The HLMD currently holds 32 drawings by the Romantic artist Moritz von Schwind (1804-1871) in its graphic art collection. Of these, 30 belong to the “old inventory”: because the pre-1908 inventory book was lost during the war, only some of these can now be identified with any certainty. Two more works entered the collection in 1997 and 2000. It was only the discovery of an old exhibition catalogue from the Berlin Nationalgalerie, dated 1904, that unexpectedly allowed progress to be made in researching the provenance of these works. For the Grand Ducal Museum in Darmstadt of those years loaned a total of 22 drawings to the Berlin exhibition. The catalogue not only supplies the works’ titles and dimensions but also provides information on technique. The latter has proved particularly helpful, for today the scenes depicted in the drawings are sometimes described in different terms than they were back then. Unfortunately, the catalogue contains no illustrations; these might have made a determination significantly easier. Surprisingly, among the 22 exhibited works are two no longer extant large-format watercolours, of which not even the original titles are known: they are of a “saint with palm branch” and a “Christ with saint”. These are sketches for church windows in Landshut, acquired by a “J. Naue in Munich”, probably identifiable as Julius Naue (1833-1907), one of Schwind’s pupils. Of three watercolours by Schwind, only “The Apostles Thomas and James” has survived. Whether the missing works were exchanged for others between 1904 and 1950 or were sold or stolen—or whether they were destroyed in 1944— can no longer be determined. But where and from whom did the Grand Ducal Museum acquire its other drawings by Schwind? A possible clue is provided by a further source of loans from Darmstadt in the 1904 exhibition: the von Neufville family, who lent over 80 drawings to the Berlin exhibition. A granddaughter of Schwind’s married into the von Neufvilles, a long-established Frankfurt family. In 1937 the Landesmuseum acquired the painting “Die Morgenstunde” [The Morning Hour] from her, originally a wedding present from Schwind to his daughter Marie.
Udo Felbinger
