Christoph Heilmann Foundation
In 2013, the Christoph Heilmann Foundation and the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau concluded an agreement that laid the foundation for a long-term collaboration. Over a hundred works from the foundation's collection of early nineteenth-century landscape paintings have joined the museum's own holdings, a perfect complement that rounds out the Lenbachhaus's cherished collection.
Over the past years, an initial presentation in the galleries of the new Lenbachhaus offered a comprehensive survey of the collection, showcasing characteristic exemplars of the art of the Munich school and the Dresden romantics as well as the Berlin and Düsseldorf schools. The exhibition also highlighted an important subset of the foundation's holdings that is unrivaled among private collections in Germany: works of the Barbizon school of artists, who revolutionized landscape painting with the plein-air oil sketches they created in the Forest of Fontainebleau.
After a successful two-year tour of Germany, with stops at Museum Schloss Moyland near Kleve and at the Angermuseum in Erfurt, Christoph Heilmann's collection returned to the Lenbachhaus in Munich in March 2019 with the extensive exhibition "Nature as Art". In an unusual Munich "summit conference," the paintings of the Christoph Heilmann Foundation engaged in a constructive dialogue with early landscape photographs from the Münchner Stadtmuseum's photography collection. Two of the most innovative pictorial media of the nineteenth century—the freehand oil sketch and precise nature photography—threw one another’s distinctive qualities into relief and illustrated the evolution of the modern vision of the landscape.
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Der Große Baum (Studie), um 1865, Christoph Heilmann Stiftung, on permanent loan to Lenbachhaus Munich
Théodore Roussau, Wald bei Sonnenuntergang im Winter, nach 1846, Christoph Heilmann Stiftung, on permanent loan to Lenbachhaus Munich
Charles-François Daubigny, Mündung der Themse, um 1870, Christoph Heilmann Stiftung, on permanent loan to Lenbachhaus Munich
Jean-François Millet, Nacktes Bauernmädchen an der Böschung eines Baches sitzend, 1847/48, Christoph Heilmann Stiftung, on permanent loan to Lenbachhaus Munich
New Acquisitions
In keeping with its collection profile, the Christoph Heilmann Foundation has enlarged its holdings of early German, French, and Scandinavian Nineteenth-Century landscape paintings. Over the past two years, ten new works have been acquired for the collection.
These include "Palazzo Donna Anna" (1825) a work of the landscape and genre painter Franz Ludwig Catel (1778–1856) that combines an imposing depiction of the ruined building and a group of fishermen seeking shelter with a faithful rendering of the agitated sea. Three of the new acquisitions enhance the foundation's collection in the field of the Barbizon school. Among its leading members were Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) and his close friend Jean-François Millet (1814–1875). A major oil study by Rousseau from his 1830 sojourn in Auvergne offers evidence of his keen eye for the particular qualities of daylight conditions and vegetation and his aspiration to verisimilitude. The acquisition of a drawing by his comrade Millet of a peasant girl resting naked and lost in thought on a riverbank served as a preparatory sketch for a painting already in the foundation’s possession, enables an illustration of Millet’s creative process.
The third newly acquired French landscape painting is a small picture of undergrowth in the old forest of Villers-Cotterêts by Paul Huet (1803–1869). In recent years, the foundation has sought to enlarge the collection's foci by adding works from the Scandinavian countries. In this connection, it has acquired a "Südliche Landschaft bei Subjaco" (Southern Landscape near Subiaco, 1847) by Gustaf Wilhelm Palm (1810–1890), a Swedish landscape painter whose significance was not fully appreciated until recently. A study of a gnarly old oak by Anton Eduard Kieldrup (1826–1869) attests to the discovery by landscape painters of the north with its characteristic rough vegetation.
Franz Ludwig Catel, Palazzo Donna Anna, 1825, Christoph Heilmann Stiftung, on permanent loan to Lenbachhaus Munich
Théodore Rousseau, Landschaft in der Auvergne, 1830, Christoph Heilmann Stiftung, on permanent loan to Lenbachhaus Munich
Gustaf Wilhelm Palm, Landschaft bei Subjaco, 1847, Christoph Heilmann Stiftung, on permanent loan to Lenbachhaus Munich
Anton Eduard Kieldrup, Studie eines alten Eichbaumes, n. d., Christoph Heilmann Stiftung, on permanent loan to Lenbachhaus Munich
Jean-François Millet, Junge Frau, sich die langen Haare nach dem Bade hochsteckend, 1845/46, on permanent loan to Lenbachhaus Munich
Research
Scholarly catalogue of the holdings
The foundation continually works to subject its growing collection to scholarly analysis. Supplements to the existing catalogue of the holdings, titled "Frühe Landschaftsmalerei des 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland und Frankreich" (ed. Christoph von Heilmann, Heidelberg: Wunderhorn 2013/2015), that document the newly acquired works are published in intervals of two to three years.
Symposia / Lectures
Lecture series, symposia, and research projects are organized to consider the foundation's collection in broader perspectives and connect the analysis of the works to larger issues in the scholarship on early landscape painting.
For example, the symposium "Mobilität und Naturerfahrung im 19. Jahrhundert" examined the question to which extent landscape artists' travels to destinations near and distant, which came to be seen as obligatory in the nineteenth century, had a crucial influence on their work. To read the article on ArtHist please click here.
The accompanying book "Landschaftsmalerei, eine Reisekunst?—Mobilität und Naturerfahrung im 19. Jahrhundert" presents contributions by renowned international experts that offer an extensive discussion of the particular situation in which traveling landscape painters worked.
In the context of new research perspectives on landscape paining around 1800, two publications have been published with the support of the Christoph Heilmann Foundation:
Barbara Eschenburg: Naturbilder – Weltbilder. Landschaftsmalerei und Naturphilosophie von Jan van Eyck bis Paul Klee, Gebr. Mann Verlag Berlin 2019.
Valenciennes‘ Ratgeber für den reisenden Landschaftsmaler. Zirkulierendes Künstlerwissen um 1800, herausgegeben und kommentiert von Claudia Denk mit einem Vorwort von Christoph Heilmann und Bernhard Maaz, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin, München 2019.
