August de Ridder

August de Ridder was a Belgian-German merchant and art collector, a contemporary of Adolphe Schloss (1845-1910).

He spent his early years in Antwerp, moved to Germany in 1863 and received Prussian citizenship in 1899. He worked for the company of Ludwig August Müller, the co-founder of the tea dye factory Meister Lucius and Brüning in Hoechst am Main. In 1863 he became its commercial director.   De Ridder purchased a villa inside a park in Schönberg near Kronberg im Taunus in 1891. He collected contemporary art, which he displayed in his villa. De Ridder collected Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century art. He was interested in portraits, genre pieces such as interiors, and landscapes. He bought most of his pictures through the gallery of Franz Kleinberger (d. 1926) in Paris, the same gallery where Adolphe Schloss bought many of his paintings. De Ridder had close contact with Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929), curator and director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, who advised De Ridder on his acquisitions and his collection.   Adolphe Schloss owned paintings that were previously in the collection of August de Ridder, and de Ridder also owned pictures that had been in Adolphe Schloss’ collection. All of these transfers occurred through Franz Kleinberger. One of the most significant exchanges was the acquisition of the Portrait de Michel Middleboeven, pasteur de Voorschoten by Frans Hals (Schloss German no. 81/ French no. 96). This picture had been in the possession of de Ridder and later came into the collection of another prominent art collector, the Polish painter André Mniszech (1823-1905), before being sold to Franz Kleinberger. Adolphe Schloss purchased the painting from Kleinberger in 1908 for 255,000 francs; he paid 1,000 francs and exchanged two of his own paintings: a seascape by Jan van de Capelle and a picture by (at the time attributed to) Rembrandt, Young shepherdess as Flora. De Ridder bought the Rembrandt painting from Kleinberger for 180,000 francs in 1908. It was eventually sold in 1924 in Paris.

Literature: Benkard, Ernst. “Die Sammlung de Ridder. Bemerkungen zur Kunst der Holländer des 17. Jahrhunderts”, in Kunst und Künstler: illustrierte Monatsschrift für bildende Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, Oktober 1912. Bode, Wilhelm Arnold, e.a. The Collection of Pictures of the Late Herr A. de Ridder in His Villa at Schönberg near Cronberg in the Taunus. Catalogued and Described by Wilhelm Bode. Translated by Harry Virgin, Etc. Julius Bard, 1913. Link: https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/artists/458200 Accessed 4 June 2021.