Richard Neumann (art collector)

Richard Neumann (born December 17, 1879, in Vienna, died 1961 in New York) was an Austrian industrialist and art collector persecuted by Nazis because he was Jewish.

Early life

Richard Neumann was born into a Jewish family who had made their fortune with textiles. His parents were David and Bertha Neumann, née Stein;[1] his grandfather Max Bernhard Neumann founded the M. B. Neumann company in Königinhof and was one of the leading textile producers in the Danube Monarchy.[2]

Richard Neumann studied in Heidelberg and received his doctorate there. phil. In 1901 he joined the family business. In 1923 he became president of the M. B. Neumanns Sons Union and vice-president of the Neumanns Sons Austrian weaving and printing company A.G. (Neumanns Söhne Österreichische Weberei und Druckerei A.G). He also became director of the Guntramsdorfer Stoffedruckfabrik and was on the board of several other textile companies.[3]

Art Collection

In 1921, Neumann's art collection was honored with landmark status in Austria; 28 of the over 200 works were acknowledged as particularly important.[4] Neumann and his wife Alice agreed in a notarial act that the collection could be viewed twelve days of the year - either as part of state organized exhibitions, or by legitimate visitors monument office. In return, the couple received deductions on his property tax.

Nazi persecution

After the Anschluss with Nazi Germany in 1938, the Neumanns were persecuted because of their Jewish origins.[5] Neumann's villa at 30 Hasenauerstraße in Vienna was "Aryanized", i.e. transferred to a non-Jewish person. It became the property of Daisy Princess Fürstenberg. Neumann's art collection was inventoried by the Nazis and seized through forced sales and refused export licenses.[6] He was forced to pay special taxes imposed on Jews.[7]

Neumann fled to Paris and then to Cuba with his wife Alice.

Neumann found work in a textile factory in Cuba, gave evening lectures on art history and became an honorary professor at the University of Havana. He was one of the initiators of the founding of the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Havana. He later moved to the United States.[8]

Restitution of artworks from the Neumann Collection

From 1949 at the latest, Neumann tried, through his lawyer Felix Friedländer, to recover some of the artworks. In 1952 he traveled to Vienna to discuss the issue with the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna which held pieces from his collection.[9]

In 2007 the descendants of Neumann received back two paintings by "Kremser Schmidt" Martin Johann Schmidt, which had come into the possession of the city of Krems an der Donau illegally through the "Aryanization". The family's lawyer and provenance researcher Sophie Lillie had been trying to get it returned since 2002. In 2012 at least one of the two paintings, St. Florian saves the burning Stockern Castle, was offered at auction but failed to meet the reserve. The two very large altarpieces were ultimately sold to a museum in Lower Austria.[10]

In 2010, Neumann's heirs received back Two altar wings with pictures of the donors by Martin van Heemskerck, a sacrificial scene, Hannibal's oath by Giovanni Battista Pittoni, the painting Laundresses by Alessandro Magnasco and two statuettes by Alessandro Algardi depicting Pope Innocent X and St. Pius.[11]

When the Allies seized objects looted by Nazis from the former Neumann Collection after the end of the Second World War, they returned them not to the Neumann family but to France. The looted art ended up in various French museums. The "Musées Nationaux Récupération" (MNR) placed three paintings - The Miracle of Saint Eligius by Gaetano Gandolfi, Abraham and the three angels by Sebastiano Ricci and a portrait of Saint Francis of Paola standing in a niche by Salvador Francesco Fontebasso - in the Louvre and three other items were given to museums in Agen, Saint-Étienne and Tours. These six pieces from the Neumann collection were identified by the art historian and provenance researcher Sophie Lillie after the MNR holdings were published online. The restitution of these six works of art was the most extensive restitution to date since the founding of the Commission pour l'indemnisation des victimes de spoliations (CIVS).[12][13][14][15]

In 2021, the Worcester Art Museum organized an exhibition from April 10, 2021, to January 16, 2022, about the looting of the Neumann collection entitled What the Nazis Stole from Richard Neumann (and the search to get it back). "The exhibition includes 12 Old Master paintings and two sculptures and will trace his and his family's efforts to reclaim these works over the last 70 years."[16]

See also

References
  1. "David Neumann (1844-1910) - Find A Grave Memorial". www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
  2. "Lost Art Internet Database - Jüdische Sammler und Kunsthändler (Opfer nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung und Enteignung) - Neumann, Richard". www.lostart.de. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
  3. Lilli, Sophie (2003). Was einmal war Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens. Czernin. p. 791. ISBN 978-3-7076-0049-0. OCLC 231981591.
  4. "What the Nazis Stole from Richard Neumann (and the search to get it back) | Worcester Art Museum". www.worcesterart.org. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
  5. "Lost Art Internet Database - Jüdische Sammler und Kunsthändler (Opfer nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung und Enteignung) - Neumann, Richard". www.lostart.de. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
  6. "What the Nazis Stole from Richard Neumann (and the search to get it back) | Worcester Art Museum". www.worcesterart.org. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
  7. Petsch, 21 02 2010 um 18:45 von Barbara (2010-02-21). "Restitution: "Ein exemplarischer Fall!"". Die Presse (in German). Retrieved 2021-04-06.
  8. Lillie, Sophie 1970- (2003). Was einmal war Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens. Czernin. ISBN 978-3-7076-0049-0. OCLC 231981591.
  9. "Austria Urges Return of Altar Panels to Jewish Heir". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-06. Two altar panels by the 16th-century Dutch artist, Maerten van Heemskerck. An Austrian government council today recommended that the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna should restitute them to the heir of their prewar owner, a Jewish textiles industrialist who was persecuted by the Nazis. The council today recommended that the items be restituted from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna to Thomas Selldorff, 82, the Boston-based grandson of Richard Neumann, a textiles industrialist who was forced to flee Austria in 1938. Selldorff said he wants to keep the art in the family.
  10. "Martin Johann Schmidt, called Kremser-Schmidt". Sothebys. Sotheby's. By 1921, the Neumann collection comprised some two hundred objects and was officially recognized as a landmark of Vienna. Neumann regularly loaned his works to Viennese exhibitions. The last such venues were Bozzetti und Modelletti der Spätrenaissance und des Barock at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, in late 1936, and Italienische Barockmalerei at Galerie Sanct Lucas in 1937—only months before Hitler's invasion of Austria. Neumann, who was Jewish, was forced to leave behind his collection when he fled the country in March 1938. That October, the Nazis impounded many of Neumann's most prized objects and placed them on the so-called "Reich List," a central registry of Austrian cultural treasures. Among the works seized were these two paintings by the Baroque artist Johann Martin Schmidt (or "Kremser Schmidt") which the Nazis gave to the City of Krems, the artist's birthplace.Richard Neumann and his wife Alice escaped Europe to Havana, Cuba. There, Neumann worked as a foreman in a textile factory and taught evening classes on art history for the refugee community. He was later named honorary professor of the University of Havana and laid the foundation for Havana's Palacia de Bellas Artes. He died in 1961 in New York. Richard Neumann's post-war attempts to recover his Viennese art collection failed. His grandson—himself a Nazi refugee—resumed the quest to recover his family's lost art in 2001, encouraged by Austria's new position on art restitution. These Kremser Schmidt oils were the first Neumann works to be restituted in 2007.
  11. "What the Nazis Stole from Richard Neumann (and the search to get it back)". www.arthistorynews.com. Art History News. the show follows the fate of the art collection of Dr Richard Neumann (1879-1959), whose paintings were confiscated by the Nazis when he fled Austria in 1938. Reuniting Neumann's 200 works of art, including old master paintings and sculpture, became the focus of the last years of his life. 16 works of art have been returned thus far, and 14 of these will be in the exhibition. The show will include works by Maerten van Heemskerck, the sculptor Alessandro Algardi and Guiseppe Sanmartino. Also included are works by Italian artists Alessandro Magnasco, Giovanni Battista Pittoni the Younger, and Alessandro Longhi.
  12. "Paris restituiert sechs Werke der Sammlung Neumann". DER STANDARD (in Austrian German). Retrieved 2021-04-06.
  13. "Sept chefs-d'œuvre spoliés vont être restitués". LEFIGARO (in French). 18 March 2013. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
  14. "Œuvres d'art en mal d'histoire". France Culture (in French). 2013-03-18. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
  15. Noce, Vincent. "Sept tableaux restitués à des familles juives". Libération (in French). Retrieved 2021-04-06.
  16. "OLD MASTER PAINTINGS—AND ISSUES OF ART RESTITUTION IS FOCUS IN UPCOMING EXHIBITION AT WORCESTER ART MUSEUM What the Nazis Stole from Richard Neumann (and the search to get it back) Presents 14 Works on Long term Loan from the Family of Austrian Collector Dr. Richard Neumann" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-05-13.
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