The gripping story of Christian Tetzen-Lund, who owned numerous rare masterpieces and sold them again. Among Danish art collections, one has almost legendary status: the rich collection of French art that Christian Tetzen-Lund built from 1916-1925. The collection consisted of 23 masterpieces by Matisse and a corresponding number of works by Picasso, but also paintings by Derain, Rousseau, Kandinsky, Braque, and many others. In total, Tetzen-Lund acquired about 600 works at a hectic pace and with unwavering judgment.
This book presents the first reconstruction of Tetzen-Lund's collection, which, despite its significance and astonishing quality, has never been thoroughly studied before. The eccentric art collector offered the collection to the Danish state, which declined. Today, the works hang in the world's leading museums.
Christian Tetzen-Lund's secret collection of modern art. The story of the rich collection of French art that the former grain and feed wholesaler Christian Tetzen-Lund (1852-1936) built up from 1916 and until its dissolution eight years later. The core of the collection was 23 major works by Matisse from the period 1898-1918 as well as a similar number of works by Picasso. Added to this was paintings by André Derain, Georges Braque, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Giorgio De Chirico, Wassily Kandinsky and many others. As a resonant base for contemporary art, Tetzen-Lund also collected a small group of older French paintings of main figures such as Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Degas, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. By Cézanne alone he owned five paintings, by Gauguin six paintings and by Vincent van Gogh as many as eleven.
The vast majority of the works are part of well-known museum collections around the world. It goes without saying that a study of the works' unknown, Danish prehistory is of great interest, nationally as well as internationally.
