The Cleveland Museum of Art

• Provenance
  1991-

  The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

  1990-1991

  (Otto Naumann, Ltd. and Galerie Sanct Lucas, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)

  After 1947 -1990

  Dr. Karl Josef Steger, Vienna, sold to Otto Naumann, Ltd. and Galerie Sanct Lucas

  Probably early twentieth century - after 1945

  Baron Rudolf von Gutmann [1880-1966], sold to Dr. Karl Josef Steger

  Provenance Footnotes

  1 According to the provenance provided by Otto Naumann, Ltd. to CMA, Naumann/Galerie Sanct Lucas purchased the Ochtervelt in 1990 from a Viennese private collector, who Roman Herzig, director of Galerie Sanct Lucas, recalled was Dr. Steger.

  2 To show their appreciation for his management of their postwar restitution proceedings, the Gutmanns sold to Steger some pieces from their collection, including the Ochtervelt (Roman Herzig, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Sept. 9, 2014).  It is not known exactly when Gutmann sold the Ochtervelt to Steger.

  3 According to the provenance provided to the Cleveland Museum of Art by Otto Naumann, Ltd. (“Naumann”), the painting was purchased on the Paris art market in the 1850s by the Gutmann family. Naumann concluded this because “the bulk of the Gutmann pictures were acquired in this way, and the frame that accompanied the painting was made in France in the mid-nineteenth century.”  To date CMA has been unable to confirm the foregoing conclusion. The date and circumstances of Gutmann’s acquisition of the painting are unknown. In 1938, Gutmann and his wife Marianne fled Austria, escaping to Czechoslovakia and eventually settling in British Columbia, where they lived until Rudolf’s death in 1966.   Most of Gutmann’s collection, which consisted of over 1000 objects, was seized by the Nazis during the war, much of it slated for the Linz Museum.  According to Roman Herzig of the Galerie Sanct Lucas (email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Sept. 9, 2014), the Ochtervelt was among a group of artworks belonging to Gutmann that the family lawyer, Dr. Karl Josef Steger, hid, and it therefore escaped confiscation.  Indeed, the Ochtervelt does not appear on the list of works confiscated from the Gutmann collection (“Abschrift des Inventars des Sammlung R.G. [Rudolf Gutmann], Wien, I., Beethovenplatz 3, die in das Zentraldepot beschlagnahmter Kunstgegenstände in der Neuen Burg verbracht wurde, 1939”) nor is it found on the list of confiscated works published in Sophie Lillie’s Was Einmal War (2003), which documents Vienna’s plundered art collections.  In 1947, with the help of Dr. Karl Josef Steger, the Gutmann’s lawyer, much of Gutmann’s collection was restituted.
• Citations
  Otto Naumann, Ltd., invoice, March 29, 1991, in CMA curatorial file.

  Otto Naumann, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, May 28, 2013, in CMA curatorial file.

  Roman Herzig, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Sept. 9, 2014, in CMA curatorial file.

  Roman Herzig, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Sept. 9, 2014, in CMA curatorial file.

  Invoice, Otto Naumann, Ltd. to the Cleveland Museum of Art, March 29, 1991, in CMA curatorial file.

  Roman Herzig, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Sept. 9, 2014, in CMA curatorial file.

  Chong, Alan. "Notable Acquisitions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 78, no. 3 (1991): 63-147. Reproduced and Mentioned: p. 79 www.jstor.org

  Ho, Angela K. Creating Distinctions in Dutch Genre Painting: Repetition and Invention. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. Reproduced: P. 165, fig. 56; Mention: P. 163

  Bianchi, Pamela. The Origins of the Exhibition Space (1450-1750). Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2023. Reproduced: p. 88, fig. 7
• Exhibition History
  Notable Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 15, 1991).

  Notable Acquisitions, The Cleveland Museum of Art, June 7 - Sep 15, 1991
• Cite this Page
  {{cite web|title=A Musical Company|url=false|author=Jacob Ochtervelt|year=c. 1668|access-date=26 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}