Abstract
After dealer Joseph Duveen bought the entire art collection of the prominent Parisian collector Rudolf Kann in summer 1907 and subsequently sold almost all of the artworks to American collectors, the competitiveness of European private collectors as well as public institutions became questionable. My contribution focuses on outlining the circumstances of the sale of Rudolf Kann's collection of art, presented from the perspective of Wilhelm von Bode, director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum (now Bode Museum) and renowned connoisseur of old master paintings.
This study is based mainly on the research of the previously unpublished correspondence between Wilhelm von Bode and the members of the Kann family - preserved at the Central Archive in Berlin, and the records of Duveen company including Bode's letters with Maurice and Eduard Kann - archived at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Thanks to these archival documents, I was able to elucidate the process of negotiating the sale's conditions and further explore Bode's relationships with the members of the Kann family and with Joseph Duveen.
In the context of the sale of the Kann family collection, we can learn much about Bode's opinion on the taste and knowledge of American collectors and at the same time outline some of the basic issues of the more complex European-American art market's dynamics in the early 20th century.