Maurice Édouard Kann

Maurice Kann was a German-born businessman and prominent art collector of Jewish heritage. He was born in Frankfurt-am-Main to a family of bankers and was the older brother of Rodolphe Kann (1845-1905). Both brothers became bankers and owned their fortunes to the diamond and gold mines of South Africa, which was associated with the business of Parisian-based businessman Jules Porgès (1839-1921).

Maurice arrived in Paris 1866. He worked until 1872 for the banking firm of his cousin Maximilien Édouard Kann. Maurice subsequently worked in Paris and London. In the 1880s, he and his younger brother Rodolphe worked in South Africa. Maurice married Marianne Charlotte Halphen (1845-1906) and they had a son and a daughter.   Both Maurice and his brother Rodolphe acquired a large property at Avenue d’Iéna in Paris. The brothers lived in adjoining mansions at nos. 49 and 51. Initially, the brothers wanted to create one large gallery for both collections; they knocked down the adjoining wall between two of the upper stories. But due to their increasing rivalry in later years, the project never came to fruition.   Compared to that of Rodolphe, Maurice’s art collection, although smaller, was seen as superior in quality. It centered mostly on seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish pictures. Their cousin Alphonse Kann (1870-1948) was also a significant collector who left his mark on the interwar art market in Paris.   Maurice’s collection was dispersed in a series of sales in Paris and Vienna between 1905 and 1911. The London-based art dealers Duveen Brothers acquired in 1909 a significant part of the collection for 2.5 million dollars. At the 1911 Kann sale, held at Galerie Georges Petit in Paris, 82 pictures were sold.   One of the paintings sold at the 1911 Kann sale was Jan Steen’s The Lute Player, which Adolphe Schloss had acquired in 1903 but then sold to Maurice Kann, who died in 1906 in Paris.   Literature: Grange, Cyril. Une élite parisienne: les familles de la grande bourgeoisie juive (1870-1939) (French edition). CNRS EDITIONS, 2016, tableaux 1.4. Colin Simpson. Artful Partners: Berend Berenson and Joseph Duveen. Macmillan, 1986. Fowles, Edward. Memories of Duveen Brothers. London, 1976, 36-52.