That networking and close professional contacts among provenance researchers can foster success is demonstrated by the reappearance of a bronze bust by the sculptor Heinrich Jobst. In 1907 Jobst was invited by Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig to join the Mathildenhöhe artists’ colony, where he remained until 1914. His works located in Darmstadt include the lions in front of the Hessisches Landesmuseum (ca. 1914), the Liebig Memorial, and the Guardsman Memorial by the Schlossgraben (1928). The bust in question portrays the ceramicist Jakob Julius Scharvogel (1854-1938).
Scharvogel had already exhibited his work on the Mathildenhöhe in 1901 and 1904. One of his specialities was monumental architectural ceramics. Starting in 1904, Scharvogel fostered the creation of the Grand Ducal Ceramics Manufactory, that commenced production in 1906, though it closed down in 1913 because it was proving unprofitable. Nevertheless, Scharvogel decisively left his mark on Darmstadt’s urban landscape in the years he was active there. Structural components from the Ceramics Manufactory may to this day be found In the Jugendstil public baths, the main train station, and the Christoph-Lichtenberg-Haus (the former Haus Hagenburg, renovated in 1909-11). Today the Manufactory’s most well-known creations are the architectural sculptures of Bad Nauheim’s spa facilities.
Thus it comes as no surprise to learn that in 1910, at the Darmstadt exhibition of the German Artists’ Association, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig acquired Jobst’s bust of Scharvogel for the Großherzogliches Museum (today Hessisches Landesmuseum). In 1936/37 the bust entered the newly founded Städtische Kunstsammlungen Darmstadt on the Mathildenhöhe as an item on loan; after 1945 it was mistakenly listed by the Landesmuseum as destroyed in the war. All records relating to the loan transaction were lost when the museum archive burnt down in 1944.
