The dream of one's own museum: With the Impressionist show Renoir, Monet, Gauguin, Museum Folkwang looks back on two outstanding collectors of the early 20th century, Kojiro Matsukata and Karl Ernst Osthaus

The exhibition highlight Renoir, Monet, Gauguin – Images of a Floating World (6 February – 15 May 2022) will kick off Museum Folkwang's cen-tenary in 2022. The important collection of late Impressionist works from Museum Folkwang, founded by Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874–1921), will enter into dialogue with the collection of Kojiro Matsukata (1866–1950) from the holdings of the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. With around 120 masterpieces by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Auguste Rodin , among others, the show illustrates how modern French art was not only appreciated by Western collectors at the beginning of the 20th century, but also found an early following in Japan. This is told through two pioneers of the modern museum: the collectors Matsukata and Osthaus.

Documents

Ida Gerhardi
Karl Ernst Osthaus, 1903
Osthaus Museum, Hagen
Photo: Achim Kukulies, Düsseldorf

Frank Brangwyn
Portrait of Mr. Kojiro Matsukata, 1916
The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. Ex-Matsukata Collection, donated by the heirs of Kojiro Matsukata
© David Brangwyn