A three piece suite with embroidered covers

A three piece suite with embroidered covers

Walnut and beech, gros and petit point embroidery in wool and silk over upholstery. Pair of Louis XIII armchairs with tall backs and X-form stretchers and a later canapé with moulded frame on eight serpentine supports. The covers embroidered with mythological motifs and animals in petit point with floral surrounds in gros point. H canapé 101.5, W 217, seat depth 68 cm, armchairs H 110.5, W 67, seat depth 57 cm.
The chairs Louis XIII, first half 17h C., the canapé third quarter 18th C.

We are pleased that an amicable settlement has been reached between the consignor and the heirs of Rudolf Mosse.

A three-part seating set made of walnut and beech wood with elaborately embroidered covers in colored petit point and gros point embroidery depicting mythological motifs and animal depictions, once belonged to the important Jewish publisher Rudolf Mosse (1843–1920). Based in Berlin, Mosse was one of the most successful entrepreneurs during the imperial era. He was the owner of the „Annoncen-Expedition“, founded in 1867, which was the first professional “advertising agency”. The Rudolf Mosse publishing house was even more popular than the agency. In 1871 he founded his own daily newspaper, the “Berliner Tageblatt” – a flagship of the liberal Berlin bourgeoisie. With a fortune of 40 million marks and an annual income of 2.54 million marks, Rudolf Mosse was one of the wealthiest personalities in Prussia in 1912, at the same time a philanthropist and an outstanding supporter of the German liberal bourgeoisie. As a collector, Mosse was enthusiastic about many different areas from different e, mainly the art of his own generation, namely works of German Realism from the second half of the 19th century. Rudolf Mosse himself probably only began to build a collection of art objects in the 1870s. He acquired the majority of the objects between 1880 and the beginning of the First World War. Between 1882 and 1888 he had a neo-baroque palace in the style of French hotels built by the architects Gustav Ebe and Julius Benda in the center of Berlin, at Leipziger Platz 15 (front side and Vossstrasse 22, courtyard side). Mosse and his family lived there surrounded by their valuable art collection, including carpets, furniture, porcelain, paintings and sculptures. The first collection catalog appeared in 1908. Important art critics praised the collection, then known as the “Mosseum,” which was open to the public by appointment. His adopted daughter Erna Felicia Mosse (1888-1972) – married since 1910 to the merchant's son and director of the Mosse company, Hans Lachmann (1885-1944) – was the sole heir to Rudolf Mosse's estate, which also included the publishing house. Like many other companies in the global economic crisis of the 1920s and during the 1930s, the Mosse Group had to file for bankruptcy in 1932. Shortly after the handover of power to Adolf Hitler on January 30, 1933, the National Socialists dismantled the company empire. The Mosse family fell victim to persecution because of their Jewish origins. After the forced conversion of assets into a foundation in June 1933, Felica Mosse and Hans Lachmann-Mosse managed to emigrate to France with their three children, and from there they moved on to the United States. They had to leave all their possessions behind and could only watch from a distance as the “Rudolf Mosse-Treuhandverwaltung-GmbH” (Rudolf Mosse Trust Administration) appointed by the National Socialists auctioned off his art possessions and home furnishings through the Rudolph Lepke's art auction house on May 29 and 30, 1934. The auction of the “Rudolf Mosse Collection”, which took place in the crowded ground floor hall of the Mosse-Palais at Leipziger Platz 15, was not only important for the German and international art trade at the time, but also a social event in Berlin. The three-part salon set was auctioned by Rudolph Lepke in Berlin in 1934: the two armchairs (Louis curved walnut frame. The furniture, valued at 1,000 Reichsmark at the time, sold easily at a hammer price of 2,700 Reichsmark. Decades later, in 1988, Lempertz auctioned off the three-piece seating set. In 2011 it resurfaced at Koller auctions in Zurich. Only on July 3, 2014, a search report and claim for the historical salon set from the Mosse collection was published in the Lost Art database as cultural property confiscated due to Nazi persecution. In the database of the Mosse Art Research Initiative (MARI), which was launched in 2017, it is documented as part of Rudolf Mosse's former art collection. Thanks to the mediation of an amicable agreement between the current private owner and the heirs of Rudolf Mosse in accordance with the Washington Principles, the historical salon set will be auctioned at the Kunsthaus Lempertz in Cologne at the spring auction 1244 on May 15, 2024 with an estimate of 8,000 - 10,000 euros .

Provenance

Collection of Rudolf Mosse, auctioned by Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus Berlin on 30 May 1934, lots 205, 206 and 207.
- Lempertz'sche Kunstversteigerung, June 25, 1988, lot 1686, 1693 - Koller Auktionen AG, Zurich, auction 158/1, lot 1075 (unsold). - German private collection.

Literature

For the chairs cf. M. Jarry, Stilmöbel. Stühle Sessel Kanapees von Ludwig XIII. bis Napoleon III., Düsseldorf-Lausanne 1974, illus. 2.