Rodolphe Kann

Rodolphe Kann was born in Frankfurt-am-Main to a family of bankers of Jewish heritage. The younger brother of Maurice Kann (1839-1906), Rodolphe became a prominent businessman and art collector. Both he and Maurice made their fortunes in diamond and gold mining in South Africa, with close business ties to Parisian-based businessman Jules Porgès (1839-1921), who also supplied Adolphe Schloss with paintings for his collection.

Rodolphe started to collect paintings and decorative objects in the 1880s. He was interested in Old Masters, from seventeenth century Dutch paintings to fifteenth century Netherlandish and Italian pictures, as well as French and English eighteenth century artists. During his lifetime, Rodolphe donated various art objects to French institutions, such as the Musée du Louvre and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Rodolphe displayed his paintings at his gallery at 51 Avenue d’Iéna in Paris, spread over three rooms on the first floor. His brother Maurice lived next door at no. 49.   Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929), curator of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, produced an illustrated catalogue of Rodolphe Kann’s collection in 1900.

Two years after Rodolphe Kann’s death, his collection was acquired in its entirety in 1907 for 21 million francs jointly by London-based dealer Joseph Duveen and Paris-based art dealer Nathan Wildenstein, the patriarch of the Galerie Wildenstein.

The sales catalogue was divided into four separate volumes. Wilhelm von Bode catalogued the paintings in two volumes and wrote a preface while Charles Sedelmeyer produced the volume dedicated to Flemish and Dutch paintings.

In 1907, Franz Kleinberger acquired a marble fountain adorned with cupid figures from Duveen and Wildenstein which had come from the Rodolphe Kann collection. He later sold it to Adolphe Schloss in 1910.

One of the works that the Louvre museum’s curators selected in July 1943 from the confiscated Schloss Collection was a painting by Aert van der Neer, called Coucher de soleil (Schloss German no. L31/ French no. 183). It is not known, however, when Rodolphe Kann acquired it or sold it.

Literature: Bode, Wilhelm. Die Gemälde-Galerie des Herrn R. Kann in Paris. (Trans. French by A. Marguillier). Vienna, 1900: 100 plates. Simpson, Colin. Artful Partners: Berend Berenson and Joseph Duveen. Macmillan, 1986. Link: https://gulbenkian.pt/museu/en/collection-of-stories/rodolphe-kann/