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In 2017, the Van Gogh Museum completed research into the important role the Thannhauser Galleries (Germany) played in the promotion and distribution of Vincent van Gogh’s work.
The Thannhauser Galleries
Thannhauser was one of the most important art galleries in Germany in the decades before the Second World War and was active internationally. Beginning in 1909, Heinrich Thannhauser – followed by his son Justin and his nephew Siegfried Rosengart – built up an impressive network of art dealers and collectors for the sale of modern art. The Thannhausers played a key role in the distribution and promotion of Vincent van Gogh’s work.
Avant-garde art
The gallery began at an early stage to sell works by the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Fauvists and contemporary German Expressionists. They included painters like Degas, Manet and Monet, Gauguin and Van Gogh, Matisse and the artists of Der Blaue Reiter. The gallery also staged the first major Picasso retrospective in 1913. In the 1930s, the Nazi regime made it increasingly difficult for the Thannhausers to exhibit and sell ‘degenerate art’. Heinrich died in 1935 and five years later his son Justin emigrated to New York, where he continued to work as an art dealer until the early 1960s.
Publication 'The Thannhauser Gallery, Marketing Van Gogh'
This scholarly publication is based on many years of research, focuses on the important role played by the Thannhauser Gallery in Germany and later by Justin Thannhauser in New York in the promotion and distribution of Vincent van Gogh’s work. It also explores how the gallery operated within an increasingly international art world. The result is a reassessment of the Thannhausers’ reputation as committed promoters of modern and contemporary art. The Thannhauser Gallery: Marketing van Gogh is published in September 2017.