Le Dîner

inscr. b. l.: Claude Monet

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Wildenstein Monet II.62.129

2021

Hugo Nathan (1861–1922), a banker from Frankfurt, was known for his position as director of Deutsche Bank and his role as an art collector who organized salons for art enthusiasts. Claude Monet’s The Dinner joined his art collection in 1912. Following his death, his wife Martha (1874–1958) inherited the collection. She came from the Jewish banking family of Dreyfus-Jeidels in Frankfurt, whose company the Nazis compulsorily liquidated in 1938. Martha Nathan fled in 1937 to Paris, where she obtained French citizenship. In 1938, she was forced to sell her villa in Frankfurt, but received only half its market value from the Nazi authorities. She was compelled to give six paintings to the Städelsches Kunstinstitut and pay the ‘Reich flight tax’. She settled in Geneva in 1939, where she lived until her death. After the war was over, she successfully claimed compensation for the assets stolen from her in Germany and France. She had already deposited some of the works with the Kunsthalle Basel in 1930. Of these, The Dinner was shown in 1944 at Galerie Aktuaryus in Zurich, where Emil Bührle bought it. Restitution claims by the heirs of Martha Nathan in respect of works that were also deposited in Switzerland and later entered the collections of two museums in the US were dismissed by the courts in 2006 and 2007. The fact that they were exported prior to 1933 and were sold outside the area of Nazi rule was a crucial factor in the judgment. The extent to which the sale in Switzerland constitutes a confiscation as a result of Nazi persecution will be assessed as part of the Kunsthaus Zürich’s new provenance research strategy, which includes the Emil Bührle Collection. 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. 119, S. 262 (ill.). - Daniel Wildenstein: Monet. Catalogue raisonné. Werkverzeichnis, Bd. 2: Volume II. Nos. 1-968, Köln: Taschen, 1996., No. 129, S. 62 (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. 179, S. 112 f. (ill.). - Monica Seidler-Hux: Martha Haffter. Eine Schweizer Künstlerin zwischen Peripherie und Paris, Salenstein: Benteli, 2023, No. 263, S. 221.