Having been restituted in December 2016 to the heirs of Alfred Salomon, this Bacchanale was a highlight of Dickinson’s stand at TEFAF Maastricht 2017.
Corinth in Munich and Berlin
Painter, printmaker and founding member of the Berlin Secession group, Corinth achieved in his mature work a fusion of Impressionism and Expressionism. He painted bucolic landscapes, female nudes, still lifes and portraits, but it was in mythological scenes such as this one that his synthesis of the classical and the fin-de-siècle was most evident. After the hedonistic and subtly subversive Bacchanale was rejected by the Munich Academy, Corinth moved to more liberal Berlin in 1900, where the painting received its first public showing in 1913; it was not exhibited in Munich until 1975.
The Salomon Family
Alfred Salomon, his wife Martha and their two children were wealthy Jews living in Berlin, in an elegant apartment filled with antique furniture and a growing art collection. Salomon purchased Corinth’s Bacchanale for 23,000 Reichsmark from a Munich gallery in the 1920s – a daring acquisition, even then. After the Nazis rose to power, Salomon’s assets were seized for forced sale. Only Martha survived the War, and the painting reappeared in a Cologne gallery, before being acquired by the Städtisches Museum in Gelsenkirchen in 1957. It was restituted at the end of 2016 after a lengthy period of negotiation.
The Landesmuseum Hannover
The Landesmuseum State Gallery (Landesgalerie) features artworks from the 11th through the 20th centuries, including highlights by Rembrandt, Rubens and Dürer. The museum is also exceptionally strong in German and French Impressionist paintings, and includes several other examples by Corinth, albeit none on this scale.
