Jacques Goudstikker
Jacques Goudstikker was a Jewish Dutch art dealer who fled Holland when it was invaded by Nazis during World War II, leaving over 30 "Old Masters" which were looted by the Nazis. "Between the two World Wars, Jacques Goudstikker was probably the most important Netherlandish dealer of Old Master paintings", according to Peter C. Sutton, executive director and CEO of the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science. [1] The Dutch government restored the paintings to the Goudstikker family in 2006, and they were sold at auction in 2007 for almost $10 million. [2]
Goudstikker was the son of an art dealer, Eduard Goudstikker. He studied at the Commercial School in Amsterdam, and more intensely with Wilhelm Martin and William Vogelsang at Leiden and Utrecht. In 1919 he joined his father's Amsterdam gallery, introduced a notably more international style; publishing catalogs in French rather than Dutch, and showing for the first time Italian Renaissance paintings, including The Madonna and Child by Francesco Squarcione. This was revolutionary in Holland of the time, where in 1906, Dr. Adriaan Pit , the director of the Rijksmuseum, had stated "We have become chauvinistic with regard to the field of art. This worship of our old school of painting, which started thirty years ago is still alive and appears not to let us appreciate any foreign art." [3]
Following World War I, Amsterdam once again became a center of international commerce, and Goudstikker flourished, along with fellow art dealers, Jelle Taeke de Boer, and Henri Douwes; in 1927 he moved to a larger gallery. Goudstikker rose above his contemporaries, however in presenting works from the Dutch Golden Age alongside panels by 14th century, 15th century and 16th century Dutch, Flemish, German and Italian painters, mixing paintings, sculptures, carpets, and other works of art together, in the sophisticated style of Wilhelm von Bode of Berlin, much emulated in London, Paris, and New York.[3] Goudstikker's taste extended to the design of his catalogs, which were minor works of art in themselves.
Goudstikker maintained close ties with art historians and collectors. In the introduction to his 1928 catalog, he wrote "[W]e are happy as a logical development in our Italian department in having obtained the assistance of our compatriot Doctor Raimond van Marle", author of the influential The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting. His clients, including J. W. Edwin vom Rath, Detlen Van Hadeln, J. H. van Heek, Ernst Proehl, Daniel G. van Beuningen, Heinrich Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon and Otto Lanz, also partook in this mix of connoisseurship and scholarship. [3]
He staged an exhibit of Dutch and Flemish paintings, including five van Goghs, two van Dongens, and a Mondrian, together with a group of 17th century works including a magnificent wooded landscape by Philips Koninck, at the Anderson Gallery in New York in 1923, organized through the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce; the Committee of Patrons included such society notables as as Mrs. T. J. Oakley Rhinelander and Mrs. Cortland S. Van Rensselaer.
Other notable paintings sold by Goudstikker include the Madonna and Child by Pacchiarotti, Christ Carrying the Cross by Hieronymous Bosch which now resides in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, and Young Girl with a Flute by Vermeer, which was eventually purchased by Joseph Widener to donate to the National Gallery in Washington, DC in 1942. Other American museum purchases from Goudstikker include a large altarpiece by Luca Signorelli depicting The Assumption of the Virgin with Saints Michael and Benedict, by the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1929 and Pesellino's King David before the Ark of the Covenant by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas, in 1932.