»From Menzel to Monet« − Hamburger Kunsthalle shows little-known Wolffson Collection

Albert Wolffson was a well-known lawyer and from 1898 was involved in the administration of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. After Wolffson's death in 1913, parts of his collection were donated to the Kunsthalle; decades later, most of the remaining works became the property of the art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt as Nazi looted art. In the course of the exhibition of the Gurlitt Collection in the Gropius Bau in 2018/2019, 36 drawings by Adolph Menzel, among others, were returned to the Wolffson family. Six of these drawings and other loans are now on view in »From Menzel to Monet. The Hamburg Wolffson Collection«.

A highlight of the exhibition is Claude Monet's painting »The Waterloo Bridge«, which the Kunsthalle acquired from Wolffson's widow in 1927. Other paintings, drawings and graphic works by, for example, Arthur Illies, Max Liebermann and Valentin Ruths are complemented by numerous photographs and other archive material. Thus, the exhibition also brings Wolffson into deserved focus as a person who was close to the Kunsthalle in its earlier days.