Provenance

16 February 1925 Hôtel Drouot, Paris (to Gerstenberg, 657,25 FFs); 1925 Otto Gerstenberg* , Berlin [Lugt 2785, collector’s mark, verso of print]; 1935 Margarethe Scharf, Berlin; 1961 Dieter Scharf, Hamburg; [date?] Colnaghi, London; by 1977 Eric Franck, Zurich; his (anonymous) sale 14 December 1978 Sotheby’s London (to Theodore B. Donson); James B. Parks, Los Angeles; The James B. Parks Collection of Fine Prints, Swann Galleries, New York 9 November 2009 (to Schulman and Bullard); Dr. Lewis Coulson, Chicago; Susan Schulman and Caroline Bullard

* Otto Gerstenberg (1848–1935) was a Berlin businessman whose collection of modern art was widely regarded as the best in Germany. Gerstenberg was protestant, and upon his death in 1935 his print collection, including this etching, passed to his only child Margarethe, who married a Mr. Scharf, and thence to her son Dieter Scharf in Hamburg. The print has no provenance issues. This information has been provided to us by Juliet Wilson-Bareau, whose book on the Otto Gerstenberg Collection is being released this month (Die historische Sammlung Otto Gerstenberg [Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, October 2012]).