Le Jardin de Monet à Giverny

inscr. b. r.: Claude Monet 95

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Wildenstein Monet III.588.1420

2021

Franz Ullstein (1868–1945) was one of the five sons of Leopold Ullstein, the founder of the Ullstein publishing house, and head of the newspapers’ editorial staff. The Berlin-based newspaper empire spent many years attempting to combat National Socialism through its publications. In 1934, the publishing house owned by the Ullsteins, who were Jews, was compulsorily sold due to antisemitic ideology. Franz and Rudolf were forced to flee before the war, abandoning much of their wealth in the process. The family found itself in financial distress, and did not obtain partial restitution of the publishing house and their properties until 1952. Franz Ullstein had owned Gustave Courbet’s The Sculptor Louis-Joseph Lebœuf and Monet’s Garden at Giverny by Claude Monet since 1930. In 1935, he sent the portrait of Lebœuf to an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich, where it initially remained. It was transferred to his son Kurt (1907–2003) in 1936 and, in 1939, passed to the latter’s sister Lisbeth Malek-Ullstein (1905–2001), who was already in neutral Portugal and remained there until 1941. After that, she fled to the US, where she stayed until her death. In 1941, the painting was sent to Geneva, at which point all trace of it is lost. It has not yet been possible to ascertain how much it was sold for, or whether the Ullsteins received the proceeds. It turned up in 1942 at the St. Gallen gallery of Fritz Nathan, who sold it to Emil Bührle for 26,000 francs. Franz Ullstein tried unsuccessfully to sell Monet’s Garden at Giverny in 1936 and 1941. Finally, in March 1941, the gallerist Tony Aktuaryus in Zurich sold it to Bührle for 16,800 francs. Here again, it has not been established whether Ullstein received the proceeds of the sale. The Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection announced on the 14th of June 2024 that it will seek fair and just solutions with the heirs' representatives for these works. State of research 31.12.2021 Do you have questions, criticism, suggestions, and further information? Please send us a message to provenienzforschung(at)kunsthaus.ch.

- Die Sammlung Emil Bührle. Geschichte, Gesamtkatalog und 70 Meisterwerke, hrsg. vom Schweizerischen Institut für Kunstwissenschaft (SIK-ISEA), München: Hirmer, 2021, No. 54, S. 258 (ill.). - Daniel Wildenstein: Monet. Catalogue raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, Bd. 3: Volume III. Nos. 969-1595, Köln: Taschen, 1996., No. 1420, S. 588 (ill.). - Sammlung Emil G. Bührle. Festschrift zu Ehren von Emil G. Bührle zur Eröffnung des Kunsthaus-Neubaus und Katalog der Sammlung Emil G. Bührle, hrsg. von Kunsthaus Zürich, Sammlungskatalog Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, 1958, No. 185, S. 114.