Victory of Beauty over Envy
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Luxury and Passion: Inventing French Porcelain, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, August 13 2022–August 12 2024, no cat.
Heinrich Rothberger (1868-1953), Vienna, by 1933 [1];
With A. S. Drey, New York, by October 15, 1933 [2];
Purchased from A. S. Drey by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1934.
NOTES:
[1] Heinrich Rothberger’s porcelain collection was confiscated by the Nazi-controlled Vienna city council in 1938 and dispersed. This object, however, had left Rothberger’s collection sometime before 1934 and was therefore not included in the group of objects confiscated in 1938. Rothberger often sold or exchanged objects with dealers and other collectors, but it is currently unclear how this piece left his collection. For more on Rothberger’s collecting activities and the confiscation and restitution of his collection, see especially Leonhard Weidinger, “Heinrich Rothberger – der Porzellansammler” in Christina Gschiel, Ulrike Nimeth and Weidinger, eds., schneidern und sammeln. Die Wiener Familie Rothberger, Wien-Köln-Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2010.
[2] A leather-bound carrying case for this object bears several labels related to its shipment from Europe to the United States. Its conveyor is identified as Dr. P. Drey (presumably Paul Drey, grandson of A. S. Drey, who would take over managing the family’s New York branch in 1936). Drey carried this object in its case onboard the steamer S/S Bremen, operated by the Norddeutscher Lloyd company. The ship departed Bremen, Germany on October 15, 1933 bound for New York. A number of the back of a photograph of the object in the NAMA registration file may be the Drey stock number: 59538.
Friedrich H. Hofmann, Frankenthaler Porzellan (Munich: F. Bruckmann): I, pl. 87, no. 399 (ill.).
Helen Comstock, “A Porcelain Group by Conrad Link, of Frankenthal,” Connoisseur 93 (May 1934):333-334, (repro.).
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2nd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 81, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 233, (repro.).
Friedrich H. Hofmann, Das Porzellan der Europäischen Manufakturen (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1980): 296 (repro., fig. 143).
Maria Christiane Werhahn, Der kurpfälzische Hofbildhauer Franz Conrad Linck (1730–1793), Modelleur der Porzellanmanufaktur Frankenthal, Bildhauer in Mannheim (Neuss, Germany: Neusser Druckerei und Verlag, 1999): 66-69 (ill., p. 68), 447.
Barbara Beaucamp-Markowsky, Frankenthaler Porzellan, 2 vols. (Munich: Hirmer, 2008): cat. 222, 405-408 (ill. p. 407).
Matthew Kangas, Jim Leedy: Artist Across Boundaries (Kansas City: Kansas City Art Institute, in association with University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2000), 75, (repro.).
