Dr. Vitale Bloch (1900–1975) was an art historian, collector and art dealer of Russian-Jewish origin. From the 1920s onward, he was active in the international trade in Old Master paintings. He was associated, among others, with the Berlin art dealer Fritz Rothmann and later worked from The Hague and Paris. His name appears in the provenance histories of numerous Dutch, Flemish and Italian paintings.[1]
Bloch differed from many art dealers in that he was first and foremost an art historian and connoisseur. Over several decades, he published extensively on Old Master painting and contributed regularly to the authoritative journal Oud Holland. His publications included studies on artists such as Rembrandt, Paulus Bor and Caesar van Everdingen.[2]
A good example is The Goddess Pallas Athena with the Horse Pegasus by Theodoor van Thulden. Bloch purchased the painting in July 1943 at a Van Marle & Bignell auction in The Hague and retained it until 1964. The work subsequently passed through the art trade before entering the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum.[3]
Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem’s The Toilet of Bathsheba was also in Bloch’s possession. In 1955, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam acquired the painting from him.[4] One anecdote illustrating his absent-mindedness recounts that he once gave two landscapes to an acquaintance. Because the recipient did not take them away immediately, Bloch later inadvertently sold them to a client.
Vitale Bloch during the Second World War
Bloch’s position during the German occupation forms a complex chapter in his career. As a Jewish art historian, he was himself in an extremely vulnerable position. At the same time, he maintained contacts with individuals involved in German art acquisitions, including Erhard Göpel, who worked for the planned Führermuseum in Linz.
Research by the Dutch Restitutions Committee has shown that Göpel offered Bloch protection, while Bloch in turn made his expertise and contacts available. His name therefore also appears in documentation relating to works of art that circulated on the market during the occupation years.[5] This history must be understood within the exceptional circumstances in which Jewish art experts and dealers sought to survive under German occupation.
Bloch’s career also intersects with another sensitive subject in art history: forgeries and erroneous attributions. He lived and worked at a time when connoisseurship was often decisive in determining the authenticity of a painting. The Han van Meegeren affair demonstrated how vulnerable this system could be. After the war, Bloch would engage explicitly with the significance and limitations of art-historical connoisseurship.[6]
The collection of Vitale Bloch
Bloch was not only an art dealer but also assembled an important collection of his own. Upon his death in 1975, he bequeathed nineteen paintings and sixteen drawings to the municipality of Rotterdam for Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The municipality accepted the bequest in 1978, and a separate catalogue of the collection was published that same year.[7]
The bequest underlines the distinctive position Bloch occupied throughout his life. He was simultaneously a scholar, collector, adviser and dealer. As a result, his name continues to appear in museum catalogues, historic auction catalogues, photographic archives and provenance records of paintings across Europe and the United States.
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Footnotes
[1] National Gallery of Art, Washington, provenance authority record Dr. Vitale Bloch (1900–1975); Edward Grasman, “Vitale Bloch: the early years”, RKD Bulletin 2010/2, pp. 3–12.
[2] See, among others, Vitale Bloch, “Zum frühen Rembrandt”, Oud Holland 50 (1933), and “Pro Caesar Boetius van Everdingen”, Oud Holland 53 (1936).
[3] RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, provenance record for Theodoor van Thulden, The Goddess Pallas Athena with the Horse Pegasus.
[4] RKD, Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, The Toilet of Bathsheba, 1594; provenance: Vitale Bloch, Paris, until 1955; Rijksmuseum Amsterdam from 1955.
[5] Dutch Restitutions Committee, binding opinion concerning Jacob van Geel, Mountain Landscape with Tree Stump; documentation relating to Vitale Bloch and Erhard Göpel during the German occupation.
[6] Edward Grasman, “An Indispensable Eye for Art: Vitale Bloch”, Studiolo 11 (2014), pp. 120–131.
[7] J.C. Ebbinge Wubben, Legaat Vitale Bloch, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1978; Dutch Restitutions Committee, recommendation concerning the Vitale Bloch bequest.