683. A Shannon & Ricketts Exhibition in Munich 1907 (1)

Surprisingly, until recently, I had not come across this major exhibition of Ricketts and Shannon's work in 1907; the show has not been mentioned in Paul Delaney's biography, nor in any other book or article about Ricketts and Shannon. Yet it was not an exhibition to be overlooked: 110 art works were on display and the event took place in the show room of one of the most important art dealers in Germany, the Heinemann firm in Munich. Perhaps the fact that it was a non-English venue allowed this exhibition to be forgotten and the fact that Shannon got his first major one-man show at Leicester Galleries in London that same year.

Charles H. Shannon, Charles Ricketts, London.
(München, Galerie Heinemann, Oktober 1907)

The catalogue of this exhibition in October 1907 is extremely rare, there are no copies of it in the British Library, the Tate Library or the National Art Library (V&A, London), for example. The catalogue is titled: Charles H. Shannon, Charles Ricketts, London. (München: Galerie Heinemann, 1907) and lists oil paintings, lithographs, drawings, watercolours, wood-engravings and bronzes. 

Galerie Heinemann was founded by David Heinemann in 1872 and in 1890 was taken over by his three sons. It had branches in New York and Nice and in 1904 moved the main premises to Lenbachplatz 5/6 in Munich where the Shannon and Ricketts exhibition was held three years later. Theobald and Hermann Heinemann headed the Munich business, while Theodor, the oldest brother, was in charge of the New York office. 

After the two younger brothers had died, Theodor's wife Franziska and their son Fritz managed the Munich department. In January 1938 Fritz left for New York, followed in 1939 by his mother, while the firm was 'aryanised', and forcibly sold. After the war Fritz Heinemann returned to Germany and in the end got hold of the archive that he donated to the German Art Archive (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg) in 1972. The documents have been digitised and are accessible on the website 'Galerie Heinemann Online' [see Galerie Heinemann Online].

Galerie Heinemann, Lenbachplatz 5/6, Munich

Although the magazine The Queen mentioned that the Heinemann Galleries exhibited pictures by the American artist Pinckney Marcius-Simons in September 1907, no English newspaper seems to have reported about the October show.

Shannon exhibited eighty-five works: sixteen oil paintings, thirty-seven lithographs and thirty-two drawings, pastels, watercolours and colour woodcuts. From the digitised catalogue it seems that the order in the rooms was different from that in the catalogue which started with Shannon's paintings and ended with Ricketts's bronzes. New numbers have been written in red ink before the black printed numbers, suggesting a different order altogether. However, the numbers are confusing as there are two series of number 1-25:

1-8 CR's paintings

9-24 CHS's paintings

25 CR painting

1-37 CHS's lithographs

38-63 CHS's woodcuts, pastels and drawings

64-66 CR's drawings

67-72 CHS's woodcuts

73 CR's poster

74-85 CR's bronzes

The show ended with the numbers 86 and 87. These were two bronzes by Kathleen Bruce: her portraits of Ricketts and Shannon.

Some titles in the catalogue have been crossed out, but these are not the works that were actually sold.

Only four works were sold during the course of the exhibition. Not the more expensive paintings, but a pastel painting and a watercolour, both by Shannon, and two lithographs

Frank Eugene, photograph of
Friedrich August von Kaulbach (1907
 [Bavarikon]

The main buyer was a German painter from Munich, Friedrich August von Kaulbach (1850-1920), who was known for his decorative, romantic society portraits in the French style. On 26 October 1907, he acquired a pastel of the wounded amazone (catalogue no. 73: 'Die verwundete Amazone') and a portrait study in watercolour (catalogue no. 75: 'Porträtstudie'). 

The cash book records his purchase.

Cash book 4 (KB-04-2 for 17.08.1907-17.05.1909)
[Galerie Heinemann]

Shannon got paid the same day, as the cast book shows. He received £30 for the works that Kaulbach had acquired, but paid a commission of 25%.

Cash book 4 (KB-04-2 for 17.08.1907-17.05.1909)
[Galerie Heinemann]

He had also sold two lithographies, called 'Meerwasser' (catalogue No. 29) and 'Auf Meeresgrund' (catalogue No. 18) to countess Treuburg in Schloss Holzen near Nordendorf. At the end of the nineteenth-century Holzen was a centre of painting in Munich. The countess was presumably Rosine Antonie Therese von Poschinger (1849-1935). 'Meerwasser' probably is 'Salt Water', a lithograph from 1895, published in The Savoy, and 'Auf Meeresgrund' must be 'At the Waters Edge' which was a recent lithograph finished in the year of the exhibition.

[To be continued.]