Galerie Ehrhardt & Co. was among the Berlin art dealerships specializing in Old Masters during the 1920s and early 1930s. The firm was run by Martin Ehrhardt and Heinrich Grünwald and was located at Lennéstraße 6a in Berlin. Heinrich Grünwald was a co-owner of the business and had a background of his own as an art dealer and collector.[1]
The firm had considerable international ambitions. An American advertisement from October 1928 lists, in addition to Galerie Ehrhardt & Co. in Berlin, Ehrhardt Galleries Inc. in New York and a branch at Luisenstraße in Baden-Baden. The business explicitly presented itself as a dealer in “Paintings by Old Masters”.[2]
Dutch and Flemish Old Masters
Dutch and Flemish painting formed an important part of the firm’s stock. A notable example is Maarten van Heemskerck’s The Lamentation. The painting was with Ehrhardt in 1927 and entered the collection of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum the following year.[3]
Ehrhardt Galleries in New York
Galerie Ehrhardt established links with the American art market at a remarkably early stage. In October 1928, The Art News was already carrying advertisements for Ehrhardt Galleries Inc. in New York alongside the firm’s German branches.[2]
An important figure in the later American history of the business was the German-Jewish art dealer Siegfried F. Aram. He had previously been a partner in Ehrhardt Galleries in Berlin. After leaving Germany in 1934, he settled in the United States and opened Aram-Ehrhardt Galleries in New York in 1935. Two years later, the firm was renamed S.F. Aram, Inc.[4]
That this American connection was more than merely an administrative arrangement is demonstrated by museum provenance records. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, for example, document paintings that passed through Aram-Ehrhardt Galleries in New York. One of these works was with Ehrhardt Galleries by 1928 at the latest and was sold to the museum in 1937.[5]
Ehrhardt & Co. and provenance research
Considerably less has been published about Galerie Ehrhardt & Co. than about major firms such as Colnaghi, Knoedler or Cassirer. Nevertheless, the dealership is particularly relevant to research into paintings that circulated through Germany and the United States during the 1920s and 1930s.[6]
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Footnotes
[1] Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste, Proveana, files on Heinrich Grünwald and Martin Ehrhardt; both are documented as being associated with Galerie Ehrhardt & Co.
[2] The Art News, vol. 27, no. 3, 20 October 1928; advertisement for Ehrhardt Galleries Inc., New York / Galerie Ehrhardt & Co. G.m.b.H., Berlin, Lennéstraße 6a / Baden-Baden, Luisenstraße 26.
[3] RKD provenance records concerning Maarten van Heemskerck, The Lamentation, c. 1527–1530; Ehrhardt, 1927; Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, 1928.
[4] Frick Art Reference Library, Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America, entry for Dr Siegfried F. Aram; partner in Ehrhardt Galleries in Berlin, Aram-Ehrhardt Galleries in New York from 1935, and S.F. Aram, Inc. from 1937.
[5] Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, provenance records for works handled through Ehrhardt Galleries and Aram-Ehrhardt Galleries, New York.
[6] Getty Research Institute, Schaeffer Galleries records, 1907–1988, acc. no. 910148, box 171, folder 2: Galerie Ehrhardt & Co., 1928.