Adolph von Menzel, “Staircase of the Nysa Palace”

Adolph von Menzel, “Staircase of the Nysa Palace”

One of the most renowned painters from Breslau is Adolph von Menzel, so it’s not surprising that his works garnered exceptional interest from the Breslau collector Leo Lewin. The artist left his hometown in his youth, and his professional life was associated with Berlin. He held the position of a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, and during his lifetime, he was recognized as one of the most important painters of his era. He passed away in 1905 as an honorary citizen of both Breslau and Berlin, decorated with the Order of the Black Eagle, the highest decoration of the Kingdom of Prussia. The emperor himself took part in his funeral. Most of the works he owned, including the gouache painting “Staircase of the Nysa Palace,” found their way to the Berlin National Gallery.

In order to acquire a larger group of Menzel’s works, Leo Lewin proposed to the curators of the National Gallery an exchange involving a substantial collection of Max Slevogt’s works. Lewin was friends with Slevogt and owned many of his works from various periods of his career. The transaction was successful, and a bulky folder containing Menzel’s works came into the hands of the Breslau collector.

Among the over fifty drawings that Lewin gathered, one particularly stands out—an exquisite composition executed in gouache on light gray paper, depicting the staircase of the palace in Nysa. This work serves as a preliminary sketch for one of Menzel’s most famous canvases, “The Meeting of King Frederick II with Emperor Joseph II in Nysa,” created between 1855 and 1857. The conversations between the monarchs took place in August 1796 at the Nysa episcopal palace, with their main focus being the preparations for the partitions of Poland.

Before the Second World War, the painting adorned the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Breslau, and it became part of the collections of the Berlin National Gallery in 1954. In that year, the USSR granted limited sovereignty to the GDR. During that time, many gestures of friendship were made towards Berlin, including Polish cultural institutions transferring artworks significant to German history, including Menzel’s large-format painting commemorating events from 1769.

The large dimensions of the painting, measuring 247 x 318 centimeters, required proper preparatory studies. One of them was a sketch acquired by Leo Lewin through an exchange with the National Gallery in Berlin. In 1905, after the artist’s death, it was incorporated into the collections of the Berlin National Gallery, where it joined other works by Menzel. The sketch found its way to Leo Lewin’s collection through an exchange in 1928. The gouache was then auctioned at Rudolph Lepke’s auction in Berlin in 1932 and remained in a private collection in Baden-Württemberg until 2006. In 2007, the drawing was offered by the Hamburg art salon Dr. Moeller & Cie.

Drawing Information:

pencil and gouache on paper, dimensions: 26.5 x 37.2 cm.

Literature:

Auction catalog of Rudolph Lepke, Berlin, February 23, 1932, no. cat. 2051, no. 165, Illustration no. 7.