The Fencing Lesson
Hedwig Ullmann (1872-1945), Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and Melbourne, Australia, no. 291, by 1925-1945 [1];
Ullmann estate, 1945-1947;
Purchased from the Ullmann estate, through the dealer Arthur Kauffmann, London, by Rosenberg & Stiebel, Inc., New York, stock no. 595, March 24, 1947-January 5, 1948, as The Fencing Master [2];
Purchased from Rosenberg & Stiebel by Ilse Bischoff (1901-1990), New York and Hartland, VT, January 5, 1948-1978 [3];
Her sale, Important Continental Porcelain…the Collection of Miss Ilse Bischoff, Sotheby's New York, February 24, 1978, lot 53;
European Faience and Porcelain, Christie's (International) S.A., Geneva, May 11, 1987, lot 83;
With Kate Foster, Ltd., Rye, East Sussex and London, by April 1989-1990;
Purchased from Kate Foster, Ltd., by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1990.
NOTES:
[1] Albert (1862-1912) and Hedwig Ullmann assembled an important collection of German porcelain, metalwork, sculpture and paintings. Following Albert’s death in 1912, Hedwig continued collecting and lending objects to exhibitions, including the loan of this object to an exhibition of Höchst porcelain in 1925. In 1938, with World War II on the horizon, Arthur Kauffmann, owner of the Frankfurt branch of the Hugo Helbing auction house, helped Ullmann send much of her porcelain collection to London before she emigrated to Australia and Kauffmann himself emigrated to London. Kauffmann served as caretaker for the Ullmann collection until the end of the war. Following Ullmann’s death in May 1945, Kauffmann began selling objects from the collection in consultation with Ullmann’s two sons. See correspondence between Arthur Kauffmann and Saemy Rosenberg, 1945-1946, Frick Art Reference Library, New York, MS.065 Rosenberg & Stiebel Archive, Subject Files – Kauffmann, Arthur, copies in Nelson-Atkins curatorial file. For more on the Ullmann collection, see Maike Brüggen, Kunst in der Krise. Die Sammlung Hedwig und Albert Ullmann und der Frankfurter Kunstmarkt im Spiegel des Ersten Weltkriegs (PhD diss., Technische Universität Berlin, 2022).
[2] Frick Art Reference Library, New York, MS.065 Rosenberg & Stiebel Archive, Subject Files – Kauffmann, Arthur, copies in Nelson-Atkins curatorial file.
[3] Frick Art Reference Library, New York, MS.065 Rosenberg & Stiebel Archive, Sales and Inventory Records, Client Purchases, Miss Ilse M. Bischoff.
Kurt Röder and Michel Oppenheim, Das Höchster Porzellan auf der Jahrtausend-Ausstellung in Mainz, 1925, exh. cat. (Mainz, Germany: In Kommission bei L. Wilckens, 1930 ), 37, plate 26, (repro.).
Important Continental Porcelain…The Collection of Miss Ilse Bischoff (New York: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1978), (repro.).
European Faience and Porcelain (Geneva: Christie’s International S.A., 1987), 43, (repro.).
Christina Nelson, “Museum Acquires Höchst Figure Group,” Calendar of Events, May 1991, 2, (repro.).
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 189, (repro.).
