6781 - Menzel, Adolph von

Menzel, Adolph von Old Peasant Woman in Profile, Looking to the Right. Pencil, smudged. 16.2 x 13 cm. Monogrammed and dated "A.M. / 70". The drawing was part of an exhibition of 49 previously unknown Menzel drawings, announced on February 17, 1935, in the magazine *Weltkunst*, which was presented by the Westfeld Gallery in Wuppertal-Elberfeld. Our “Old Peasant Woman in Profile, Looking to the Right” subsequently appears under No. 426 on an invoice from Westfeld to the Kunsthaus Zürich and its director, Wilhelm Wartmann, listing 37 Menzel drawings. However, a planned Menzel exhibition in Zurich did not take place, and the purchase did not go through. On April 23, 1937, Walter Westfeld confirmed receipt of the drawings. The return is also confirmed by the estate and customs stamps of the Wuppertal Main Customs Office on the reverse. As early as mid-1935, Walter Westfeld, a Jewish art dealer, had come under scrutiny by the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and the Gestapo and was barred from practicing his profession. Among the 30 works by Menzel that the Düsseldorf art dealer Alex Vömel sent to the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Breslau on October 27, 1938, for review, the list of offerings included, under No. 12, the drawing “Old Peasant Woman in Profile.” But the museum in Breslau did not acquire it either. Presumably, the Menzel drawing was among those that Westfeld had handed over to the art historian and museum curator Karl Koetschau shortly before his arrest on November 21, 1938 (on the history of the Walter Westfeld Collection, see Melissa Müller and Monika Tatzkow: Lost Pictures, Lost Lives: Jewish Collectors and the Fate of Their Artworks, Munich 2009, pp. 87 ff.). It was not included in the forced auction of Westfeld’s art collection held by Lempertz on December 12–13, 1939. After that, the trail of the drawing rediscovered here is lost. - We thank Dr. Monika Tatzkow for her detailed information on the provenance of this drawing (email dated April 20, 2026). Provenance: Estate of Adolph von Menzel. Otto Krigar-Menzel, Breslau (Lugt 4602). Probably inherited by his daughter Ingrid Brebeck (b. 1897). Walter Westfeld Gallery (since early 1935; forced sale after 1937). Presumably museum director Karl Koetschau. Private collection in Baden-Württemberg. October 2026: amicable agreement reached between the last owners and the heirs of Walter Westfeld. - We ask that you request condition reports for the lots, as the condition is only indicated in the catalog in exceptional cases. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog.