Zwrócił mi uwagę jeden z czytelników na bliźniaczo podobne dwie prace Meli Muter. Jedna z nich była pokazana na blogu (https://polishartcorner.com/2020/11/03/maria-melania-mutermilch-1876-1967-16/ ) i będzie licytowana za kilka dni we francuskim domu Tajan, zaś druga (poniżej) pojawiła się w Sopockim Domu Aukcyjnym (https://www.sda.pl/aukcja/obiekty/mela-muter-kobieta-z-dzieckiem-przed-1939-r,30718,pl), nie jest sygnowana, za to z rozbudowaną proweniencją oraz ma jakieś nalepki transportowe.

Czy ktoś widział inne repliki prac wykonane przez tę artystke? Obie prace maja pochodzić z podobnego okresu czasowego a są przecież tak różnie malowane. Any thoughts?

Pan Krzysztof Zagrodzki, ekspert francuskich domów aukcyjnych, specjalizujący się w Ecole de Paris, w odpowiedzi na moje wątpliwości związane z pracami Meli Muter odpisał na mój list do niego skierowany, że potwierdza autentycznośc pracy sprzedawanej w Sopockim Domu Aukcyjnym i dobrze zna jej proweniencję. Fragment listu p. Zagrodzkiego wraz z fotografią:

Ten obraz pochodzi z kolekcji ś;p. Arona Kupfera, sprzedany na aukcji (małej) części spuścizny kolekcjonera w Hôtel Drouot 27 pażdziernika 2017 roku. Załączam zdjęcie zrobione jeszcze u niego w domu. To ten sam co sprzedany w 2002 roku w Tel Avivie, do którego odsyła komentarz w katalogu Tajana. (11/23/20)

Kolejny znakomiy olej Meli Muter. Tym razem w niemieckim Lempertz. Proweniencja z Galerii Bargera/Gmurzynskiej. Perła na rynku.

Lot 204. Mela Muter (Maria Melania Mutermilch). Stadt in der Provence. Oil on canvas 73 x 92 cm Framed. Signed ‘Muter’ in blue lower right. – In fine condition with fresh colours.
The work is documented in the photo archive of Galerie Bargera and titled there “Town in Provence”
Over the course of the period she spent working in France, Mela Muter painted numerous images of landscapes and views of towns in Provence, mostly from the area around Avignon. The fascination that this region’s diversity of colours and forms exercised over the artist is particularly palpable in the large-format panorama of a little Provençal town offered here. From an elevated vantage point, an extensive view opens up above the mountainous landscape; lanes with cubic, interlocking formations of houses drop steeply down and away towards a river, perhaps the Rhône. A church tower and the towers of a fortress are also visible, although the precise extent of the townscape remains uncertain. Beyond the river, additional buildings are nestled within a low-lying area, behind which a mountain ridge crowned by a fortress rises up along the numerous thrusting rock formations. The intense light of the south permeates everything depicted here: it is reflected by the white walls of the houses, provides the surface of the river with its radiant cobalt blue and even invests the reddish-brown tones of the rooftops and the earth that define the tonality of the picture with radiant nuances in pink and orange. Estimate 80,000 – 100,000 euro. Lempertz. 12/08/20. Sold 100,000 euro (hammer)

Prace Meli Muter wyjątkowo obrodziły w tym sezonie. Opis katalogowy dość dobrze wyjaśnia pochodzenie tych prac.

Lot 24. MELA MUTER (1876-1967) MELA MUTER (1876-1967)
ELISABETH, ZACHARIA AND SAINT JEAN-BAPTIST CHILD (RECTO)
CHILD VIRGIN WITH HOLY AND TWO PRAYER CHARACTERS (BACK)
Oil on double-sided panel. Signed lower left on one side and right on the other. Double sided oil on panel; signed lower left and right. 142 X 122 CM – 55 7/8 X 48 IN. PROVENANCE: Acquired in the 1980s from Fressynette Billon in Les Angles (Gard) by the present owner. Private collection, France.
This work belongs to a cycle of large double-sided compositions – at least four according to Fressynette Billon – which the artist’s specialists agree that they were painted by Mela Muter in the 1940s and 1950s. Taking as their theme the life of Christ and his precursors, they are painted on panels coated with gesso, which gives them the matt appearance of a fresco. One side of this work can be compared to a painting by Mela Muter presented by Christie’s, Tel Aviv, 6 April 2002, lot 45 and, for a composition belonging to the same cycle, to a double-sided painting presented by Sotheby’s, London, 30 November 2016, lot 53.
“The technique often employed by Mela Muter achieves very special effects. From one brushstroke to the next the canvas remains white and naked, an area where the reasonable dream of memory freely restores hue and tone.”
Robert Rey, Mela Muter, Catalogue d’exposition, Paris, Galerie Joseph Billet, s.é., Paris : 1924, n. p.
“I think that Mela Muter has reasoned her art as a painter and poet, which is not limited, which only specifies its measure in her ambition to instruct the world of the secret of bringing everything to its lyrical value, an ambition more pressing than that of limiting these chances of lyricism (which are in fact universal) to a few occasions arbitrarily given as exemplary among all. …] Mela Muter, from the very first days of her happy and laborious career, was one of those innovators who were the enemies of false originality, artists and poets who, as Picasso said, influenced each other in turn, and one of whose high aims was to bring art back to life. This is why Mela Muter’s art, freed from the sour feelings of her immediate predecessors, is not literally a theme of joy, out of the universal rhythm. …] No one better than Mela Muter, far from having recourse to any other art than her own, will have warmly lavished these calm effusions fixing as an ideal point the direct properties of shapes and colours and what commands the world of words. Orphic realism which is enough, even if the author, painter for poet, claims to have some prefiguration of a sovereign future.”
André Salmon, “The Painting of Mela Muter”, in Literary Poland, December 15, 1933, No. 87, p. 5. Estimate 20,000 – 30,000 euro. Tajan. 11/24/20. Sold 58,000 euro

Lot 20. Mela MUTER (Warsaw 1876 – Paris 1967). Portrait of a woman with a necklace / Portrait of a young girl. Circa 1930. Oil on canvas recto verso, 63 x 49,5 cm. Signed on one side lower left “Muter”. Estimate 15,000 – 20,000 euro. Millon. 11/10/20. Sold 35,100 euro (bp)

Millon na swojej dużej aukcji szkoły paryskiej wystawił dwie dobre prace Meli Muter. Pierwsza, wygladająca znakomicie, podwójny olej z kobiecymi portretami oraz druga, akwarela przedstawiającą widok z okna na ulicę i rzekę w Paryżu.

Lot 24. Mela MUTER (Warsaw 1886 – Paris 1967). The quays of Paris. Circa 1920. Watercolour on paper, 35 x 49 cm. Signed lower left “Muter”. Estimate 4,000 – 6,000 euro. Millon. 11/10/20

Równolegle, w Niemczech pokazała się akwarela sygnowana inaczej (porównując do sygnatur na tych dwóch pracach z Millon) również z widokiem miasta oraz nieskończonym na odwrociu widokiem miasteczka z widoku ptaka.

Lot 170. Marie Mela Muter (1876 Warschau – 1967 Paris). Urbane Szene, Aquarell auf Bütten, 51 cm x 36,5 cm Blattmaß, signiert, rückseitig mit Landschaftsstudie und Vorzeichnung, Papier stockfleckig, Ecken mit Einstichslöchern, am Rand Zuschnittsspuren. Reserve 800 euro. Auktionshaus an der Ruhr. 11/14/20

Czy wszystkie sa dobre? Generalnie, bardziej wierzę Francuzom niż Niemcom pod względem ustalania autentyczności i jak zwykle proweniencja jest słowem kluczowym. Tak łatwo przeciez obecnie kupić coś co wypadło sroce spod ogona.

Praca z certyfikatem autentyczności.

Lot 284. Mela MUTER (Maria Melania Mutermilch) (1876-1967). View of the Seine, ca. 1925-1930. Oil on panel, signed lower left “Muter”. H. 46 cm L. 55 cm. Provenance: Private French
Collection Views of large rivers, often with bridges or animated by ships, barges or boats engaged in river traffic, often appear in the work of Mela Muter. In Paris, as early as the 1920s, she depicts the Seine or the Canal Saint-Martin. Paintings such as Le Pont Saint-Michel, Paris, 1920; Les péniches sur le canal Saint-Martin, circa 1922, coll. Nawrocki; Pont Marie in Paris; Quais parisiens et péniches, circa 1925, coll. particulière are examples. Later, in Avignon, she had a predilection for the Rhône, majestic and imposing, and its swirling white water: Le pont d’Avignon, Pont sur le Rhône in Avignon, Les tourbillons sur Rhône, circa 1940-1945, coll. Nawrocki).
The painting “View of the Seine” presents a fragment of the river, bordered on one side by a quay animated by a single character and punctuated by a few trees. The painter concentrates on the boats that dock there. The other bank presents an architecture punctuated by high chimneys and pointed roofs. The artist is visibly attracted by an industrial urban landscape, as well as by a lively port universe. Of robust construction, the composition is punctuated by numerous black verticals made up of tree trunks, chimneys and crossed oblique masts. The painting is painted vigorously, with broad brushstrokes, with impasto, so as not to cover the entire surface evenly, a process typical of the artist’s style. The range of colours that she likes is very present: the blue combined in several shades, from emerald to purple and navy blue of the water, the coloured whites and greys of the boats, as well as the pinkish spots of the sky and buildings. A strong work that has a beautiful place in Mela Muter’s work. The work comes from a French private collection where it has been kept since the 1950s and 1960s. Mela Muter (Maria Melania Mutermilch) (1876 Warsaw – 1967 Paris) arrived in Paris in 1901. She had great success in the 1920s and 1930s and continued her career after the Second World War. Famous as a portraitist of the intellectual and artistic “tout-Paris”, she is known for her sumptuous still lifes and she is also much appreciated for her landscapes, painted in Brittany, in the South of France, around Avignon, as well as in Paris and its region. Expert consultants EBMC Bobrowska-Mielniczuk. Estimate 20,000 – 30,000 euro. DeBecques et Associes. 10/16/20

Nieduży pejzaż Meli Muter. Nisko wyceniony. Będzie zainteresowanie, choć umiarkowane, bo są obecnie na rynku lepsze (ale też i droższe) jej prace.

Lot 23. Maria-Mela Muter, French-Polish, 1876 – 1967. Landschaft; oil on board, signed lower right, 33 x 41cm (ARR) (VAT charged on hammer price). Provenance: Sotheby’s, London, 19 October 1988, lot 283; Private Collection, London. Note: The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Mrs Urszula Lazowski.

Mela Muter, the pseudonym of Maria Melania Mutermilch, is one of the most significant Polish Jewish female painters in Paris in the early 20th century. She studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Colarossi under Etienne Tournés. In Paris, Muter swiftly built a reputation as a portrait painter and exhibited her work regularly, first at the Paris Salon in 1902, and subsequently at the Salon des Indépendants, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, the Salon des Tuileries as well as the Salon des Femmes Artistes Modernes. During her early years in Paris she was associated with the Polish elite Leopold Gottlieb, Wladyslaw Reymont, Leopold Sraff, Stefan Żeromski, and Henri Barbusse, as well as other artists Auguste Peret, Diego Rivera and Rainer Maria Rilke, who would become one of her closest friends. During the Second World War, Muter went into hiding in the South of France, from this point on she created these Fauvist landscapes of the area, such as the present painting. Estimate 5,000 – 7,000 GBP. Roseberys. 07/15/20. Sold GBP 20,000

W tej chwili ustalono w Agrze-Art, że olej Wierusza, groteskowo wycenionny 2,000,000 -2,500,000 złotych, zdominuje polski rynek. Myślę, że ta praca Meli Muter powinna być hitem roku.

Lot 45. Mela Muter (Warsaw 1876 – 1967 Paris). Group of Children. 1913. Oil on canvas. 146,5 × 114 cm ( 57 ⅝ × 44 ⅞ in.). Formerly a signature at lower left from circa 1965. Inscribed by the Muter-collector Dr. Boleslaw Nawrocki with black pen on the reverse on canvas and stretcher: “Depôt. Reservé pour le Musée National de Varsovie, BN. Retrouvé en 1962 et partiellement restauré par BN”. Provenienz: From the estate of the artist / Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne / Private Collection, Southern Germany (acquired circa 1975 at Galerie Gmurzynska). Ausstellung: Mela Muter. Paris, Galerie Jean-Claude Bellier, 1966 (“Groupe d´enfants”, 1913) / Mela Muter. New York, Hammer Galleries, 1967 (“La Famille”, 1913) / Mela Muter, 1876–1967. Retrospektiv-Ausstellung. Cologne, Galerie Gmurzynska, 1967, cat. no. 34, ill. Estimate 180,000 – 240,000 euro. GRISEBACH. 07/09/20

Smutny obraz tak jak smutne było życie tej artystki. To już drugi jej olej jaki będzie licytowany w Lempertz w odstępie jednego dnia. Jej martwą naturę już pokazałem kilka dni temu.

Lot 92. Mela Muter (Maria Melania Mutermilch). Kellerkinder. Öl auf Leinwand, doubliert 109 x 88,5 cm Gerahmt. Unten rechts schwarz signiert ‘Muter’. Rückseitig auf dem Keilrahmen mit Galerie- und Transportaufklebern. – Mit wenigen einzelnen Retuschen. Zu den Seitenrändern mit kleinen Farbausbrüchen durch Aufziehen auf neuen Keilrahmen. Provenienz: Nachlass der Künstlerin; Galerie Gmurzynska, Köln; Galerie Jean-Claude Bellier, Paris (mit rückseitigem Transportaufkleber); Galerie Bargera, Köln (mit rückseitigem Aufkleber); Privatbesitz Israel. Ausstellungen:  Köln 1966 (Galerie Gmurzynska), Mela Muter. Bilder, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, vermutlich Kat. Nr. 17 (“Zwei Mädchen”, 1916, 108 x 84 cm); Köln 1967 (Galerie Gmurzynska), Mela Muter – Retrospektiv-Ausstellung, Kat. Nr. 23 mit ganzseitiger Abb. Estimate 80,000 – 100,000 euro. Lempertz. 06/19/20. Sold 80,000 euro (hammer)+25 premium = 100,000 euro.