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Double Portrait
Max Beckmann (German, 1884–1950)
1946
Medium/Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
130.81 x 75.56 cm (51 1/2 x 29 3/4 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Dr. Hanns Swarzenski
Accession Number1989.348
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
Reality and illusion emerge in Beckmann’s portrait of his friends Hanns Swarzenski and Curt Valentin. Their meeting was fictional; these men did not pose together, though each had separately visited the artist in Amsterdam that year. Swarzenski was a German scholar of medieval art who had immigrated to the United States in 1938; a champion of Beckmann’s work, he served as an MFA curator from 1948 to 1972. Valentin, a German Jewish dealer in modern art who represented Beckmann, holds a candle, symbol of hope and testament to a friendship that survived the dangerous years of the Nai regime. After immigrating to the U.S. in 1937, Valentin opened a gallery in New York where he sold modern art, including works the National Socialists had removed from German state museums as “degenerate,” mostly abstract, avant-garde art like the work of Beckmann.
Signed
At lower right: FüR KURT VALENTIN by BECKMANN A 46
Provenance1946, gift of the artist to Curt Valentin (b. 1902 - d. 1954), New York; 1954, from Valentin to Hanns Swarzenski (b. 1903 - d. 1985), Cambridge, MA; 1989, gift of Hanns Swarzenski, through his estate, to the MFA [see note 1]. (Accession Date: November 29, 1989)
NOTES:
[1] In 1946, Max Beckmann painted this double portrait of his friends Curt Valentin, an art dealer who directed the Buchholz Gallery in New York, and Hanns Swarzenski, an art historian who became a curator at the MFA. Upon Valentin's death in 1954 it passed to Dr. Swarzenski. For more on the execution of the work, see Erhard Göpel and Barbara Göpel, eds., "Max Beckmann: Katalog der Gemälde" (Bern, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 438-39, cat. no. 731.
NOTES:
[1] In 1946, Max Beckmann painted this double portrait of his friends Curt Valentin, an art dealer who directed the Buchholz Gallery in New York, and Hanns Swarzenski, an art historian who became a curator at the MFA. Upon Valentin's death in 1954 it passed to Dr. Swarzenski. For more on the execution of the work, see Erhard Göpel and Barbara Göpel, eds., "Max Beckmann: Katalog der Gemälde" (Bern, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 438-39, cat. no. 731.
Copyright