Ferenc Hatvany

Baron Ferenc Hatvany (29 October 1881 – 7 February 1958) was a Hungarian painter and art collector. A son of Sándor Hatvany-Deutsch and a member of the Hatvany-Deutsch family, he graduated in the Académie Julian in Paris. His collection[1] included paintings by Tintoretto, Cézanne, Renoir, Ingres and Courbet, most notably L'Origine du monde and Femme nue couchée.

Ferenc Hatvany
Born(1881-10-29)29 October 1881
Budapest, Austria-Hungary
Died7 February 1958(1958-02-07) (aged 76)
Lausanne, Switzerland
NationalityHungarian
Spouse(s)Lucia Királdi-Lukács
Parent(s)Sándor Hatvany-Deutsch and Emma Hatvany-Deutsch

During the Second World War, his art collection was placed in a bank vault in Budapest to protect it from the pro-Nazi Hungarian government, and the Hatvany family, which was Jewish, fled the country just before the Nazi takeover of Hungary in March 1944.[2]

Mystery surrounds the fate of the paintings, which appear to have been looted by Germans and then by Soviets.[3] Towards the end of the Second World War his paintings were looted by Soviet troops but some were ransomed by Hatvany. In 1947 he emigrated to Paris.[4] In 1955 L'Origine du monde was sold at auction for 1.5 million francs (the buyer was psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan). The lawyer Hans Deutsch filed a claim on behalf of Ferenc Hatvany against the German government and obtained compensation for him.[5]

Paintings that were looted from Hatvany's collection are still hanging on museum walls in Budapest, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod. John Constable's Beaching A Boat, Brighton was identified in the collection of The Tate in 2014.[6]

Hatvany died in Lausanne in 1958.

References
  1. Inventory of art works which Hatvany placed in the strongrooms of major Budapest banks in 1942 Archived 2011-05-25 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Hutt, Sherry; Tarler, David (15 October 2008). YEARBOOK OF CULTURAL PROPERTY LAW 2008. Left Coast Press. ISBN 978-1-59874-080-6.
  3. Akinsha, Konstantin; Akinsha, Konstantin (1 February 2008). "The Mysterious Journey of an Erotic Masterpiece". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
  4. ARTNews; The Mysterious Journey of an Erotic Masterpiece
  5. Lillteicher, Jürgen. L'Allemagne de l'Ouest et la restitution des biens juifs en Europe. p. 139.
  6. "Tate to return Constable painting looted by Nazis" The Telegraph; 28 March 2014

Further reading
  • László Mravik. Hungary's Pillaged Art Heritage. Part Two: The Fate of the Hatvany Collection. Hungarian Quarterly vol. 39, no. 15, 1998. . Accessed on February 7, 2007.
  • László Mravik. "Princes, Counts, Idlers and Bourgeois:" A Hundred Years of Hungarian Collecting, 3rd part. In T. Kieselbach (ed.) Studies in Modern Hungarian Painting 1892–1919. . Accessed on February 7, 2007.
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