Lot 1369 | August Gaul | Otter with Fish

GAUL, AUGUST
1869 Großauheim - 1921 Berlin

Title: Otter with Fish.
Technique: Bronze with amber eyes.
Height: 49cm.
Notation: Inscribed and dated verso: A. Gaul 1910.

Literature:
J. Gabler: August Gaul. Das Werkverzeichnis der Skulpturen, Berlin 2007, p. 150ff,
no. 150a.
Exhibition cat. "August Gaul. Die Sammlung Alfons und Marianne Kottmann", Museums der Stadt Hanau 21.06 - 04.09.2011, p. 48.

Provenance:
Auction Ketterer 1983;
Kottman Collection, Hanau.

In 1909, in the course of the Berlin Secession exhibition, August Gaul presented a hexagonal fountain with a high stele, the top of which was decorated by an otter with a fish in its mouth. Max Liebermann saw this fountain and gave it to his wife Martha for Christmas that same year; in the spring of 1910, the fountain was installed in the painter's garden in Wannsee.
A second casting was recorded in the Cassierer Gallery's purchase book in 1910, which was presumably shown - also as a fountain ensemble - at the Brussels World's Fair in the same year. Since it was not sold, the fountain probably ended up in the garden of the Gaul family's country estate in Berkenthin, south of Lübeck. With the sale of the house in the 1930s, the trace of the 1910 casting is lost.
The catalogue of the 2011 Hanau exhibition, in which the present work was exhibited, speculates whether this casting could be identical to Liebermann's figure and would thus have disappeared after 1940. However, Gabler clearly assumes in her catalogue raisonné that this work, dated 1910, is a second version. The Paul Cassirer Archive confirms that two different casts are listed for 1909/1910; the ArtLoss Register has no reservations regarding possible restitution claims