Baron Ferenc Hatvany (29 October 1881 – 7 February 1958) was a Hungarian painter and art collector. A son of Sándor Hatvany-Deutsch and a member of the Hatvany-Deutsch family, he graduated in the Académie Julian in Paris. His collection[1] included paintings by Tintoretto, Cézanne, Renoir, Ingres and Courbet, most notably L'Origine du monde and Femme nue couchée.
Ferenc Hatvany | |
|---|---|
| Born | 29 October 1881 |
| Died | 7 February 1958 (aged 76) Lausanne, Switzerland |
| Nationality | Hungarian |
| Spouse | Lucia Királdi-Lukács |
| Parent(s) | Sándor Hatvany-Deutsch and Emma Hatvany-Deutsch |
During the Second World War, his art collection was placed in a bank vault in Budapest to protect it from the pro-Nazi Hungarian government, and the Hatvany family, which was Jewish, fled the country just before the Nazi takeover of Hungary in March 1944.[2]
Mystery surrounds the fate of the paintings, which appear to have been looted by Germans and then by Soviets.[3] Towards the end of the Second World War his paintings were looted by Soviet troops but some were ransomed by Hatvany. In 1947 he emigrated to Paris.[4] In 1955 L'Origine du monde was sold at auction for 1.5 million francs (the buyer was psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan). The lawyer Hans Deutsch filed a claim on behalf of Ferenc Hatvany against the German government and obtained compensation for him.[5]
Paintings that were looted from Hatvany's collection are still hanging on museum walls in Budapest, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod.[specify] In 2005, the Hatvany heirs recovered Femme nue couchée (1862) after it resurfaced in 2000 in the hands of a Slovakian art dealer. In 2014 an agreement was reached with the Tate for John Constable's Beaching A Boat, Brighton [6] In 2021 Courbet's Baigneuses dans la forêt (1862) was restituted to the Hatvany heirs.[7] The Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art printed the image of one of the missing paintings on a playing card in an effort to relaunch the search.[8]
Hatvany died in Lausanne in 1958.
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Inventory of art works which Hatvany placed in the strongrooms of major Budapest banks in 1942 Archived 2011-05-25 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Hutt, Sherry; Tarler, David (15 October 2008). YEARBOOK OF CULTURAL PROPERTY LAW 2008. Left Coast Press. ISBN 978-1-59874-080-6.
- ^ Akinsha, Konstantin (1 February 2008). "The Mysterious Journey of an Erotic Masterpiece". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
- ^ ARTNews; The Mysterious Journey of an Erotic Masterpiece
- ^ Lillteicher, Jürgen. L'Allemagne de l'Ouest et la restitution des biens juifs en Europe. p. 139.
- ^ "Tate to return Constable painting looted by Nazis" The Telegraph; 28 March 2014
- ^ Villa, Angelica (3 May 2021). "Restituted Courbet from Prominent Hungarian Collection Heads to Auction". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 1 November 2023.
- ^ "Monuments Men and Women Foundation I WWII Most Wanted Art™ | Guercino". MonumentsMenWomenFnd. Retrieved 1 November 2023.
Further reading
edit- László Mravik. Hungary's Pillaged Art Heritage. Part Two: The Fate of the Hatvany Collection. Hungarian Quarterly vol. 39, no. 15, 1998. [1]. Accessed on February 7, 2007.
- László Mravik. "Princes, Counts, Idlers and Bourgeois:" A Hundred Years of Hungarian Collecting, 3rd part. In T. Kieselbach (ed.) Studies in Modern Hungarian Painting 1892–1919. [2]. Accessed on February 7, 2007.
External links
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