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Artist or Maker: KARL BLECHEN 1798 - 1840

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Description: SCHLAFENDER FAUN (SLEEPING FAUN)


Estimated Price: $_________

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Medium: oil on panel

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Dimensions: 30 by 25.5cm., 11 3/4 by 10in.

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Provenance: Julius and Clara Freund, Berlin and Winterthur
The Estate of Julius Freund (by descent from the above; forced sale: Galerie Theodor Fischer, Lucerne, Sammlung Julius Freund, 21 March 1942, lot 36)
Deutsche Reich (acquired at the above sale)
Bundesrepublik Deutschland (on loan to the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne)
Restituted to the heirs of Julius Freund in 2009

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Exhibited: Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum (permanent collection until 2009)

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Published: Paul Ortwin Rave, 'Karl Blechen', Denkmäler deutscher Kunst, Berlin, 1940, p. 214, no. 577, catalogued
Peter-Klaus Schuster, Carl Blechen. Zwischen Romantik und Realismus, Berlin, 1990, p. 107

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Notes:

The present work is one of three versions Blechen painted of the Sleeping Faun. Of the other two, one is in the Nationalgalerie, Berlin (Rave no. 576) and the other was last recorded in the Milster Collection, Berlin.

An expression of Blechen's yearning for Italy, according to Helmut Börsch-Supan, the picture probably pre-dates Blechen's arrival there in 1828. The Pan figure can be seen as self-referential, a projection of himself wallowing in the warm evening light of the Amalfi coast with the unmistakable outline of Capri rising from the sea on the horizon.

The textile magnate Julius Freund (1870-1941) and his wife Clara fled Berlin for Winterthur in 1933, taking with them their important collection of Romantic art including the present work and Mühle im Tal (lot 5). They had to leave both works behind them in Switzerland, however, when they left for England in 1939 where they settled in Wigton, Cumbria, on the edge of the Lake District.

After Julius Freund's death in 1941, his daughter (the celebrated photographer Gisela Freund) inherited the collection. Gisela, who had already left Germany for Paris in 1933, fled to Argentina in 1942 and the Freund collection was sold by Theodor Fischer in Lucerne that same year.