Baron Ferenc Hatvany (29 October 1881 – 7 February 1958) was a Hungarian painter and art collector. A son of Sándor Hatvany-Deutsch and a member of the , he graduated in the

Académie Julian The () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907). The school was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number and qual ...

in Paris. His collection included paintings by

Tintoretto Jacopo Robusti (late September or early October 1518Bernari and de Vecchi 1970, p. 83.31 May 1594), best known as Tintoretto ( ; , ), was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Venetian school. His contemporaries both admired and criticized th ...

, Cézanne, Renoir,

Ingres Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ( ; ; 29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassicism, Neoclassical Painting, painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic ...

and Courbet, most notably '' L'Origine du monde'' and '' Femme nue couchée''. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, his art collection was placed in a bank vault in Budapest to protect it from the pro-Nazi Hungarian government, and the Hatvany family, which was Jewish, fled the country just before the Nazi takeover of Hungary in March 1944. Mystery surrounds the fate of the paintings, which appear to have been looted by Germans and then by Soviets. Towards the end of the

his paintings were looted by Soviet troops but some were ransomed by Hatvany. In 1947 he emigrated to Paris. In 1955 ''L'Origine du monde'' was sold at auction for 1.5 million francs (the buyer was psychoanalyst

Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, ; ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Sigmund Freud, Freud", Lacan gave The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, year ...

). The lawyer Hans Deutsch filed a claim on behalf of Ferenc Hatvany against the German government and obtained compensation for him. Paintings that were looted from Hatvany's collection are still hanging on museum walls in Budapest, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod. In 2005, the Hatvany heirs recovered ''Femme nue couchée'' (1862) after it resurfaced in 2000 in the hands of a Slovakian art dealer. In 2014 an agreement was reached with the

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

for

John Constable John Constable (; 11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romanticism, Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedha ...

's ''Beaching A Boat, Brighton'' In 2021 Courbet's ''Baigneuses dans la forêt'' (1862) was restituted to the Hatvany heirs. The

Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art The Monuments Men and Women Foundation, formerly known as the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, is an American IRS-approved 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, which honors the legacy of those who served in the Monuments, Fi ...

printed the image of one of the missing paintings on a playing card in an effort to relaunch the search. Hatvany died in

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

in 1958.

References

External links

A short biography of Ferenc Hatvany
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hatvany, Ferenc 1881 births 1958 deaths Hungarian art collectors Jewish Hungarian painters Subjects of Nazi art appropriations Artists from Budapest Jewish art collectors 20th-century Hungarian painters Austrian barons Ferenc Hungarian male painters 20th-century Hungarian male artists

See also

References

Further reading

External links