Ferenc Hatvany

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ferenc Hatvany
Born(1881-10-29)29 October 1881
Budapest, Austria-Hungary
Died7 February 1958(1958-02-07) (aged 76)
Lausanne, Switzerland
NationalityHungarian
Spouse(s)Lucia Királdi-Lukács
Parent(s)Sándor Hatvany-Deutsch and Emma Hatvany-Deutsch

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  [hu], 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.

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] John Constable's Beaching A Boat, Brighton was identified in the collection of The Tate in 2014.[6]

Hatvany died in Lausanne in 1958.

References[]

  1. ^ Inventory of art works which Hatvany placed in the strongrooms of major Budapest banks in 1942 Archived 2011-05-25 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Hutt, Sherry; Tarler, David (15 October 2008). YEARBOOK OF CULTURAL PROPERTY LAW 2008. Left Coast Press. ISBN 978-1-59874-080-6.
  3. ^ Akinsha, Konstantin (1 February 2008). "The Mysterious Journey of an Erotic Masterpiece". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  4. ^ ARTNews; The Mysterious Journey of an Erotic Masterpiece
  5. ^ Lillteicher, Jürgen. L'Allemagne de l'Ouest et la restitution des biens juifs en Europe. p. 139.
  6. ^ "Tate to return Constable painting looted by Nazis" The Telegraph; 28 March 2014

Further reading[]

  • 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[]

Retrieved from ""