Gustav Rau (21 January 1922 – 3 January 2002) was a German medical doctor, philanthropist and art collector. Rau who was born and died in Stuttgart.

Life

Rau was born in Stuttgart in 1922 and was drafted into the Nazi Wehrmacht at 19. His father left him a large inheritance. Later, after selling the family business and completing his medical studies, he relocated to Africa. He worked in Nigeria and the former Zaire, where he founded a hospital.

Foundations

The Dr. Rau’sche Kunststiftung

The Dr. Rau’sche Medizinalstiftung

Rau Foundation for the Third World

Crelona Stiftung

Art collector

According to the New York Times, he amassed one of the world's major private art collections, "second only in size to the Thyssen-Bronemisza collection in Madrid, his foundation said." In 1958 Rau bought his first old master, ''The Cook'' by

Gerard Dou Gerrit Dou (7 April 1613 – 9 February 1675), also known as Gerard Douw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders. He specialised in genre scenes and is noted for his ' ...

. He attended auctions in London, Paris and New York. By 1997 he had collected 700 paintings, sculptures and craft works. The collection contains outstanding paintings from the 14th century to modernism, including El Greco's ''Saint Dominic at Prayer'', Auguste Renoir's ''Lady with a Rose'', Camille Pissarro's ''Portrait of Jeanne'' and

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically d ...

's ''La mer à l’estaque'', a still-life flower painting by Odilon Redon,

Canaletto Giovanni Antonio Canal (18 October 1697 – 19 April 1768), commonly known as Canaletto (), was an Italian painter from the Republic of Venice, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school. Painter of city views or ...

's ''St Mark's Square'', works by

Cranach Cranach is a German-language surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Augustin Cranach (1554–1595), German painter *Hans Cranach (c. 1513–1537), German painter *Lucas Cranach the Elder (c. 1472–1553), German artist *Lucas Cranach th ...

, ''The Beheading of Goliath by David'' (1606–07), an early Guido Reni, paintings by

Giandomenico Tiepolo Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (August 30, 1727March 3, 1804) was an Italian painter and printmaker in etching. He was the son of artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and elder brother of Lorenzo Baldissera Tiepolo. Life history Domenico was born in ...

, François Boucher,

Thomas Gainsborough Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of ...

, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot,

Gustave Courbet Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and ...

, Edvard Munch,

Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Bo ...

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. Durin ...

, Edgar Degas,

Alfred Sisley Alfred Sisley (; ; 30 October 1839 – 29 January 1899) was an Impressionist landscape painter who was born and spent most of his life in France, but retained British citizenship. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedicatio ...

, Camille Pissarro,

Max Liebermann Max Liebermann (20 July 1847 – 8 February 1935) was a German painter and printmaker, and one of the leading proponents of Impressionism in Germany and continental Europe. In addition to his activity as an artist, he also assembled an important ...

, early Italian panel paintings and other Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque paintings. The collection grew in an underground vault at Zürich Airport out of public view but under the watchful eye of the Swiss authorities. He made loans from the collection to international exhibitions, mostly credited as "from a Swiss private collection". However, the quality and scope of the collection remained mysterious until a major exhibition in Paris in 2001. The collection is valued between 500 and 750 million Euros (Approximately $555 and $832 million in US Dollars). Eight works from the collection were auctioned at Sotheby's in London in 2008 for a total of £6.2 million - a triptych by

Taddeo di Bartolo Taddeo di Bartolo (c. 1363 – 26 August 1422), also known as Taddeo Bartoli, was an Italian painter of the Sienese School during the early Renaissance. He is among the artists profiled in Vasari's biographies of artists or ''Vite''. Vas ...

valued at £300,000 sold for £1.9 million and one of Tintoretto's self-portraits for the then record price of £1.6 million. The Foundation raised 43 million Euros for

Unicef UNICEF (), originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in full, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to ...

by selling some works from the collection in 2013. Early in 2014 ''The Self-Assured Algerian'' by

Jean-Baptiste Corot Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot ( , , ; July 16, 1796 – February 22, 1875), or simply Camille Corot, is a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast ...

and ''View of the Hermitage'' by Pissarro were sold for a total of 16 million Euros, again to raise money for UNICEF, though the sale was criticised since these two works were from the core collection, which was supposed to be kept together until 2026.

Nazi-looted art

In 2013 controversy arose when it was discovered that the art donated to Unicef included a painting by Paul Cézanne that had been looted by the Nazis from its former Jewish owners during the German occupation of France in World War II. In 2000 French courts ordered the seizure of Cézanne's “The sea at l’Estaque” which was part of the “From Fra Angelico to Bonnard: masterpieces from the Rau Collection” exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg because of a claim that it had been looted by Nazis from the gallery owner Josse Bernheim-Jeune

Exhibition in the Arp Museum Rolandseck

Catalogue of the collection

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rau, Gustav 1922 births 2002 deaths People from Stuttgart German art collectors Patrons of the visual arts 20th-century art collectors