CHRONOLOGY
Art Dealing Family: 1855 – 2014
1855
The family of Irene Helbing, sister of Munich auctioneer and antiques dealer Hugo Helbing, starts
to deal with art.
1895
Fritz Nathan is born on 30th June 1895 in Munich. He is the only child of Alexander Nathan’s
second marriage, to Irene Helbing; four significantly older half-siblings resulted from the father’s
first marriage. Fritz Nathan enjoys a close relationship with them. The prerequisites for a career in
the art trade came above all from his mother’s side of the family.
The grandfather Sigmund Helbing had an antiques business from the mid-19th century onwards
in Munich, and his three sons worked in the art trade: Otto ran a respected coin dealership in
Munich, Ludwig an antiques business in Nuremberg and Hugo, the youngest, opened an auction
house in Munich in 1895 which soon attained international importance (it later also had branches
in Frankfurt and Berlin).
1908
His father dies. Hugo Helbing is appointed legal guardian; the elder half-brothers Ernst and Otto
H. Nathan assist his mother in bringing up Fritz.
1913
Otto H. Nathan, who has previously worked for Hugo Helbing, sets up his own art dealership.
1914
Fritz Nathan passes his school-leaving exams and plans to study art history. From an early age
he is always visiting museums, concerts and operas; his first speeches at grammar school are
about painting. In his memoirs, Fritz Nathan describes turn of the century Munich
as a city in which art and music play a defining role and developments in painting and music are
followed and supported by a broad swathe of society. On the outbreak of the First World War,
amid a widespread clamour of enthusiasm, Fritz Nathan reports for military service. Due to his
constitution he is not accepted into either the artillery or the infantry, so he decides to study
medicine, which leads to his admission as a volunteer in the emergency medical services.
1914-1918
Wartime service as medical orderly and assistant physician, initially in Munich, then in various
field hospitals in France.There, in 1918, he meets Erika Heino, later to become his wife. She is
working as a nurse and comes from the Lüneburg Heath. During this time he meets Theresa
Kauffmann- a 100 year friendship between the Kauffmann’s and Nathan’s starts.
1922
Fritz Nathan completes his medical studies with a doctorate. However, current salaries for a
junior doctor are not sufficient to start a family, so he decides to enter his brother Otto’s art
dealershipas a business partner. At the same time he attends art history
lectures at the university, including those given by
Heinrich Wölfflin. Marriage to Erika Heino. The marriage produces three children: Ilse, Peter and
Elisabeth.
1923
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In the first years of his work as an art dealer the sphere of activity develops in Munich and the
surrounding area, especially Nuremberg; soon Fritz Nathan starts to travel to more distant cities
such as Berlin and Hamburg. Relationships begin with collectors such as Alfred
Winterstein, who went to school with Nathan and for whom he will later procure Caspar David
Friedrich’s The Source of the Elbe in the Riesengebirge (illustration p. 271), and with artists such
as Hans Thoma and Max Liebermann and with the descendants of Carl
Spitzweg and Moritz von Schwind. Only gradually does he start to travel abroad, initially to
Vienna, from 1924 onwards to Switzerland and in 1926 to Paris.
1924
The firm moves to number 6 Ludwigstrasse and adopts the name Ludwigs Galerie. In the course
of its existence it puts on both thematic and monographic exhibitions. The latter are devoted to
artists such as Carl Philipp Fahr (1927), Emil Lugo (1928), Hans Thoma (1929) and Adrian
Ludwig Richter (1934).
1926
The Ludwigs Galerie opens a summer branch in Lucerne in partnership with the Helbing firm.
Fritz Nathan has his first opportunity to visit the Reinhart collection without, however, meeting
Oskar Reinhart himself.
1928
First meeting of Fritz Nathan and Oskar Reinhart on his first visit to Ludwigs Galerie. Thereafter,
contact with Oskar Reinhart rapidly becomes more intense; they travel together and a friendly
working relationship gradually emerges. By placing his trust in Nathan, Reinhart provides
significant support for him until his death in 1965, while the former made a decisive contribution to
the development of the Reinhart collection.
1930
Death of brother and business partner Otto H. Nathan. Fritz Nathan continues to run the firm
on his own, but must also earn enough to support the family of his deceased brother, his mother
and his sister. His wife is also of great support to him in this situation. Fritz Nathan brokers the
contact between Oskar Reinhart and the Berlin collector Julius Freund, from whom Reinhart is
able to buy Chalk Cliffs on Rügen by Caspar David Friedrich.
The gallery moves to 46 Briennerstrasse, where it remains until 1933.
1931
Together with the firm of Paul Cassirer, Berlin, Fritz Nathan puts on an exhibition in the Ludwigs
Galerie with the title Romantic painting in Germany and France. At the same time, an exhibition
takes place in Munich’s Glass Palace of German Romantic painting, which shortly afterwards falls
victim to a fire. Nathan, who has been interested in Romantic painting from an early age, is now
considered a specialist. Two important works by Caspar David Friedrich, Summer (Caspar David
Friedrich, 1807) and The Stages of Life (Caspar David Friedrich, ca. 1835) find their way to the
Neue Pinakothek in Munich and the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig respectively. Fritz
Nathan exhibits the collection of the painter Bernt Grönvold. Oskar Reinhart buys the majority of
it. Further significant works are purchased by the Neue Pinakothek in Munich and the National
Gallery in Berlin.
1933
After the Nazi Party seizes power, the house in Briennerstrasse is confiscated for the German
Labour Front. The Ludwigs Galerie has to be moved to 5 Ottostrasse, where Nathan hands it
over to his long-term employee, Käthe Thäter, when he emigrates from Germany. The house in
Ottostrasse is completely destroyed in the Second World War, as are the remaining parts of the
library, the card index and the catalogue collection.
1935
Fritz Nathan is consulted on the reorganisation of the Sturzenegger collection at the St. Gallen
Art Museum. Because the climate in Germany is becoming increasingly dangerous, he comes to
the conclusion that he should migrate to Switzerland. On the invitation of Dr. Konrad Naegeli,
mayor of St. Gallen, he chooses the town as his new home.
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1936
Emigration to Switzerland and opening of business in St. Gallen, where the family is warmly
welcomed. Thanks to intervention of collectors who were friends of his, especially Oskar Reinhart
and Hans E. Bühler, Nathan is granted a work permit. He continues his work on the
reorganisation of the Sturzenegger collection, as part of which he is granted permission to travel
to Germany. The Society of Friends of the Fine Arts in St. Gallen is founded on Fritz Nathan’s
initiative. The flat in St. Gallen becomes a meeting point for family, friends and acquaintances
who are suffering under the political conditions in Germany or who are forced to emigrate, for
example the musicians Clara Haskil, Herrmann Scherchen, Karl Flesch and Felix von
Weingartner, as well as professional colleagues, especially Walter and Marianne
Feilchenfeldt from Berlin, who are frequent guests from 1939 onwards. Thus a new circle of
friends is formed.
1938
First meeting with the businessman Emil Georg Bührle. Contact becomes more frequent
especially in the second half of the 1940s. As a consequence, Fritz Nathan is able to procure a
series of important works for the Bührles Collection, which are later made accessible to the public
in the form of a foundation. In this year, Nathan is able to bring his mother and his sister Sofie to
Switzerland.
1939
Outbreak of the Second World War. Thanks to the support of the St. Gallen local authorities,
Fritz Nathan is able to help some of his friends and acquaintances to escape their fate in
Germany and emigrate to Switzerland; this is achieved in the period leading up to 1940.
1940
For the duration of the war, export and import have become almost impossible. It is difficult to
check the provenance of anything that nevertheless manages to reach Switzerland from abroad.
Activity is therefore limited principally to pictures from Swiss collections. During this period, looted
art from French collections repeatedly comes up for auction. This also includes drawings from the
collection of Paul Rosenberg, Paris. Fritz Nathan recognises these and informs Paul Rosenberg.
1942
Nathan is commissioned by Clara Freund, the widow of Julius Freund who had emigrated with
her to London, and by their daughter Gisela Freund, to complete the sale of his collection. During
the 1930s this has been stored, on Nathan’s instructions, in Winterthur. It comes up for auction at
Fischer’s, Lucerne and due to its important works of German Romanticism, is also highly
regarded in Germany.
1945
World War II Ends. Edgar Alexander Kaufmann celebrates V-Day in and around the fountains of
Trafalgar Square.
1946
It is once more possible to travel abroad. First comes a visit to Erika Nathan’s family in northern
Germany, followed by journeys to France and England, where contact is re-established with
Nathan’s best friend Arthur Kauftmann in particular. Kauffmann had managed the Frankfurt
branch of Hugo Helbing’s auction house from 1920 to 1938. Through him contact was once more
intensified with Emil Georg Bührle, who had served alongside Kauffmann in the First World War.
Peter Nathan is naturalised in St. Gallen. He
begins to study Art History in Basel.
1947
Fritz Nathan makes his first journey to America, where the centre of the global art trade has
relocated, due to events in Europe since 1933 and the emigration of influential individuals from
German cultural life. Even French galleries such as Rosenberg and Wildenstein have moved their
headquarters to the USA. Fritz Nathan once more meets many of his colleagues
and friends who have emigrated to America, for example Hanns Swarzenski from Frankfurt and
Heinrich Schwarz from Vienna. With Fritz Nathan as intermediary, an exhibition of a
selection of works from the Karlsruhe Gallery is opened in the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen,
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the first to be put on outside of Germany, after the war, with German museum holdings.
1948
Fritz and Erika Nathan are naturalised in St. Gallen. Nathan, with the Art Association of St.
Gallen, puts on the first post-war exhibition of works by Max Liebermann. He testifies before the
Looted Art Committee of the Federal Court. In the same year he is commissioned to value the
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Lugano with a view to dividing the estate. Via Oskar Reinhart,
contact is renewed to Margarete Scharf-Gerstenberg, the daughter of the important Berlin
collector Otto Gerstenberg. As a consequence, works including The Refugees by Honoré
Daumier and In the Café by Édouard Manet are purchased by
Oskar Reinhart. From the meeting with Gerstenberg’s descendants, a friendship emerges that
continues into the following generations and ultimately leads to Walther Scharf and Peter Nathan
founding the Neue Galerie together in 1966.
1949
Peter Nathan begins his dissertation on Friedrich Wasmann, which he submits in 1953. He buys
his first drawing by Delacroix, thus laying the foundations for his own collection.
After the modern artists he represents, Delacroix is the painter who plays the most prominent role
in his life. During the course of his career as an art dealer a large number of Delacroix’s works
pass through Peter Nathan’s hands.
1950
Fritz Nathan is able to acquire the significant early Picasso, the double-sided painting Crouching
Woman and Mother and Child from the years 1905-1907, which originally comes from Gertrude
Stein’s collection. In the same year he sells an important work by Claude Monet, Palazzo
Contarini, Venice to the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen.
1951
In late January the Oskar Reinhart Foundation is opened, featuring works by Swiss, German and
Austrian painters of the 19th century. Since 1928, Fritz Nathan has made an essential
contribution. The peripheral location in St. Gallen proves to be disadvantageous in the face of
post-war business development, which is why Fritz and Erika Nathan decide to move house to
Zurich. In his memoirs, Fritz Nathan describes the years in St. Gallen, with gratitude for the
generous reception of himself and his family, as among his happiest.
1952
The year is overshadowed by Erika Nathan’s severe illness.
1953
On 4th February Erika Nathan dies. Peter Nathan enters his father’s firm. Several months spent
in the USA follow. Here he gains his initial experience in the art trade. Fritz Nathan becomes vicepresident of the Swiss Art Trading Association.
1954
Peter Nathan encounters the work of Nicolas de Staël in Paris and buys one of his pictures. This
purchase is greeted by incomprehension from those around him; it is only years later that he can
sell the picture on. Despite the opposition he remains enthusiastic about de Staël, and in the
course of his career a large number of works by this painter passes through his hands.
1955
Together with Willi Dünner, Fritz Nathan plays an essential role in the organisation of an
exhibition to mark the 70th birthday of Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur. On 4th June he marries his
second wife, llse Gabriele Nast-Kolb. He sells the Portrait of Monsieur Devilliers by
Jean-Auguste-Dominique lngres to Emil Georg Bührle. In his memoirs he goes on to describe this
as one of the most important and beautiful pictures ever to pass through his hands. On 15th
September, Peter Nathan and Barbara Neher marry. They will share their passion for art for a
lifetime together. The marriage produces four children.
1956
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The firm moves its headquarters from 184 to 170 Zollikerstrasse. A highly finished sketch by
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, complete as a picture in its own right, appears in the English
dealership. This is bought by the American collector Charles Wrightsman, who will later donate it
to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In the same year the firm sells The Bronze Age by
Rodin to the National Gallery of Canada.
1957
On a joint trip to Paris, Peter Nathan and Walther Scharf discover the painter Jean
Bazaine. Their enthusiasm for his work and the friendly relationship will last a lifetime.
The firm sells Henri Rousseau’s Eva to the Kunsthalle Hamburg.
1958
Peter Nathan and Walther Scharf are introduced to the work of the painter Charles Lapicque by
Pierre Granville. This begins a lifelong collaboration and friendship with this artist.
1959
The Swiss Art Trading Association entrusts the firm with its expert consultancy service. Fritz
Nathan sells the double-sided Picasso painting, Crouching Woman and Mother and Child,
to the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart.
1961
The Galerie Villand & Galanis in Paris shows works by Maurice Esteve. Peter Nathan buys three
important paintings. He and Walther Scharf become personally acquainted with Esteve. The firm
sells Albrecht Altdorfer’s Landscape with Bridge to the National Gallery in London and Caspar
David Friedrich’s Landscape with Trees to Oskar Reinhart.
1962
In spring, Kunsthalle Bern, under its then director Harald Szeemann, puts on an exhibition of
Charles Lapicque. Fritz Nathan gives lectures at various museums in Germany about his career
as an art dealer.
1964
The firm sells the monumental View of Dresden by Bernardo Bellotto (cat. no. 33), which he had
painted in 1765 as his masterpiece for acceptance into the Academy of the time, to the
Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. Fritz Nathan becomes an honorary member of the Swiss Art Trading
Association.
1966
Together with Walther Scharf, Peter Nathan opens the Neue Galerie in Wilfriedstrasse in Zurich
on 18th March. The inaugural exhibition shows pictures by Lapicque, Bazaine, Esteve, Bores,
Lanskoy and Maréchal.
1967
In their first solo exhibition, Peter Nathan and Walther Scharf show paintings, drawings and
watercolours by Charles Lapicque. In the same year, a large retrospective of Charles Lapicque
takes place at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. In
autumn, the Neue Galerie shows an exhibition of oil paintings, watercolours and drawings by
Maurice Estève.
1969
Peter Nathan and Walther Scharf decide to represent the Spanish sculptor Baltasar Lobo and
exhibit his sculptures, together with pictures by André Lanskoy.1971 Walther Scharf leaves the
Neue Galerie, which Peter Nathan continues to manage alone. With Thomas Le Guillou as
intermediary, Peter Nathan discovers the work of the painter Gaston Chaissac, who died in 1964,
and whose work he first shows in autumn.
1972
Fritz Nathan dies on 28th February. Peter Nathan merges the Neue Galerie with the Fritz
and Peter Nathan art dealership to become the Galerie Nathan, based at 7 Arosastrasse. The
edited volume Dr. Fritz Nathan und Dr. Peter Nathan1922-1972, to which Fritz Nathan
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had contributed, is published. Adolph Menzel’s The Disturbance (cat. no. 61) is sold to the
Kunsthalle Karlsruhe.
1974
On 16th September the Galerie Nathan is opened with a collective exhibition of the artists
represented by Peter Nathan. Works by Jean Bazaine, Gaston Chaissac, Maurice Esteve, André
Lanskoy, Charles Lapicque, Baltasar Lobo, Serge Poliakoff, Nicolas de Stael and Jacques Villon
are exhibited.
1975
Peter Nathan is able to broker the sale of an important large-scale work by Pierre Bonnard, The
Terrace in Vernon to the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein- Westfalen in Dusseldorf. The gallery shows
an exhibition of works by Félix Vallotton. In November, Peter Nathan sells
Caspar David Friedrich’s Tree of Crows to the Louvre.
1978
Corinne Nathan and Arturo Cuéllar, a Colombian student from a medical family, meet as students
in London, England. Corinne studies Paper Restoration and Arturo Music. Arturo visits Arthur
Kauffmann frequently. They play the “Can you Guess this Picture” game many times, as well as
discuss different points of view in art.
1978
With the exhibition Old and New, which takes place in spring and includes works by Jacob
Jordaens, Gustave Courbet, Odilon Redon, Max Liebermann, Fernand Léger, Charles Lapicque,
Jean Bazaine and Nicolas de Stael, Peter Nathan intends to demonstrate that
the origin of creative impulses remains the same over the centuries and that only the form
of artistic expression changes over time.
1979
The French state honours Charles Lapicque with the Grand Prix National de la Peinture.
1980
Peter Nathan sells Gustav Klimt’s Roses under the Trees (illustration p. 283) to the Louvre in
Paris (now at the Musée d'Orsay).
1981
In the spring, the gallery shows a Chaissac exhibition with objets d’art, drawings and gouaches.
The Chaissac exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Winterthur receives widespread attention in the
press. It is then shown in the Kunsthalle Bremen.
1982
The Galerie Nathan shows a large exhibition of paintings by Maurice Esteve. Peter Nathan sells
the monumental painting by Ferdinand Hodler The Orator, a study for Unanimity in the Hanover
town hall, to the Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
1983
In autumn Alois Perregaux’s monograph on Charles Lapicque, written in cooperation with Peter
Nathan, is published.
1984
Peter Nathan sells a monumental painting by Guercino, known as the Aldrovandi Dog, to the
Californian collector Norton Simon.
1985
From April the Galerie Nathan puts on a Lobe exhibition. In June, on Peter Nathan’s initiative, the
Catalogue raisonné of the works of Baltasar Lobos, written by Verena Bollmann-Müller and with
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an introduction by Joseph-Emile Muller, is published. The museums in Colmar, Martigny and Ulm
show an exhibition co-initiated by Peter Nathan featuring the works of Gaston Chaissac.
1986
In the Musée du Grand Palais, Paris, a major Maurice Esteves retrospective takes place.
In autumn the Galerie Nathan puts on an exhibition of night paintings by Charles Lapicque; its
patron is Simone Veil, president of the European Parliament.
1986
Corinne Nathan marries Arturo Cuéllar, who subsequently becomes heavily involved in art
dealing with Peter Nathan as well as independently. Salomon Cuéllar is born in 1990, Baltasar
Cuéllar in 1994 and Johannes Cuéllar in 1998.
1987
Galerie Nathan shows a Chaissac exhibition, which accompanies the publication by Klett-Cotta of
the Chaissac monograph by Barbara Nathan-Neher and an English edition published by Thames
and Hudson. Peter Nathan sells a significant painting by Eugène Delacroix, Hamlet and Horatio
in the Cemetery, to the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt.
1987
Corinne Cuéllar-Nathan and Arturo Cuéllar open a gallery “Arturo Cuéllar-Nathan Galerie” at the
Rämistrasse in Zurich. They aim to set up their own art dealing business, separately from Peter
Nathan. They start to deal with international auction houses, museums and to sell works to major
collections in Europe and the United States with their main focus in Old Master Drawings.
1988
In autumn the Galerie Nathan puts on an exhibition of works by Georg Meistermann.
1991
Corinne & Arturo Cuellar-Nathan sell Edgar Degas’ painting Les Chevaux de Courses through
Christie’s London, which achieves a record prize for Degas at the time, namely 6’050’000 GBP.
1991
At the beginning of the year Galerie Nathan shows paintings by Charles Lapicque that take the
sea as their theme. The patron of the exhibition is Jack Lang, French minister of culture.
1992
Corinne & Arturo Cuellar-Nathan close their gallery at the Rämistrasse and move the business to
their flat in the Bürgli at the Bürglistrasse 18.
1993
Galerie Nathan: A major exhibition of works by Gaston Chaissac receives widespread attention
from the press at home and abroad; Peter Nathan’s commitment to this artist is also
acknowledged.
Peter Nathan is able to sell the Oskar Kokoschka painting, Lake Geneva in Thunderstorm, which
had been sold off by the Nazis from the Leipzig Museum as “degenerate art”, back to the
museum.
1994
Friedhelm Mennekes shows in St. Peter, Cologne, a Chaissac exhibition which takes place with
the assistance of Peter Nathan. Nathan becomes an honorary member of the Swiss Art Trading
Association.
1996
A major exhibition of the works by Chaissac opens in the Neue Galerie of the Austrian town of
Linz, which then travels to the German galleries Kunsthalle Tübingen, the Von der Heydt Museum
in Wuppertal and the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt.
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1998
In March Peter Nathan is appointed Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République
Française. On 5th November there is a ceremony, attended by André Gadaud, French
ambassador in Bern, to mark the opening of the exhibition Delacroix and my Modern Painters.
This exhibition is essentially an expressionof the conception of art that Peter Nathan has
represented in his life.
2000
In summer a major retrospective of the work of Gaston Chaissac is held in the Galerie Nationale
du Jeu de Paume in Paris. The Jan Krugier Gallery, in partnership with the Galerie Nathan,
exhibits Gaston Chaissac’s work in New York.
2001
Michel Dauberville, the grandson of the Paris art dealer Josse Bernheim-Jeune, and Peter
Nathan each donate half of the cost of the painting Odalisque by Camille Corot, which was stolen
in the Second World War by the Nazis from the Galerie Bernheim- Jeune in Paris and which
Peter Nathan had bought in good faith in the 1950s. On 30th December Peter Nathan dies. Four
months previously, on 25th August, his wife Barbara Nathan-Neher had died.
2002
From January to May a Chaissac exhibition takes place in the Galerie Nathan
that had been initiated and curated by Peter Nathan.
2005
Kunsthalle Tübingen presents a large-scale exhibition titled “Die Kunst des Handelns –
Meisterwerke des 14. bis 20. Jahrhunderts bei Fritz und Peter Nathan” (The Art of Art-dealing –
14th to 20th century masterworks at Fritz and Peter Nathan). This exhibition held from September
24, 2005 to January 8, 2006 focuses retrospectively on the family’s art dealing business. Hatje
Cantz publishes a 315 page exhibition catalogue.
2013
Corinne Cuéllar-Nathan and Arturo Cuellar open a gallery at Zähringerplatz 11 in Zurich. Their
eldest son, Salomon Cuéllar, is actively involved in the family business after studying at the
Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Salomon establishes his own art dealing business named
Salomon Cuellar AG. The family collaborates with auction houses, galleries (e.g. Jill Newhouse)
in Europe and the United States. Arturo Cuéllar plays concerts in major concert halls, including
Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Research by Katharina Perez
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