Spendthrift couple of doctors

Treasure worth millions as a gift for the Leopold Museum!

The Vienna Leopold Museum has been richly endowed

(Bild: Leopold Museum)

A couple of Lower Austrian doctors have donated 37 works by 24 artists - from Egon Schiele to Richard Gerstl and Anton Kolig - to Vienna's Leopold Museum: a total value of 14 million euros!

Over the course of forty years of passionate collecting, a couple of Lower Austrian doctors have succeeded in amassing an extraordinary treasure trove of paintings. The collection focuses on Austrian modernism. The couple, who wish to remain anonymous, have now donated 37 works by 24 artists with a total value of 14 million euros to Vienna's Leopold Museum. Incidentally, the museum's founder Rudolf Leopold and his wife Elisabeth were also doctors.

Most of the exhibits are paintings, but there are also watercolors and drawings by Egon Schiele, Richard Gerstl, Broncia Koller-Pinell, Tina Blau-Lang and Anton Kolig.

Egon Schiele, Self-portrait with long hair, 1907

(Bild: © Leopold Museum, Wien – Schenkung E. & H. H.)

"It's great to meet people who see their passion for collecting as a life's work and decide to make their collection accessible to the public through a donation," says Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum, "this indicates a pronounced philanthropic nature on the part of the donors and, in this particular case, fits particularly well with a concept of the human condition as a basic condition of human life and action, guided by the medical ethos. This donation represents an essential enrichment of our collection holdings and at the same time represents an obligation to fulfill the noblest task of museum work: to preserve, research and communicate the works to our public."

Richard Gerstl, Interior with Thonet chair (room), fall 1908

(Bild: © Leopold Museum, Wien – Schenkung E. & H. H.)

Two oil paintings by Egon Schiele, one of the most important Austrian Expressionists, of whom the museum has the world's largest and most important collection, were donated: a self-portrait painted in 1907 showing the young artist with long hair and a portrait of Schiele's uncle Leopold Czihaczek from the same year. The donation also includes three Schiele works on paper. With the drawing "Mädchen mit Haarmasche" (1909), the watercolor "Schwangere" (1910) and a female nude from 1917, works from important creative phases of the artist are represented.

The interior with Thonet chair was created by the groundbreaking pioneer of Austrian Expressionism Richard Gerstl in 1908, the last year of his life. The color chalk lithograph Self-portrait from two sides as a painter by Oskar Kokoschka was created in 1923. Kokoschka used the motif for the poster of the exhibition at the Kunstsalon Wolfsberg in Zurich.

Broncia Koller-Pinell, Still Life with Oranges, Flower Vase and Statuette, 1890

(Bild: © Leopold Museum, Wien – Schenkung E. & H. H.)

The watercolor "Fairy Tale" (around 1926) and two male nudes by Anton Kolig are part of the donation. Like Kolig, Anton Mahringer also belonged to the Carinthian artists' group of the Nötsch Circle. He created a self-portrait (1952) and the "Blue Landscape" from 1961.

The recent donation of two paintings - Koller-Pinell's "Still Life with Oranges, Flower Vase and Statuette" (1890) and a portrait of her daughter Silvia from 1910 - further emphasizes this important artist in the Leopold Museum.

The earliest painting in the donation is "Square in Szolnok" by Tina Blau-Lang (1874): August von Pettenkofen had already founded the Szolnok School of Painting around 1850, a painters' colony to which Theodor von Hörmann and later Tina Blau also belonged.

"The new additions fit perfectly into the Leopold Museum's collection profile and are predominantly by artists whose important works are already in the Leopold Museum," says Wipplinger. The works from this donation, amounting to a double-digit million sum, will be on display in future as part of the permanent collection presentation as well as selectively in the course of special exhibitions.