Images & Texts

This coming Sunday, the 15th of March 2015; marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Städel Museum. Germany’s oldest civic museum foundation is observing the historic day with a grand public celebration. Under the motto “200 Years Städel: A Gift for Everyone”, a comprehensive programme of guided tours, workshops and chamber music performed by the hr-Sinfonieorchester will await the visitor. In the time-tested tradition of Johann Friedrich Städel’s foundation vision, the Frankfurt museum is sustained by broad patronage on all levels, and this anniversary year is no exception. On the occasion of the bicentennial, for example, citizens have made donations to the Städel amounting to several millions of euros, agreed to sponsor exhibition rooms, and started their own fundraising initiatives for the civic museum. What is more, after donations of works Jusepe de Ribera, Guido Reni, Edgar Degas und Philip Guston, just within the past weeks the Städel has received further birthday gifts, among them prominent works by Bettina von Arnim, Eugène Carrière, Bruno Goller, Karl Hofer, Mike Kelley, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Albert Oehlen and Moritz von Schwind, but also, not least importantly, rare photographs by the Bisson brothers, Helmar Lerski and others, as well as vintage prints by Horst P. Horst.

After a development phase of more than two years, the Städel Digital Collectionoffers a completely original approach to the institution’s holdings. Based on the extensive store of the Frankfurt museum’s collection and data, this knowledge tool has a semantic search function that both satisfies art historical interests and providesindividual search paths through seven hundred years of art history along intuitive and associative criteria. To ensure the prerequisites for this “digital roaming” facility, the free-to-accessCloud-based exhibits platform encompasses not only large-format pictures, multimedia contents like audio sequences and film productions and a wide variety of details on the Städel’s works but also a far-reaching concatenation of these works, contextualizing them in an evident, yet often also surprising way.

Download the complete press text here.

From 11 March to 28 June 2015, Frankfurt’s Städel Museum is presenting a major exhibition on “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism”. One hundred masterworks from the world’s most prominent painting collections will shed light on the beginnings of the Impressionist movement in the years from the early 1860s to 1880. World-famous loans will be on view, for example Monet’s La Grenouillère (1869) from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, his Boulevard des Capucines (1873) from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, and The Luncheon: decorative panel (ca. 1873) and Camille on Her Deathbed (1879), both from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The exhibition, which will be one of the highlights of the ¨200 Years Städel¨ anniversary programme, inquires into how Impressionism came about and the extent to which this approach to painting manifests contemporary visual experience. In addition to some fifty paintings by Claude Monet, works by numerous other Impressionists will also be on display, including important examples by Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley. The anniversary exhibition bears a direct connection to the history of the Städel Museum’s own holdings: as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, then director Georg Swarzenski (1876–1957) came out passionately in favour of acquiring French painting ‒ which now represents one of the chief focuses of the museum’s collection.

The exhibition is been made possible by the Commerzbank Foundation.

In conjunction with the show, a catalogue is being published by Prestel Verlag in German and English. In addition to numerous essays, it will present the results of in-depth technological examinations of all the Impressionist works in the Städel holdings, carried out in preparation for the exhibition. An audio guide of the show recorded by actress Diane Kruger will also be available. The free Digitorial moreover offers interested visitors a means of acquainting themselves with the exhibition contents before coming to the museum (monet.staedelmuseum.de). In order to avoid waiting in queues, the Städel advises visitors to purchase their tickets in advance online at tickets.staedelmuseum.de.

“Works from the early days of Impressionism are rare and precious. All the more delighted are we that we have been able to realize such a complex and spectacular special exhibition as a prelude to our anniversary year, and have the opportunity to present loans from all over the world side by side with central works from the Städel collection. The exhibition and research project will undoubtedly be yet another highlight in the Städel’s two-hundred-year history”, comments Max Hollein, the director of the Städel Museum.

Taking as its point of departure Claude Monet’s painting The Luncheon (1868/69) ‒ a key work of early Impressionism that the Städel is fortunate enough to have in its holdings ‒ and the museum’s superb collection of early Impressionist works by Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley and Paul Cézanne, the exhibition will show how the Impressionists found their way to the dissolution and dematerialization of their pictorial motifs. From a multifaceted perspective, the visitors will learn about the various conditions that led to the birth of Impressionism and the radical change that came about in the relationship between pictorial content and form in the paintings produced by this important movement. Impressionism challenged the visual habits of the time in a completely new way ‒ and met with a wide variety of responses, as is evidenced by contemporary caricatures to be presented alongside works of Impressionist painting and photography.

“Our show revolves around the beginnings of the Impressionist movement. The Städel collection provides a foundation upon which we can ask how it was possible for Impressionism to emerge within just a few years. This exhibition focuses on the development of Impressionism from its inception to 1880”, remarks curator Felix Krämer, the head of the collection of modern art at the Städel Museum.

The nineteenth century was a time of upheavals and a wide variety of developments all taking place at the same time ‒ developments that also left their mark on the paintings of the Impressionists. Increasing industrialization brought about a change in the relationship between man and nature, but also that between work and leisure time. Technical progress led to a general acceleration of life. The visual experience of the big city and the spread of new media such as photography also had a decisive impact on the works of the period’s artists. The main protagonist and continual point of reference in the exhibition is Claude Monet. Among the artists of his time, Monet played a pioneering role in the growing popularity of open-air painting. In his œuvre, the formal innovations of Impressionism ‒ the clearly recognizable brushstroke and the rapid, sketchy painting style ‒ are particularly prominent. And his work also exemplifies another phenomenon that applies to the art of the Impressionists in general: they increasingly abandoned large-scale figural compositions in favour of smaller landscape scenes.

A circular tour of the exhibition

Part I of the exhibition
Arranged in chronological order, the presentation spreads out on both floors of the exhibition annex. A prologue in the first room on the ground floor is dedicated to the artists whom the Impressionists looked to as examples, such as the representatives of the “School of Barbizon” in whose work the predilection for landscape scenes, the tendency towards a sketchy manner of painting and the departure from academic tradition are all manifest. Here key compositions by Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, Gustave Courbet, Charles-François Daubigny, Eugène Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind are on view.
After the prologue, the first main section of the show retraces the development of early Impressionist art in the period from 1864 to approximately 1870/71. It begins with a selection of paintings executed in the Forest of Fontainebleau. This is where the members of the “Barbizon School” worked on their open-air studies. Following in the footsteps of the painters they admired, Monet and his artist friends Frédéric Bazille, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley also visited the Fontainebleau woods to paint. This section of the show is flanked by a photo gallery devoted to the theme of nature in the photography of the period, and shedding light on the concurrence of painting and photography activities in the Forest of Fontainebleau.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Paris transformed from a city still shaped by medieval structures to a modern metropolis characterized by large squares and wide boulevards and considered very progressive. Monet also devoted himself to the motif of the public urban space in these years. His first endeavours to come to terms with the theme of the city are already perceivable in the following room of the show. Here the significance of Édouard Manet for Monet also becomes evident. At the time, Manet was regarded as the major talent of the avant-garde, and younger artists looked to him for orientation. The exhibition features Manet’s large-scale painting The Universal Exhibition of Paris 1867 (Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo). Yet Monet was also concerned with depicting the urban realm: The Quai du Louvre of 1867 (Gemeentemuseum, The Hague) shows the view from the balcony of the famous museum: it was not the Old Masters in the Louvre galleries that interested him, but the view of the everyday present outside. At the same time, he and his colleagues continued to paint landscapes and seascapes, several of which are likewise on view in this room. The rear section of the ground floor concentrates on the years from 1868 to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. The key work here is the painting The Luncheon (1868/69) belonging to the Städel. The depiction of the home of a couple without a marriage licence and with an illegitimate child was a deliberate provocation and a critique on prevailing conventions. It was moreover the first time an artist had represented a private interior on such a large scale. Measuring 2.31 x 1.51 metres, the work was refused by the Salon jury, as was the depiction of La Grenouillère (1869) Monet had likewise submitted. This rejection led to the artist’s break with the Paris Salon and a radical reorientation in his art: The Luncheon is the last of his large-scale figural paintings and marks his departure from Manet as an artistic reference. The fact that Monet presented this painting at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, when it was already five years old, testifies to the significance it nevertheless held for him. It was the largest work in the 1874 show. Scenes of the Franco-Prussian War are not to be found in the Impressionist paintings of this period. Most of the works were executed in exile, among them Monet’s Dutch landscape views. This section is enhanced by a photo gallery shedding light on the discrepancy between the political situation and the cheerful Impressionist pictorial motifs of these years.

Part II of the exhibition
The second part of the exhibition follows the further development of Monet’s œuvre and those of other Impressionists from 1872 to 1880 ‒ i.e. to the phase in which the subordination of the pictorial subject to atmospheric phenomena reached a climax. Upon entering the suite of galleries on the upper level, the beholder encounters another Monet painting: The Luncheon: Decorative Panel dating from 1873 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), with which the artist reacted to his Frankfurt Luncheon. The work aptly demonstrates the shift of interest that had come about in his art: the focus was no longer on the human being and the interior but on nature and atmosphere. The dark shades of the predecessor painting make way for flickering dabs of paint applied to the canvas unmixed. Monet now concentrated primarily on reproducing light and colour and conveying a certain mood. In these paintings the visitor witnesses the increasing dissolution of form that took place in this phase of Impressionism. Monet presented this work along with the depiction of La Grenouillère at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876.
The painting The Boulevard des Capucines of 1873 (Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City) on display in this room is representative of Monet’s depictions of Paris. The pedestrians on the street have been recorded sketchily, with rapid brushstrokes, as an anonymous mass. Here the artist has masterfully captured the constant state of unrest and motion in the city with painterly means, and it is a work that already met with great admiration in his lifetime. The subsequent section of the show features landscape depictions and leisure-time scenes of the years 1873 to 1878, works that address man’s changing relationship to nature. As illustrated, for example, by Monet’s painting Summer of 1874 (Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), the great outdoors gained importance in this period as a place of recreation and recuperation for the modern city dweller. In the main room on this floor, the focus is on the Parisian metropolis and motifs of urban life as depicted in paintings by Degas, Morisot, Renoir and others. In Monet’s railway station scenes the increasing dissolution of the scenery brought about by the sketchy, diffuse application of the paint is clearly evident. At the centre of his 1877 work Exterior of Saint-Lazare Station (The Signal) of 1877 (Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover), a large traffic signal blocks the view. The grounds of the railway behind it are blurred, and reminiscent of a landscape seen from a train window during fast travel on what was then a brand new means of transport. The steam of the engine also prevents us from taking in the entire scene. Obstructions to sight have thus been elevated to the status of pictorial motifs as the actual subject recedes ever further into the background. At the same time, the artist has assigned special importance to atmospheric qualities. This section is accompanied by a gallery showcasing contemporary caricatures on Impressionism. In the last room on the upper level, we see how the phenomenon of the pictorial subject’s disintegration has been taken to the farthest extreme and the intrinsic value of colour has come to the fore, for example in Monet’s painting Vétheuil in the Fog of 1879 (Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris).

Finally, an “epilogue” assembles a number of characteristic works of Monet’s late phase that serve as particularly good illustrations of the development to the nearly complete loss of the pictorial subject. In the four paintings from the Rouen Cathedral series (Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Klassik Stiftung Weimar; private collection) executed in 1892‒94 and depictions of London bridges likewise dating from this period (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, private collection), no more than an inkling of the built structures has remained; they appear almost entirely immaterial. Instead, the representation of light and atmosphere dominates the compositions.

The research project in preparation for the exhibition
In preparation for the exhibition, the Städel’s department of painting conservation subjected all of the Impressionist works in the museum’s holdings to comprehensive technological investigations. Achieved with the aid of the microscope, ultraviolet and infrared light and X-ray, the results of these procedures enhance the project with a well-founded technological perspective and are being published in the accompanying exhibition catalogue. With the aid of QR codes, visitors can moreover access detailed online information on the results of technological examinations of seven selected paintings in the exhibition. Among other things, the examinations have provided invaluable insights into the complex evolution of Monet’s Luncheon. Edited by Felix Krämer, the catalogue is being published in German and English by the Prestel Verlag. In addition to the co-editor and project director Dr Nerina Santorius, the authors include Prof André Dombrowski, University of Pennsylvania, and Prof S. Hollis Clayson, Northwestern University.

The exhibition Digitorial
With the Digitorial developed especially for the show, the Städel is moreover offering a new digital educational medium. A responsive website presents worthwhile background information, art-historical and culture-historical contexts and fundamental exhibition contents. The free digital format in German and English enables the public to tune in to the exhibition themes before visiting the exhibition. The multimedia combination of image, sound, film and text interlinks the contents in a multiplicity of ways and provides entirely new means of depicting, narrating and mediating art. The Digitorial is accessible at monet.staedelmuseum.de.

List of artists
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Édouard Béliard (Edmond Joseph Béliard) (1832–1912), Eugène Boudin (1824–1898), Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Antoine Chintreuil (1814–1873), Camille Corot (1796–1875), Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878), Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Armand Guillaumin (1841–1927), Charles Jacque (1813–1894), Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819–1891), Stanislas Lépine (1835–1892), Édouard Manet (1832–1883), Jean-François Millet (1814–1875), Claude Monet (1840–1926), Berthe Morisot (1841–1895), Camille Pissarro (1831–1903), Auguste Renoir (1841–1919), Henri Rouart (1833–1912), Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867), Alfred Sisley (1839–1899), Félix Ziem (1821–1911).

MONET AND THE BIRTH OF IMPRESSIONISM

Curator: Dr Felix Krämer, Head of Modern Art Department
Project management: Dr Nerina Santorius, Assistant Curator of Modern Art Department
Exhibition dates: 11 March – 28 June 2015

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, phone +49(0)69-605098-0, fax +49(0)69-605098-111
Visitors’ service: +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de
Venue: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main

Opening hours until 8 June: Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun 10 am ‒ 7 pm, Thu + Fri 10 am ‒ 9 pm
closed Mondays
From 9 to 28 June: Daily 10am – 9pm
also Mondays
Special opening hours: 14th, 24th and 25th May / 4th and 26th June 2015 10 am ‒ 7 pm
Admission: 14 euros, reduced 12 euros, family ticket 24 euros; free admission for children up to twelve years of age; groups of at least ten persons: reduced admission per person. Booking required for groups: +49(0)69-605098-200 or info@staedelmuseum.de.
Advance ticket sales: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Catalogue: A comprehensive catalogue edited by Felix Krämer will be published by Prestel to accompany the exhibition. With a preface by Max Hollein and texts by Christoph Asendorf, Eva Bader, Marlene Bielefeld, Hollis Clayson, André Dombrowski, Chantal Eschenfelder, Dorothee Hansen, Felicity Korn, Felix Krämer, Svenja Mordhorst, Ingrid Pfeiffer, Isolde Pludermacher, Nele Putz, Nerina Santorius, Beate Söntgen, and Maria Zinser. German and English editions, c. 300 pages, 39.90 euros (museum edition). Booklet: A booklet will be forthcoming on the occasion of the exhibition. German and English editions, 7.50 euros.
Digitorial: The Digitorial has been made possible by the Aventis Foundation. It can be accessed at monet.staedelmuseum.de. Audio guide: The audio guide has been made possible with support from the Georg und Franziska Speyer’sche Hochschulstiftung. It provides a guided tour of the exhibition in German and English. The audio guide was recoreded by the actress Diane Kruger. The fee for one audio guide is 4 EUR, for two audio guides 7 EUR.

Social Media: The Städel Museum communicates the exhibition in the social media with the hashtags #monet und #staedel.

General guided tours through the exhibition: Tue + Sat 3.00 p.m., Wed + Sun 11.00 a.m., Thur 7.00 p.m., Fri 5.00 p.m. Tickets: 5 euros plus admission; tickets will be available starting two hours before each tour, Wed + Sun as of 10.00 a.m., at the cash desk of the Städel Museum.
Lunchtime Special: admission + guided tour through the special exhibition (available only online), Tue to So 1.00 p.m., 18 euros, tickets.staedelmuseum.de.

Sponsored by: Commerzbank Foundation
Media Partner: Alnatura, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main
Mobility Partner: Deutsche Bahn AG
Cultural Partner: hr2-kultur The exhibition advertising campaign at Frankfurt Airport is supported by Fraport AG and Media Frankfurt.

The Städel Museum’s jubilee year starts with an exhibition of outstanding drawings and etchings by the French artist Jean-Jacques de Boissieu (1736–1810), which will be on display in the Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings from 11 February until 10 May 2015. Boissieu was already highly acclaimed beyond France in his lifetime. Not only princes but also private collectors like Johann Friedrich Städel (1728‒1816) were fascinated with the landscapes, genre scenes, and portraits depicted in the artist’s drawings and prints. The founder of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut acquired over twenty drawings and far more than two hundred etchings by Boissieu. These works are not only part of the Städel Museum’s oldest holdings but constitute one of the most comprehensive collections of Boissieu’s works in Germany. The thirteen drawings and eighty-three etchings which have been selected to be shown in the Städel’s special presentation offer an impressive insight into the artist’s production. Though created in a period of historically revolutionary events around the French Revolution, Boissieu’s oeuvre mirrors the landscape and life of the province around his native city of Lyon with an almost irritatingly unexcited and serious steadiness. His etched landscapes and portraits as well as his subtly nuanced brush and chalk drawings reveal a progressive closeness to reality fuelled by his study of nature that hints at a bourgeois understanding of art independent of any academic norms.

“We have decided to show some very special works from the more than one hundred thousand items of our Department of Prints and Drawings to start our bicentennial program off. The exhibition not only presents Johann Friedrich Städel as a knowledgeable collector of art but also aims at making our public familiar with a brilliant draftsman and engraver,” says Max Hollein, Director of the Städel Museum.

“The rich holdings of Boissieu’s etchings and drawings in Johann Friedrich Städel’s collection testify to the taste of the Frankfurt banker and spice merchant, who, as a collector, not only acquired outstanding works by old masters but was equally interested in the art of his day,” emphasizes Dr. Jutta Schütt, Head of the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings after 1750.

Born in Lyon in 1736, Jean-Jacques de Boissieu mainly dedicated himself to drawings and engravings in his work as an artist. While he produced about one thousand drawings and 151 etchings, only a small number of paintings has come down on us. Boissieu, who came from a Southern French gentry family and lost his father, a physician, in his early childhood, attended a free-of charge drawing school in his native Lyon, enjoying an education that was intended to serve the local silk industry. A Lyon art dealer encouraged him to try his hand at etching. As Boissieu had not studied at an art academy, he was considered an amateur in his day. The politically and socially turbulent times surrounding the French Revolution did not leave any marks on Boissieu’s oeuvre. His production comprises bourgeois private subjects and motific themes such as landscapes, portraits, and likenesses of family members as well as everyday and generalizing genre representations.

The presentation in the Exhibition Hall of the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings commences with a self-portrait by the sixty-year-old artist, an etching dating from 1796 and executed in two versions: the first shows Boissieu with a portrait of his wife in his hands, which has given way to a rustic idyll in the later sheet. The self-understanding of this artist who did not spend his life in Paris, the capital, but in Lyon, the country’s second largest city after Paris at the time, is rooted in his family and the region he was born in. The exhibition highlights these two strands with portraits such as that of his younger brother (c. 1781) or a motif like Soap Bubbles (1799), which might remind the viewer of the artist’s sons, on the one hand. On the other, there are topographical views of the city of Lyon and the scenery surrounding it, among them the etching View of the Rhône Bridge in Lyon (1761) presented as a striking example next to a watercolor dating from the year before. The painterly rendering of the structure, the distribution of light and shadow, and the atmospheric effect achieved this way clearly evidence the work’s original quality.

The art of Boissieu’s work is pivoted on portraits and genre pictures besides landscapes. One sheet assembles individual eye-catching faces and representations of both known and unknown persons ‒ physiognomic studies reminiscent of the Swiss philosopher and author Johann Caspar Lavater’s (1741–1801) publications dating from about the same time. The artist’s genre scenes render aspects of the region’s contemporary everyday world and are about listening (The Oboist, 1782) and watching (Portrait of the One-Hundred-Year-Old Man from Lyon, 1780), about teaching and learning (The Class, 1780), giving and taking (Old Man Giving Alms, 1780), work and craft (Large Coopers, 1790), about resting and playing, youth and old age. Beyond these primarily bourgeois private subjects, the presentation comprises merely a few etchings recording such outstanding current events as Pope Pius VII’s stay in Lyon in 1804.

With prints like the etching Les grands charlatans (1772) after a painting by Karel Dujardin (c. 1622–1678), the exhibition also explores adaptions of works by Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, which are no reproduction prints in the usual sense but by and large free transpositions. The example of his small etchings of heads and figures arranged in the form of scenes published under the title Griffonnements (Doodles) in 1758, which are also presented at the Städel, already reveals the artist’s orientation toward Dutch seventeenth-century art, which perfectly corresponds with the increased interest in the era to be observed in his time.

Jean-Jacques de Boissieu ranks among the great eighteenth-century masters of print. Though he spent most of his life in Lyon, he established the best connections with various publishers in Paris, for example, but also in Nuremberg and Mannheim and enjoyed a high standing throughout his life. That he was a member of the Institut de France as well as of the academies of Lyon, Florence, and Bologna indicates the artist’s renown. After a longer stay in Paris between 1762 and 1764, where he got to know influential artists such as Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) or collectors like Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774), Boissieu, joining the entourage of Louis-Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1743–1792), visited Genoa, Naples, and Rome. In the course of this journey, he met a number of personalities pointing the way like the philosopher and author Voltaire (1694–1778) or the archaeologist and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768). When travelling, he recorded his immediate impressions with his brushes, focusing on landscapes unfolding in the light. From then on, he fell back on these Italian nature studies for his works again and again, using them as direct models or memory props for etchings of freely composed landscapes throughout his life. Johann Friedrich Städel succeeded in acquiring one of Boissieu’s much sought-after Italian brush drawings, Ruins of the Temple of Apollo on the Shores of Lake Avernus (1765), for his foundation ‒ a sheet that will also be displayed in the Städel’s exhibition.

After his journey through Italy, Boissieu returned to his native Lyon and became a civil servant to the Crown in 1771, a post that ensured him a regular livelihood until the outbreak of the French Revolution. His noble descent, which had opened many doors for him until then, suddenly turned into a threat to his life. Finally, however, an official statement from Paris placed him and his works under protection.

In 1801, the sixty-five-year-old artist published a catalogue raisonné of his etchings. Johann Friedrich Städel acquired a copy supplemented by the artist in his own hand, which will also be part of the exhibition. Having cooperated with various Paris publishers for a few years early on, Boissieu took the distribution of his prints into his own hands in 1764. Only in his old age, from 1807 on, he had publishers ‒ this time Frauenholz in Nuremberg and Artaria in Mannheim ‒ represent his works again. Städel seems to have been supplied by these German dealers. We do not know whether the collector ever came into contact with the artist he revered. It is indicative of the Frankfurt citizen’s good taste and foresight that he included the works of a French contemporary pursuing his own way into the ensemble of his collection. There is something else Städel and Boissieu had in common: Boissieu had also set up his own collection of artworks. As an artist, collector, and connoisseur of art, Boissieu was even asked to join the committee responsible for preparing the establishment of a museum in Lyon. Their decisive role in founding a museum is another aspect the two contemporaries had in common.

Jean-Jacques de Boissieu. A contemporary of Städel's

Curator: Dr Jutta Schütt, Head of the Department of Prints and Drawings after 1750

Exhibition dates: 11 February to 10 May 2015
Press preview: Tuesday, 10 February 2015, 11.00 a.m.
Venue: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, phone +49(0)69-605098-0, fax +49(0)69-605098-111
Visitor services: +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de

Opening hours of the Städel Museum:
Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun, and holidays 10.00 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.; Thur and Fri 10.00 a.m. – 9.00 p.m.;
from 11 March 2015 Tue, Wed, Sat, Sun, and holidays 10.00 a.m. –7 p.m., Thur and Fri 10.00 a.m. – 9.00 p.m.
Special opening hours: 3 April, 5 April, and 6 April 2015 10.00 a.m. – 7.00 p.m.; 1 May 2015 10.00 a.m. – 7.00 p.m.
Admission: 12 euros, reduced 10 euros, family ticket 20 euros; free admission for children up to twelve years of age; Sat, Sun, and holidays 14 Euro, reduced 12 euros, family ticket 24 euros.
From 11 March 2015 14 euros, reduced 12 euros, family ticket 24 euros; free admission for children up to twelve years of age; groups of at least ten persons: reduced admission per person. Groups by appointment only: please call +49(0)69-605098-200 or contact info@staedelmuseum.de.
Advance ticket sales: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Opening hours of the Study Hall, Department of Prints and Drawings: Wed, Fri 2.00–5.00 p.m.; Thur 2.00–7.00 p.m.

General guided tours through the exhibition: Fri 7.00 p.m., Sun 3.00 p.m.
Special tours by request: +49(0)69-605098-200, info@staedelmuseum.de
Further offers at www.staedelmuseum.de

On the Way to the Future - the Städel's Digital Extension

200 Years Städel: Facts & Figures

200 YEARS STÄDEL “THE FRANKFURT CITIZENS’ MUSEUM: A GIFT FOR EVERYONE” – GERMANY’S OLDEST CIVIC MUSEUM FOUNDATION CELEBRATES ITS ANNIVERSARY YEAR WITH TOP-NOTCH EXHIBITIONS, A GRAND PUBLIC CELEBRATION, PROMINENT ADDITIONS TO ITS COLLECTION AND A MAJOR EXPANSION OF ITS EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMME INTO THE DIGITAL REALM

An eventful year awaits the Städel Museum founded in 1815. Germany’s oldest civic museum foundation is celebrating “200 Years Städel”. In honour of its anniversary, the Städel will be featuring a large number of top-notch special exhibitions from Claude Monet to John Baldessari, a major expansion of its digital educational programme, prominent additions to its collection and new publications – all under the motto “The Frankfurt citizens’ museum: a gift for everyone”. On 15 March 2015, the two-hundredth anniversary of its founding day, the Städel will moreover host a grand public celebration with free admission and a wide range of offers throughout the museum and its grounds.

The anniversary year got off to a start with two very special birthday gifts: The chairman of the Städelscher Museums-Verein, Sylvia von Metzler, presented Städel director Max Hollein and chairman of the administration Nikolaus Schweickart with the painting The Assumption of the Virgin of 1596/97 by Guido Reni (1575–1642) as well as a precious drawing by Edgar Degas (1834–1917). For the purchase of the Reni painting, the museum is indebted to the members of the Städelscher Museums-Verein for the successful donation drive they carried out. The acquisition of Degas’s Study of a Nude (Étude de Nu) (ca. 1888–92), on the other hand, was made possible by the generous donation of a single Frankfurt patron of the arts. These prominent works close two gaps in the Städel collection, which spans seven hundred years of art, and are at the same time a harbinger of things to come over the course of the anniversary year: in 2015, Frankfurt’s citizens’ museum will successfully continue its two-hundred-year tradition of dedicated patronage with a large number of gifts, donations and other forms of support, to be publicized separately in due time.

What Johann Friedrich Städel (1728–1816) left behind can be understood as an exceptionally generous and farsighted gift. On 15 March 2015, the banker and businessman of Frankfurt signed the third and final version of his will, in which he bequeathed his entire fortune and his art collection to the foundation that was to be named the “Städelsches Kunstinstitut”. In addition to his donation of immense material and art-historical assets, he thus introduced a visionary idea that has lost nothing of its impact to this day. The Städel – Germany’s most prominent civic cultural foundation – serves as an outstanding model of broad-based civic engagement which continues to contribute decisively to the preservation and further development of this cultural institution. Together, the passion of a single citizen and the dedication of many gave rise to a comprehensive collection of art dating from the Middle Ages to the present, one of Europe’s most prestigious museums and a prominent fixture in Frankfurt’s civic society.

As a means of shedding light on the founding vision – but also the museum’s present state and significance – the Städel has designed an anniversary wall for its main stairway. There, on more than fifty square metres, the founding year 1815 and the anniversary 2015 are juxtaposed. What was the nature of the Städel collection in 1815, and who were the visitors who came to Johann Friedrich Städel’s residence to admire his art? What are the dimensions of the Städel museum’s collection today – and in what ways can it be experienced? What has changed fundamentally in the past two hundred years, and what has remained the same? With the aid of historical and anecdotal examples, numerical comparisons and visual impressions, the anniversary wall provides insights into the beginnings of Germany’s oldest civic museum foundation and what it is today.

The Städel is moreover celebrating its anniversary with a substantial number of large-scale research and exhibition projects. Among the highlights will be the special exhibition “Monet and the Birth of Impressionism” (11 March to 21 June 2015), presenting some one hundred masterpieces by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne and others, as well as a group exhibition on figurative painting in the German Federal Republic of the 1980s (“The 80s”, 22 July to 18 October 2015). The anniversary exhibition planned for the autumn, “The Masterworks in Dialogue: Eminent Guests for the Anniversary” (7 October 2015 to 24 January 2016) will present approximately eighty select works from all areas of the Städel collection side by side with masterworks and companion pieces from the world’s most renowned museums. Spectacular temporary “partnerships” and long-yearned-for “encounters” will thus come about. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of lectures by the Städel’s curators on the history of the collection; the opening address will be given by Daniel Kehlmann. From 5 November 2015 onward, the Städel’s exhibition annex will moreover feature a very special series of works by the American concept and media artist John Baldessari. Conceived specifically for the Städel, the series will be based on objects in the collection: masterpieces by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Agnolo Bronzino, Dirck van Baburen, Maria Lassnig and others will serve as visual material for the large-scale pictorial collages by the world-famous artist (until 24 January 2016).

The two-hundred-year existence of the Städel Museum will also provide the occasion for a fundamental redefinition of the diverse educational programme and the visitor experience offered by Germany’s oldest civic museum foundation. Against the background of the increasing digitalization of everyday life, the expansion of the museum’s educational responsibilities into the digital realm represents a key building block for the Frankfurt institution. To this end, the Städel has initiated a wide range of projects to be made public over the course of the anniversary year: A comprehensive digital exhibit platform is presently in the making – a tool as intelligent as it is intuitive that will allow visitors to “roam” our collections at their leisure. Innovative and educational computer games for children are also undergoing realization, online art-history courses are being developed in cooperation with the Leuphana Universität, the prototype of a completely novel digital art book is being produced, and the educational “digitorial” already available now offers a modern means of preparing for visits to exhibitions. Starting in February 2015, Städel visitors will moreover have free access to WiFi throughout the museum and its grounds, allowing them, for example, to download the Städel app (available from March onward), listen to the audio guide on their own devices, or simply document their museum experience and share it by way of the social media. A newly developed “cabinet of digital curiosities” right in the museum will supplement the media table by providing means of trying out the new exhibit platform and the app game for children.

In addition to the new digital formats, a commemorative publication entitled …zum Besten hiesiger Stadt und Bürgerschaft. 200 Jahre Städel will be published in March by the Prestel Verlag. In addition to essays by Städel authors such as Max Hollein and Jochen Sander, it will contain a contribution by Thomas Gaehtgens (director of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles) on the development of the Städel Museum from Johann Friedrich Städel’s foundation to the European institution it is today. Florian Illies will devote his article to the “matter of taste”, author Martin Mosebach will speculate on the founder’s personality, Isabel Pfeiffer-Poensgen (secretary general of the Kulturstiftung der Länder) will address the significance and development of civic engagement for art and culture in Germany, Christoph Stölzl (president of the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar) will write about the foundation as an expression of the civic will, and Wolfgang Ullrich (professor of art theory and media theory at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe and pro-rector for research) will report on museums and the social media. Finally, a conversation between Sylvia von Metzler, Nikolaus Schweickart and Felix Semmelroth (Deputy Mayor in Charge of Culture of the City of Frankfurt am Main) moderated by Tim Sommer (editor in chief of art – Das Kunstmagazin) will revolve around volunteer involvement in the area of art and culture, the past and future of the Städel Museum and the importance of the foundation in and for Frankfurt. A series of scenes by the Frankfurt photographer Katrin Binner will provide an introduction.

200 YEARS STÄDEL

Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, telephone +49(0)69-605098-0, fax +49(0)69-605098-111 Visitor services: +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main Museum opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat and Sun 10 am ‒ 6 pm, Thu and Fri 10 am ‒ 9 pm Advance ticket sales at: tickets.staedelmuseum.de

Social media: The Städel Museum is communicating the anniversary on the social media with the hashtag #200jahrestaedel

Media partners: 3sat, Fraport AG, Media Frankfurt GmbH, Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main Culture partner: hr2-kultur

A GIFT FROM THE STÄDELSCHER MUSEUMS-VEREIN: THE STÄDEL RECEIVES PROMINENT WORKS BY GUIDO RENI AND EDGAR DEGAS FOR ITS BIRTHDAY GUIDO RENI (1575–1642), THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN, CA. 1596/97; EDGAR DEGAS (1834–1917), STUDY OF A NUDE (ÉTUDE DE NU), CA. 1888–92

Frankfurt's Städel Museum, founded in 1815, has started its anniversary year with two exceptional new acquisitions ‒ The Assumption of the Virgin of 1596/97 by Guido Reni (1575‒1642), and the precious Study of a Nude (Étude de Nu) (1888–92), a drawing by Edgar Degas (1834–1917). Both works are entering the collection as special birthday presents from the Städelscher Museums-Verein. The purchasing funds for the Reni painting were raised entirely by means of a successful donation drive and the outstanding dedication of numerous members of the association founded in 1899. The acquisition of the Degas drawing was made possible by a single donation from a Frankfurt patron of the arts.

In the Städel's Old Masters collection, Reni's Assumption of the Virgin closes a major gap in the area of early Italian Baroque painting. Executed on copper, this gem of a painting is one of the few surviving early works by Reni, an artist of key significance for the development of Baroque painting in Bologna and Rome whose works still contribute strongly to shaping our image of the Italian Baroque today. Degas's Study of a Nude (Étude de Nu) dates from the final phase of the artist's career and is an important milestone on the way to the modern art of the twentieth century. The work represents a valuable enhancement to the nineteenth-century French drawing holdings of the Städel Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings.

“The continual expansion of the Städel collection is one of our association's chief goals. Since its founding in 1899, the Museums-Verein has already been responsible for the purchase of more than one thousand prestigious artworks. We are very proud and happy that ‒ thanks to the exceptional support of many of our members ‒ we have now succeeded in fulfilling this great wish for the Städel on its two-hundredth birthday”, commented Sylvia von Metzler, chairman of the Städelscher Museums-Verein.

“For the past two hundred years, the development of the Städel collection has built on the dedicated patronage of many citizens. The two most recent acquisitions not only represent superb additions to our holdings and definitive works in the history of European art, but are also a living symbol of art patronage. The Städelscher Museums-Verein and its members are more active than ever before – their generosity fills me with the utmost respect and gratitude.

Whereas the donation campaign for the purchase of the painting by Guido Reni received generous support from Fritz and Waltraud Mayer, Ibeth Biermann, Dieter and Ingrid Seydler as well as a large number of further large and small donations from association members and sponsoring institutions, the acquisition of the Degas drawing was made possible by a single donation from a Frankfurt patron of the arts. The total volume of the two purchases amounts to some two million euros.

GUIDO RENI (1575–1642) THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN, CA. 1596/97 OIL ON COPPER, 58 X 44.4 CM In the seventeenth century, Guido Reni was one of Europe's most successful and most highly celebrated painters. His art was greatly in demand among prestigious patrons of the nobility and the clergy. His influence made itself felt above all in the religious imagery of European painting, which it continued to change and shape even after the Baroque epoch had come to an end. Executed around 1596/97, Reni's painting places the Virgin at the pictorial centre. She is surrounded by angels and painted in the canonical colours ‒ with a red robe, a blue mantle and a white veil. She floats on a throne of clouds, her arms spread out wide, her gaze lifted heavenward in the transfigured manner typical of Reni. In art history, this form of depiction is referred to as the “himmelnde Blick” (“heaven-directed gaze”). As Reni's career continued, it was to become his trademark. A golden radiance fills the pictorial space. The celestial character of the light is an allusion to God the Father, who will receive Mary in heaven. For this composition, Reni took his orientation above all from two major altarpieces of the Assumption of the Virgin (1592‒94) by Annibale Carracci (1560‒1609) and his brother Agostino Carracci (1557‒1602), today in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna. Both painted just a few years before Reni's work, they supplied the motivic inspiration for the figure of the Virgin seated on the throne of clouds with outspread arms, as well as for the angels surrounding her. At the same time, however, Reni's interpretation of the theme is not only entirely different, but can even be said to revolutionize the conventions for depicting the motif. He has translated the pathos of Mary's dramatic ascension ‒ a mode of representation learned from the High Renaissance and above all the late Raphael ‒ into a gentle upward floating full of poetic harmony and a clear pictorial composition based on geometrical shapes. The three main figures ‒ Mary and the two large angels in the foreground ‒ form an isosceles triangle. In fact, Reni's work seems to anticipate the revolving oval compositions that would come to be favoured in Baroque painting. In its manner of depiction, the work embodies the transition from Late Mannerism to the Early Baroque. “Reni's Assumption of the Virgin is a masterpiece and a key work of the Italian Baroque. After more than four centuries in private ownership, at the Städel it will be made accessible to the public for the first time in its history”, explained Bastian Eclercy, the head of the collection of pre-1800 Italian, French and Spanish painting at the Städel, who is very happy about the acquisition. The painting's provenance can be traced without interruption back to the artist's lifetime. Already his early biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616‒1693) reported in 1678 that among Reni's earliest works was an Assumption of the Virgin painted on copper in the Sampieri collection in Bologna ‒ undoubtedly the very work now in the Städel's possession. It was presumably commissioned by the jurist Astorre di Vincenzo Sampieri, a canon of the Cathedral of San Pietro in Bologna and the owner of an important art collection. After being passed down in the family for centuries, in 1811 the painting found its way into the collection of Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon's viceroy and the later Duke of Leuchtenberg. In Munich it was Johann David Passavant (1787‒1861) who catalogued the superb Leuchtenberg collection in 1851 and first had it reproduced in engravings. In 1917 the work was purchased by Nordiska, a Stockholm art dealer; sometime after 1925 it made its way from there into the collection of Rudolph Poeschel, where it verifiably remained until 1961. In that year, the Assumption of the Virgin entered a private Swiss collection by way of auction. Finally, in 2013 it was acquired by Jean-Luc Baroni, a London-based Old Masters dealer, at an auction carried out by Koller in Zürich; Baroni then sold it to the Städelscher Museums-Verein in 2014. Thanks to the acquisition of Reni's Assumption, the Städel collection now reflects all the more clearly the key role played by Italy in the history of Baroque painting. In the Städel's large Italian gallery, the newly acquired masterpiece can be linked to a somewhat later painting by Reni, Christ at the Column (1604), but also to the most recent new addition to the Old Masters collection, Jusepe de Ribera's Saint James the Greater, for which the Städel has a donation by the patron Dagmar Westberg to thank. Owing to this happy coincidence, the Städel is now for the first time in a position to present the two most important roots of European Baroque painting with the aid of two superb works: whereas Ribera's Saint James stands for the school of Caravaggio, Reni's early Assumption of the Virgin represents the academy of the Carracci and the reforms introduced in painting around 1600.

EDGAR DEGAS (1834–1917) STUDY OF A NUDE (ÉTUDE DE NU), CA. 1888–92 CHARCOAL AND PASTEL ON PAPER, 55.8 X 36.8 CM Edgar Degas is among the most prominent French artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. World famous for his portraits, ballet and jockey scenes, as well as figures of women bathing or combing their hair, he is today considered one of the pioneers of modern art. In the drawing acquired for the Städel Museum, Degas depicted a close-up view of a female body, but not in such a way as to parade his model to the viewer. On the contrary, this study demonstrates the quality of dissociated perception so typical of Degas's art, and takes it to its very limits: the artist has achieved a delicate interplay between respectful observation and sensual depiction. This late nude conveys an undeniable impression of plasticity and concentrated energy. In the process, Degas strips her of her individuality, while extracting from her form an immediacy and expressive power virtually classical in nature. “Edgar Degas returned to certain key themes again and again. His approach can be described as a process of the constant intensification of his artistic experiences. The nude drawing dating from the period between 1888 and 1892 refers the beholder to his paintings as well as his sculptural work, and is thus capable of standing for Degas in his entirety”, observes Jutta Schütt, the head of the Städel Museum's collection of post-1750 prints and drawings. The work bears the Degas estate stamp (“Lugt 658”). It remained in the artist's studio until his death in 1917 and was auctioned off with the rest of his estate in 1918. In the decades that followed it alternated between private collections and the art market in Belgium, New York (1949), London and California (since 1981). The Städel Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings has in its holdings a small but extremely high-quality group of nineteenth-century French drawings, among the best in Germany. Until now, Degas has been represented at the Städel by the early drawing Portrait of Madame Gaujelin (1867) and the monotype Repos sur le lit (ca. 1876/77). The new acquisition will soon be made available to interested visitors in the Study Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings during the department’s regular opening hours.

THE STÄDELSCHER MUSEUMS-VEREIN The Städelscher Museums-Verein, with whose aid both purchases were realized, has been supporting the museum since 1899. Its more than 7,600 members champion the cause of the Städel Museum as well as the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung. Among the Städelscher Museums-Verein's chief aims is the continual expansion of the collections through the purchase of artworks. Since its founding, the association has already acquired more than one thousand works for the Städel.

200 YEARS STÄDEL When he committed his will to paper in 1815, Johann Friedrich Städel laid the cornerstone for Germany's oldest civic museum foundation. The 15th of March 2015 will be the two-hundredth anniversary of that momentous day. The Städel Museum will be honouring its anniversary all year long with a large number of top-notch exhibition and research projects, numerous prominent acquisitions and additions to the collection, a grand public celebration, and the major expansion of its education programme, especially in the digital realm.

Städel Museum Information: www.staedelmuseum.de, info@staedelmuseum.de, telephone +49(0)69-605098-0, fax +49(0)69-605098-111 Visitor services: +49(0)69-605098-232, besucherdienst@staedelmuseum.de Location: Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main Museum opening hours: Tue, Wed, Sat and Sun 10 am ‒ 6 pm, Thu and Fri 10 am ‒ 9 pm Department of Prints and Drawings opening hours: Wed 2 ‒ 5 pm, Thu 2 ‒ 7 pm, Fri 2 ‒ 5 pm

200 Years Städel: Exhibition Program