Marczell de Nemes

Description

Marczell de Nemes (1866-1930) was born Moses Klein in Jánoshalma, Hungary. His family was Jewish and ran a business dedicated to the sale of wool and tobacco, however, at the end of the 19th century they decided to trade in wood and coal as well. Moses Klein continued in the family footsteps and started to take care of his own commercial activities, which is how he changed his name in order to make it sound more Hungarian (Tüskés, 2008). Around 1890 Marczell started collecting works of art. He did not have a defined style, but acquired Renaissance, Baroque, contemporary pieces, furniture, textiles, etc. Although there is no doubt that El Greco was one of his favorite artists, given the large number of paintings he had of him. His personal collection enjoyed great fame, which led him to exhibit it on several occasions (Akinsha, 2011). Thus, in 1910 he exhibited it for the first time at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. Subsequently, Nemes went through financial difficulties. This situation led him to sell part of his works on different occasions: in 1913he put some of his paintings on sale at the Galerie Manzi in Paris, in 1926 at the Hôtel Drouot and, after his death, the rest of the paintings were auctioned in Munich in 1931. In addition to his facet as a collector, Nemes was a benefactor of some museum institutions, proof of which is the donation of El socorro de Génova (Antonio de Pereda) to the Museo Nacional del Prado (Madrid).

Venturi (1931) described the figure of Nemes as follows: "Chi ha conosciuto Marczell von Nemes, morto di recente a Budapest, sua città natale, ricorda una personalità non comune. Coming from nowhere, with little culture, with an overbearing will, he had the gift of sensing the tendencies of the public's taste. With an unshakable faith in what he liked, with a very vivid sense of the quality of the painting material, he acquired works of primitive Italians, of Venezuelans of the fifteenth century, of El Greco, of Englishmen of the eighteenth century, of French impressionists, when few still understood the absolute value. The repeated public works of his collection have therefore made some contribution to the development of taste in the last thirty years".

Bibliography

• AKINSHA, Konstantin (2011): "Lunching under the Goya. Jewish Collectors in Budapest at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century", nº 2, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of the Fondazione CDEC.
• TÜSKÉS, Anna (2008): "La collezione di dipinti italiani di Marcello de Nemes", nº 7, Rivista di studi ungheresi, pp. 59-76.
• VENTURI, Lionello (1931): "Nella collezione Nemès", nº 34, L'arte, p. 250.