Ernest Jacques Thiel (18 August 1859 – 6 January 1947) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

financier An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some species of property. Type ...

and

art collector A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individual ...

whose former villa in the Stockholm park area

Djurgården Djurgården ( or ) or, more officially, ''Kungliga Djurgården'' (), is an island in central Stockholm, Sweden. Djurgården is home to historical buildings and monuments, museums, galleries, the amusement park Gröna Lund, the open-air museum ...

today houses the

Thiel Gallery The Thiel Gallery ( sv, Thielska Galleriet) is an art museum in the Djurgården park area of Stockholm, Sweden. Represented are the members of the Artists Association (''Konstnärsförbundet'') from the early 1900s as well as one of the world's l ...

( sv, Thielska galleriet).

Biography

Ernest Thiel was born in the Swedish town of

Norrköping Norrköping (; ) is a city in the province of Östergötland in eastern Sweden and the seat of Norrköping Municipality, Östergötland County, about 160 km southwest of the national capital Stockholm, 40 km east of county seat Linköp ...

. His parents were the Belgian Catholic engineer Jacques Thiel and Fanny Stiebel, of German-Jewish origin. After school in Stockholm, Thiel was sent to Germany to learn trade in a Hamburg merchant house, and later worked in a bank there. He returned to Stockholm in 1877 and found work in

Stockholms Enskilda Bank Stockholms Enskilda Bank, sometimes called Enskilda banken or SEB, was a Swedish bank, founded in 1856 by André Oscar Wallenberg as Stockholm's first private bank. In 1857, Stockholms Enskilda Bank began to employ women, claiming to be the fir ...

, the bank of the

Wallenberg family The Wallenberg family is a prominent Swedish family, Europe's most powerful business dynasty. Wallenbergs are noted as bankers, industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats and military. The Wallenberg sphere's holdings employ about 600 ...

. In 1884 he became the manager of the Stockholm office of Hernösands enskilda bank and in 1891 he had accumulated enough capital to start his own bank, Stockholms Kredit- och Diskontoförening, later known as Aktiebolaget Stockholms diskontobank, which he headed until 1901. In 1884 he had married Anna Josephson, member of a well-known Jewish family and sister-in-law of the publisher

Karl Otto Bonnier Karl Otto Bonnier (20 June 1856 – 26 May 1941) was a Swedish publisher for authors including August Strindberg, Verner von Heidenstam, Gustaf Fröding, Selma Lagerlöf, and Hjalmar Söderberg. He was the son of the founder of the family company, ...

. He caused a scandal when he divorced her (1896–1897) to marry Signe Maria Hansen, a young and beautiful widow with literary and artistic interests who had been his wife's companion. During the winter of 1910-11, the spouses separated. Signe Thiel moved to a villa in Öland where she died in 1915. The deflation crisis of 1920–1922 was one of the factors that led to Thiel's equity portfolio rapidly falling in value and his financial assets being destroyed. He was forced to pay heavy debt and to sell the property in 1924. Ernest Thiel became known as a translator of works by

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, Prose poetry, prose poet, cultural critic, Philology, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philo ...

into Swedish and wrote his memoirs in 1946. He died in Stockholm during 1947.

Thiel Gallery

Thiel's art collecting began in earnest in 1901, when he bought art for the then considerable sum of 19,000

crowns A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, partic ...

at the exhibition of the

Konstnärsförbundet Konstnärsförbundet ('the Artists' Association') was an association of Swedish artists founded in 1886 in opposition to the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. Background and members The association demanded reforms in the Academy's organizat ...

artist group. The following year he bought 19 paintings by

Bruno Liljefors Bruno Andreas Liljefors (; 14 May 1860 – 18 December 1939) was a Swedish artist. He is perhaps best known for his nature and animal motifs, especially with dramatic situations. He was the most important and probably most influential Swedish wil ...

. The flat at

Strandvägen Strandvägen is a waterfront on Östermalm in central Stockholm, Sweden. Completed just in time for the Stockholm World's Fair 1897, it quickly became known as one of the most prestigious addresses in town. Stretching 1 km (3.500 ft) ...

into which he had moved with second wife in 1897 started to be cramped, and in 1904, Thiel commissioned the architect

Ferdinand Boberg Gustaf Ferdinand Boberg (11 April 1860 – 7 May 1946) was a Swedish architect. Biography Boberg was born in Falun. He became one of the most productive and prominent architects of Stockholm around the turn of the 20th century. Among his most ...

to build him a large villa at Blockhusudden in the

park area of Stockholm. It was soon discovered that the art collection had outgrown the building and Boberg had to add another large room in 1905. Prince Eugen, the painter and collector, had recently had Boberg design a combined residence and art gallery at

Waldemarsudde Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde (Swedish for ''Cape Waldemar''), is a museum located on Djurgården in central Stockholm. The name is composed of Waldemar, an Old German noble male name, and udde, meaning cape. It is derived from a historical name o ...

in another part of Djurgården, which may have influenced Thiel. The Prince originally counteracted Thiel's plans and forced him to move his new house to a spot farther away from Waldemarsudde than he had first wanted, but when, in 1906, Eugen gave Thiel a painting of his, ''Nattmolnet'', it was a sign that he had accepted his position in the art life of Sweden.Linde, p. 47

References

Other sources

* Linde, Ulf, ''Thielska Galleriet''. Stockholm, 1979. catalogue of the collections Contains the biographical introduction by the editor, "Ernest Thiels galleri", pp. 7–18, and autobiographical notes by Thiel, "Några smärre erinringar" ("A few small recollections"), pp. 19–24. *Forssberg, Lars Ragnar (2015) ''Ernest Thiel : pengar & passion'' (Stockholm: Leopard)

External links

Thiel Gallery website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thiel, Ernest 1859 births 1947 deaths People from Norrköping Swedish bankers Swedish people of German-Jewish descent Swedish Jews Swedish art collectors Swedish translators Jewish art collectors Translators from German Translators to Swedish