Le Vieux Clocher

inscr. b. r.: Vincent

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Hulsker 490; de la Faille 88

2021

The art dealer Walter Feilchenfeldt (1894–1953) had been working at the art salon of Paul Cassirer in Berlin since 1919. Following the latter’s death in 1926, he took over as head of the gallery, which dealt in Post-Impressionist and European modernist artists. Owing to the Nazi party’s rise to power and the increasing threat to Jews, he fled in November 1933 to Amsterdam, where he established the local branch of the Paul Cassirer art salon. In 1936, he married Marianne Breslauer (1909–2001). The couple were in Switzerland when the Second World War began in September 1939, and were unable to return to the Netherlands. Feilchenfeldt was issued with a residence permit for Switzerland, but not a work permit. He was only able to sell pictures in Switzerland with the assistance of third parties, such as Fritz Nathan in St. Gallen. Vincent van Gogh’s The Old Tower had been in the possession of the Paul Cassirer gallery since 1930. Feilchenfeldt had sent it to Switzerland for safekeeping before the Second World War. Fritz Nathan purchased it for 12,000 francs in April 1942, then sold it to Emil Bührle three years later for 20,000 francs. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s portrait Georges-Henri Manuel had likewise been held by Cassirer’s gallery since 1930. Shortly after the Nazi takeover, Feilchenfeldt brought it to Switzerland, where it was displayed at the Kunsthaus Zürich from May to August 1933. It was also shown in places not under Nazi control up to 1940, including exhibitions in Rotterdam, Bern, New York, London, Amsterdam and St. Gallen. When Feilchenfeldt ran short of money in 1942, Nathan sold it on his behalf. Feilchenfeldt received 42,000 of the 45,000 francs that Bührle paid for the work. 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. 135, S. 262 (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. 233, S. 134. - Vincent van Gogh: Pisʹma : 1886-1890 (Dnevnik hudožnika), Moskau: Illuminator, 2023, S. 473 [ill.].