia Reinhard-Felice
Director
T +41 52 269 27 41
F +41 52 269 27 44
sor@bak.admin.ch

Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’
Haldenstrasse 95, CH-8400 Winterthur
Switzerland

Eugène Delacroix, Tasso in the Madhouse (Tasso in the Ospedale di Sant’Anna Ferrara), 1824 Oil on canvas, 50 x 61.5 cm Private Collection, courtesy of Nathan Fine Art, Berlin/Zürich (© Nathan Fine Art, Berlin)		Eugène Delacroix, Tasso in the Madhouse, (Tasso in the Ospedale di Sant’Anna Ferrara), 1839 Oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur (© Federal Office of Culture, Berne)
Eugène Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus preparatory oil sketch,1827–28 Oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm Musée du Louvre, département des Peintures, Paris (photo Jean-Gilles Berizzi, © Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris)		Eugène Delacroix, Michelangelo in his studio 1850, oil on canvas, 41 x 33.5 cm Musée Fabre, Montpellier (photo Frédéric Jaulmes, © museum)
Eugène Delacroix, The Lamentation, 1857 Oil on canvas, 38 x 46.3 cm Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe

Programme of events:

Honoré Daumier at the Römerholz Collection
9 February to 24 August 2008

The Oskar Reinhart Römerholz Collection owns an extensive ensemble of paintings and drawings by Honoré Daumier that are among the finest works he produced. These works of art make up one of the largest and best Daumier collections in the world.
     To mark the 200th anniversary of Daumier’s birth, the Römerholz Collection is putting on a new exhibition focusing on the museum’s unique holding of work by the artist. The exhibition includes a selection of graphic works from the associated Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten. The film Honoré Daumier: Il Faut Etre de Son Temps by the art historian and film-maker Judith Wechsler will be shown throughout the exhibition. Originally in French, the film will also be shown in English.
     In addition, the Oskar Reinhart Collection is organising a symposium in which seven international experts on Daumier’s work shed new light on his work.

Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) was born in Marseilles, but spent most of his life in Paris. Even in his childhood, his family’s straitened financial circumstances forced him to earn his own living, which is why he was already experimenting with the technique of lithography as a fourteen-year-old.
     The year 1830 brought a period of major change not only for France but also for Daumier. The Bourbon King Charles X’s dissolution of the newly elected Chamber of Deputies was followed by revolution, which ended in Louis-Philippe becoming King. At the same time, Daumier embarked on his long career as an illustrator and plate-maker, during which he produced around 4,000 lithographs, initially for the satirical journal La Caricature, and from 1832 for its satirical successor Le Charivari.
     His exaggerated depiction of Louis-Philippe as Gargantua, a monster figure from Gallic mythology whom Rabelais used as a character in his novels, earned the artist a six-month prison sentence. The lithograph of Souvenir de Sainte-Pélagie (Recollection of Sainte-Pélagie Prison) exhibited here alludes to this episode. Originally published in Le Charivari on 14 March 1834, it shows Daumier’s three fellow prisoners in a cell. The repressive measures against the press in the following years forced Daumier largely to give up political satire and devote himself principally to a critique of middle-class mores, of which he remained a perceptive observer to the end of his life.
     In 1925, Oskar Reinhart acquired from the Galerie Ernst Arnold in Dresden a package of 1,800 lithographs covering most of the series published in Le Charivari. Reinhart left this extensive graphic corpus to the Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten, retaining Daumier’s paintings and drawings for his own private collection. Though Daumier’s caricatures appealed to Reinhart’s legendary sense of humour, the collector’s real passion was for the paintings, even if in the artist’s lifetime they did not enjoy anything like the same popularity as the satirical lithographs, and were only rediscovered in Germany in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Oskar Reinhart witnessed this upturn in Daumier’s reputation, and celebrated the French artist as a focal point in the artistic development of nineteenth-century France that would ultimately lead to Impressionism. Reinhart saw the Impressionist period as a ‘triumph of painterliness’, which is why it became his main focus.
     The drawings and paintings are indeed much easier than the caricatures to reconcile with Reinhart’s perception of Daumier as a stylistic innovator rather than a narrator and critical observer of his contemporaries. A direct comparison is made in the exhibition between the satirical lithographs and Daumier’s drawings. Though the artist adopted numerous themes from his graphic works in his drawings (for example lawyers, art connoisseurs and the theatre), it is clear that such subject matter is not couched in dramatised settings as current events of the day but provides a record of typical figures of specific classes, occupations and social lifestyles, capturing their behavioural patterns and gestures with impressive economy.
     The works devoted to the theatre reveal Daumier’s fondness for Molière’s comedies. Daumier took as much interest in the audience as in the events on stage. A fondness for the theatre is evident in other subject matter as well. In The Two Doctors and Death (an illustration of La Fontaine’s fable of the doctors) in the Römerholz Collection, for example, the action is presented as a stage drama.
     Reinhart’s search not only for painterly qualities in the work he bought but also for perfect, balanced form led him to give preference to Daumier’s watercolours from the 1860s. The watercolours were executed with great panache and intended for sale to collectors. Daumier wanted to capitalise on his fame as a caricaturist and at the same time demonstrate his mastery as a painter.
     The paintings that Oscar Reinhart acquired also provide insight into the various phases that Daumier’s painting went through, though once again the works of the 1860s predominate, when Daumier was concentrating on this medium. They match the same aesthetic criteria that governed Reinhart’s choice of drawings and watercolours. Caricature is almost completely absent from the paintings, as the artist turned his socio-critical eye on ‘ordinary people’.
     It took Reinhart twenty-nine years to acquire The Fugitives, one of the Daumiers at the Römerholz Collection, but in 1949 he finally brought the coveted painting formerly owned by Berlin collector Otto Gerstenberg to Winterthur. Dated 1848, it was created in the years when Daumier was spending more and more time painting. The subject was one to which he returned repeatedly, in four paintings, three drawings and two reliefs. This version shows an apparently endless stream of people passing across an unidentifiable undulating landscape. Individual figures are shown naked or only clad only in rags, but otherwise undifferentiated.
     The painting does not seem to be based on a specific historical event, for example the July Insurrection, where the uprising by the poorest of the poor was crushed by the National Guard with the utmost brutality after the overthrow of ‘the People’s King’ Louis-Philippe in February the same year and the declaration of the Second Republic. By the following April, the conservatives were already able to celebrate a decisive electoral victory. The artist was looking for a metaphor for the fate of fugitives in general, and he produced a scene of shocking topicality.
     As a painter, Daumier turned to the new theme of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in the 1850s, focusing on it even more after 1860. Three Daumiers at the Römerholz deal with the subject, giving the painter an opportunity to explore the duality of humankind’s combination of earthly and spiritual natures.
     The last-dated Daumier painting at the Römerholz Collection shows a Pierrot Playing the Mandolin (c. 1873). The sketchy brushstroke style derives from Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), as can be seen by comparing the technique in the three Fragonard drawings in the Römerholz Collection. Despite the confused, spontaneous brushstrokes, the Pierrot Playing the Mandolin still preserves – in comparison with the similarly conceived but rather wild drawings and painting of the late period, when his eyesight was failing – a certain form that matched Reinhart’s taste for classical balance. This view of the French artist, combined with Reinhart’s infallible feeling for quality, has left a collection of first-rate Daumiers that is not only coherent and harmonious in itself but still without compare.

Symposium at the picture gallery:

‘Honoré DaumierRevisited
New Light, New Insights’

Saturday, 9 February 2008

10.00 am
Welcome and talk on Oskar Reinhart’s relationship with Daumier (in German)
Mariantonia Reinhard-Felice
Head of the Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’

10.30 am
Juerg Albrecht, Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft (Swiss Institute for Art Research), Zurich
‘Bild als Waffe. Die politischen Lithographien des jungen Honoré Daumier zwischen Karikatur und Historienbild, 1830–35’ (in German)

11.00 am
Judith Wechsler, Department of Art and Art History, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts
‘Daumier: Allegorical versus Activist Women’ (in English)

11.30 am
Elizabeth C. Childs, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri
‘Strategies of Humor in Daumier’s Art’ (in English; talk cancelled)

12 noon
Discussion moderators: Philippe Kaenel, Université de Lausanne, and Bernhard von Waldkirch, curator of the Daumier exhibition at the Kunsthaus in Zurich

2.30 pm
Ségolène Le Men, Université de Paris X-Nanterre, member of the Institut universitaire de France
‘Entre mémoire et imagination, le cycle des amateurs et l’évocation du musée imaginaire selon Daumier’ (in French)

3.00 pm
Margret Stuffmann, formerly Department of Prints and Drawings in the Städel Museum, Frankfurt
‘Daumier – der Blick nach innen. Beobachtungen zu seinem Spätwerk’ (in German)

3.30 pm
Rainer Michael Mason, Geneva
‘Daumier, la technique et l’écriture’ (in French)

4.00 pm
Philippe Kaenel, Université de Lausanne
‘Les points de vue de Daumier’ (in French)

4.30 pm
Discussion moderator: Andreas Beyer, Basle University

For further information, please contact:
Dr Mariantonia Reinhard-Felice
Director
T +41 (0)52 269 27 41
F +41 (0)52 269 27 44
sor@bak.admin.ch

Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’,
Haldenstrasse 95, CH-8400 Winterthur

Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) Return from the Market, c. 1855–60 Oil on canvas, 35.5 x 28 cm Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur (photo © Federal Office of Culture, Berne)	Honoré Daumier Two Print-lovers, c. 1860–63 Pen and ink and watercolour on paper, 18 x 24.4 cm Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur (photo © Federal Office of Culture, Berne)	Honoré Daumier Pierrot Playing the Mandolin, c. 1873 Oil on panel, 35 x 27 cm Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur (photo © Federal Office of Culture, Berne)

‘In Focus’ Exhibition at the Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur:

Venite, adoremus
Geertgen tot Sint Jans and the Adoration of the Kings
22 September 2007 to 27 January 2008

New Insights into an Early Masterpiece of Netherlandish Painting

With its new exhibition, the Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’ is continuing a series that began in 2005 with Manet Meets Manet. The objective of the series is to shed new light on a work or a group of works in the collection by studying it in a specific context. Thus Venite, Adoremus: Geertgen tot Sint Jans and the Adoration of the Kings puts one of the most remarkable paintings in the small, but high-quality Old Masters section of the Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’ into focus: The Adoration of the Kings, a panel painting formerly attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans (c. 1465–c. 1490/95).
     The exhibition analyses the relationship of this artist to the work, and for that purpose undertakes a comparison with two versions of the same theme that can definitely be attributed to Geertgen: the Adoration from the National Gallery in Prague, and the version from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Thus the exhibition comes close to its original aim of bringing together for the first time the four Adorations that can be linked to Geertgen – the fourth Adoration, in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, is currently being restored, and so could not be included in the exhibition. The three panel paintings of the Adoration are, however, complemented by the enchanting Madonna and Child from the Pinacoteca in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan – both the miniaturist, doll-like features and the masterly execution make it one of the greatest treasures in the creative output of this Early Netherlandish master. Considering the small number of works by Geertgen, who is widely considered the first great artist of the northern Netherlands, this concentration of his works in the exhibition is all the more impressive.

Restoration
The starting point for the project was the restoration of the Winterthur painting, a task the museum entrusted to Bruno Heimberg. It was carried out at the Doerner Institut at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich from 2006 to 2007. The exhibition also provides comprehensive documentation of the results of the technical examination the Doerner Institut conducted, and consequently is able to reveal many of the secrets of the artist’s painting and working methods.

Geertgen tot Sint Jans
Geertgen lived as a lay brother with the Knights of St John in Haarlem, the source of his name ‘tot Sint Jans’. He must have died at the age of just twenty-eight and would have been active as a painter from 1480/85 to 1490/95, in other words for only one decade. As artists prior to the Renaissance seldom signed their works, they can be identified solely through written documents. For Geertgen, only one work is authenticated in this way, the outer and inner sides of a wing of the main altarpiece at St John’s church in Haarlem, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. These two mature, superbly conceived and brilliantly executed paintings, which he must have created in the final years of his life, set the standard for every attribution of other works to Geertgen.

Reassessment
Against this background, the two scholars of Early Netherlandish painting to whom the museum entrusted the art-historical evaluation of the results of the restoration of the Winterthur panel – Stephan Kemperdick, who is Curator of Old Masters at the Kunstmuseum Basel, and Jochen Sander, who is Head of the Pre-1550 Netherlandish and Italian Paintings Department of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt – have been able to work out a new and convincing chronology for the four Adorations linked to Geertgen. This emerges from an analysis of the similarities and differences in the manner of depicting the subject, which can be clearly recognised in the exhibition through the close juxtaposition of almost all of these paintings. Thus while the Winterthur Adoration certainly has key similarities to the Prague Adoration (c. 1490), and in particular with the version in Cleveland (c. 1490), it nonetheless differs from these two masterpieces by Geertgen so much that it must be considered the work of another artist. This is also shown by comparing the Winterthur Adoration with the Madonna and Child from Milan (c. 1490), which is very typical of Geertgen’s style. Thematically, it is closer to the Winterthur panel than the masterpieces by Geertgen in Vienna are, which is why it too was selected as an exhibit for this exhibition.
     The Master of the Winterthur Adoration could well have been a pupil of Geertgen tot Sint Jans, but probably did not create the work until after Geertgen’s death. Such a dating of the painting to c. 1495 is also confirmed by the scientific determination of its age, the dendrochronological study of the wooden panel and its annual growth rings. At the same time it is evident how positively this new attribution should be assessed. On the one hand it brings out the distinguishing features of the Winterthur Early Netherlandish painting, and on the other it makes it possible to define Geertgen’s own creative work more clearly and to trace its influence on the next generation.

New perspectives
By concentrating on a small number of closely related works, it has been possible not only to open up new perspectives for the specialist, but also to let every viewer participate in the fascination of the art-historical search for clarity and authenticity. In addition, the life-like depiction of the biblical event, together with the delight in detail seen on all three Adorations that is typical of Netherlandish painting, invites visitors to immerse themselves in the paintings and to imaginatively enter the scenes depicted. Last but not least, the dialogue between the various Adorations, together with the colourful, glowing splendour of the robes and of the golden gifts brought by the Three Kings, impart a particularly charming Advent and Christmas atmosphere, which is emphasised by a corresponding accompanying programme of events at ‘Am Römerholz’.

Catalogue
The new results are discussed in depth in the lavishly illustrated catalogue, which is published in German and English by Hirmer Verlag, Munich.

For further information, please contact:
Dr Mariantonia Reinhard-Felice,
Director
T +41 (0)52 269 27 41
F +41 (0)52 269 27 44
sor@bak.admin.ch

Oskar Reinhart Collection “Am Römerholz”
Haldenstrasse 95, CH-8400 Winterthur

Geertgen tot Sint Jans (c. 1465–c. 1490/95) Triptych, c. 1490 Oak panels Middle panel: The Adoration of the Kings, 111.2 x 69.5 cm; left wing: St Bavo with Donor, 71 x 38.7 cm; right wing: St Hadrian with Donor, 70.8 x 38.8 cm National Gallery in Prague, on loan from the Art Collections of Prague Castle (photos Jan Gloc, © Picture Library of Prague Castle)

Geertgen tot Sint Jans The Adoration of the Kings, c. 1490 Oak panel, 29.3 x 18.9 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art
Geertgen tot Sint Jans The Madonna and Child, c. 1490 Oak panel, 11.8 x 8.7 cm Pinacoteca, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (photo © Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana)	Follower of Geertgen tot Sint Jans The Adoration of the Kings, c. 1495, after the restoration from 2006 to 2007 Oak panel, 134.5 x 100.9 cm Oskar Reinhart Collection ‘Am Römerholz’, Winterthur (photo Bruno Hartinger, © Federal Office of Culture, Berne)

© 2009 Federal Office of Culture, Berne, and the translators/ Imprint