Felix Auerbach

When last checked the page no longer existed at its original location. Versions of the page can be found in the Internet Archive. At that site, select a blue circled calendar date. The browser will either open the file, download it, or display a dialog. Fig. 1, Edvard Munch, Felix Auerbach , 1906. Oil on canvas. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (purchased with support from the BankGiro Loterij, the Rembrandt Association, with the additional support of the Maljers-de Jongh Fund, and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, the VSB Foundation, and the members of The Yellow House). Inventory number s0541S2017. Artwork in the public domain; photograph courtesy of Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Though not a “new discovery” in the strictest sense, the portrait by Edvard Munch depicting the German physicist Felix Auerbach has not been seen in public for nearly forty years and was therefore one of the lesser-known works by the artist (fig. 1).‍[[1]]( The portrait was first published in March 1964 in a short article in The Burlington Magazine .‍[[2]]( The author, Ruth Kisch-Arndt, a niece of Auerbach and then owner of the painting, described the genesis of the portrait and its journey from Jena, Germany, to New York City. More than half a century later, this painting recently entered the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam—representing a significant addition to the museum’s expanding collection of works by Vincent Van Gogh’s contemporaries. Edvard Munch painted this portrait of the German collector and scholar Felix Auerbach in 1906, at a time when Van Gogh was very much on his mind. By then works by Van Gogh were widely exhibited and collected in Germany. The art dealer Paul Cassirer, for example, had organized an exhibition in Berlin in December 1904 with eleven of Van Gogh’s paintings, including several portraits. Around the same time, he displayed many works by Munch in his gallery. The artistic affinities between Van Gogh and Munch were recognized since the 1890s and the two artists were often mentioned in the same breath. The parallels between them were the central focus of the exhibition Munch: Van Gogh at the Van Gogh Museum (September 25, 2015–January 17, 2016), organized in collaboration with the Munch Museum in Oslo. The Auerbach Portrait It was on the occasion of a visit to the Friedrich Nietzsche Archive in Weimar at the end of 1905 that Felix Auerbach (1856–1933) and his wife Anna (née Silbergleit; 1861–1933) first became acquainted with the work of Munch. The couple was immediately impressed by Munch’s portrait of Nietzsche that they saw there, and shortly after they invited the artist to visit them in Jena to paint a portrait of Felix. A childless Jewish couple, the Auerbachs belonged to the highly cultivated intellectual milieu of Jena, a university town in Thuringia, Germany. Auerbach was a physicist from Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland). In 1889 he was appointed associate professor of theoretical physics at the University of Jena. Owing to objections to his Jewish descent, it was not until 1923 that Auerbach was advanced to full professor, a position he should have been granted many years earlier given his stature as a scientist. Anna Auerbach was politically active as an advocate of women’s rights for Jena’s branch of the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom.‍[[6]]( Fig. 2, Postcard from the Auerbachs to Edvard Munch with a small cross indicating where Munch’s portrait of Auerbach was situated inside the house, December 26, 1927. Postcard. Munch Museum, Oslo. Photograph courtesy of Munch Museum, Oslo. Even before the Auerbachs moved into their new Bauhaus-style house in the fall of 1924, their home had been an important cultural center of Jena for more than two decades.‍[[11]]( Over the years, they had welcomed countless intellectuals, academics, artists, writers, musicians, and architects. Their many friends included the writer and art patron Harry Graf Kessler, Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth Förster-Ni