Why “Dance on the Beach” is now going under the hammer
Fateful Journey of a Picture: The “Dance on the Beach” in First Class of the “Black Watch”
Quelle: Courtesy Sotheby’s
Edvard Munch’s painting from the Berlin Reinhardt Frieze has an eventful history. After its Jewish owner was forced to sell it, it hung on a luxury yacht and was only just saved from the Nazis. Now it should get a new owner.
SEven the biography of the painting is impressive: it was commissioned in 1906 by Max Reinhardt, who wanted to equip his theater in Berlin with paintings by one of the most sought-after painters. In 1912, Edvard Munch’s so-called “Life Frieze” was divided and sold due to the renovation of the theatre. The director of the Berlin Art Library, Curt Glaser, who was also a friend of the artist, acquired one of the twelve parts, which at four meters wide is still of considerable caliber.
Dismissed from office by the Nazis as a Jew, Curt Glaser fled Germany in 1933. He had to sell his important art collection. The painting “Dance on the Beach” from Max Reinhardt’s divided theater frieze then appeared in 1934 on offer at an auction house in Oslo, where Munch’s neighbor and friend Thomas Fredrik Olsen bought it and took it with him on trips.
Until 1939 it hung in a first-class saloon on the “Black Watch”, a cruise ship owned by Olsen’s shipping company. In anticipation of the Nazi invasion of Norway and the impending confiscation of its fleet, Olsen hid the artwork (along with Edvard Munch’s famous “Scream”) in a remote barn, where it survived World War II unscathed.
Edvard Munch, “Dance on the Beach”, 1906
What: pa/akg-images
After the end of the war, the painting (along with around 30 other Munch works) remained in the family’s possession. But after Thomas Olsen’s death in 1969, his sons had a bitter inheritance dispute, which is why important Munch paintings have repeatedly come onto the market over the past few decades. So now also “dance on the beach”. However, the checkered history of the picture takes a conciliatory turn: the Olsen family and the Glaser family have agreed on an “amicable restitution settlement”, as the auction house Sotheby’s calls it.
Estimated at between £12m and £20m, the painting is set to go up for auction in London on March 1. It is the last part of the Reinhardt frieze that is still privately owned.