Otto Greiner (Leipzig 1869 - 1916 Munich)

Gäa [Gaia/Gaea - Mother Earth],

a highly finished preparatory drawing for the Greiner's chef d'oeuvre, the etching Gäa [Gaia/Gaea - Mother Earth], Vogel catalogue raisonné of Greiner's graphic work Nr. 93-main plate

1909

pen and black ink on Japan paper

39,4 x 30,7 cm (image); 46,4 x 37 cm (sheet)

signed, inscribed, and dated lower right below the framing line: "O. Greiner Rom [Rome] 1909"

The Daulton Collection

Provenance:

Collection Michael Berolzheimer (Fürth,Germany 1866-1942 Mt. Vernon, New York), circa 1917 (when  Berolzheimer lived in Untergrainau, Upper Bavaria).  Berolzheimer was a German entrepreneur and lawyer; he left Germany in 1938.  In his 1917 catalogue raisonné of Otto Greiner's graphic work, Julius Vogel states that our drawing was at that time owned by Berolzheimer.  See: Julius Vogel, Otto Greiners Graphische Arbeiten in Lithographie, Stich und Radierung (Dresden: Ernst Arnold, 1917), at pg. 99.

Collection Heinrich Stinnes (Mülheim an der Ruhr 1867-1932 Cologne), acquired before 1933.  Born into a wealthy family, Stinnes was the greatest German graphics connoisseur and collector of his day (amassing about 200,000 prints!); his violet collector's stamp (Lugt 1376a) appears in the lower left margin of our drawing.  After his death in November 1932, his collection was dispersed in a series of six auctions in Germany and Switzerland between 1932 and 1938.