Nineteenth-century French painting is one of the strength of the collection of the Kunsthalle Bremen. Works by Eugène Delacroix, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh were acquired in the early twentieth century under the museum’s first director, Gustav Pauli. The focus on French Romanticism, the Barbizon School and Impressionism were subsequently extended. A new area of collecting featured major works by the avant-garde group Les Nabis, including paintings by Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Félix Vallotton, Edouard Vuillard and, recently, Paul Sérusier.
As part of a project funded by the Getty Foundation, a catalogue of this important aspect of the collection by Dorothee Hansen and Henrike Holsing was published in August 2011. The objective was to review the collection in the light of the latest academic findings, updating the last comprehensive publication on nineteenth-century painting in the Kunsthalle Bremen of 1973. The study took into account the latest specialist literature as well as recent provenance research, which had not featured prominently during the 1970s. Restorers from the Kunsthalle Bremen and students of restoration from the Cologne University of Applied Sciences also examined the works in terms of their technique and present condition.
Around 170 paintings by French artists from Classicism to Cubism were examined, among them some forty works acquired over the past thirty-seven years. These include works by Eugène Carrière and the most recent addition to the collection, the painting Ecce Homo by Eugène Deacroix. The research revealed some surprises even among the apparently well-known paintings: the signature of Alfred Sisley on Tree-Lined Road near a Small Town turned out to be a forgery; beneath it stood the name of a little-known Impressionist of the second generation, Paul Vogler. Three paintings that had long been thought to be works by the Romantic Eugène Delacroix – including the large Lion Hunt – were re-categorised and attributed to his student Pierre Andrieu. With other paintings, new research led to revised titles. Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Mediterranean Landscape, for example, had always been entitled View of Morillon. It could now be established that the bay depicted is that of Toulon.
At the re-opening of the Kunsthalle Bremen in August 2011 the results of the two-year research project were presented to experts and the wider public in a comprehensive catalogue: Vom Klassizismus zum Kubismus. Bestandskatalog der französischen Malerei in der Kunsthalle Bremen [From Classicism to Cubism. Inventory Catalogue of French Painting in the Kunsthalle Bremen]. This book, which was supported by the Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius ZEIT Foundation, is intended both as a contribution to scholarly research and to increase the public’s awareness of the collection.