Paintings from the collection of Carl Thürling
Around 1930, Carl Hagen acquired twenty-one paintings by Dutch Masters from a defaulter. This individual’s name was Carl Thürling; he resided at the time in the Dutch city of Amsterdam.
The paintings were considered security assets for a loan. In 1938, the Hagen family had to sell the paintings. The art historian and art dealer Dr. Eduard Plietzsch, who was the former director of the Galerie van Diemen & Co. in Berlin, was commissioned to sell 13 paintings. The other paintings were sold via the bankier Siegfried Simonson, who was murdered later at the concentrations camp Theresienstadt.
After 1945, the Hagen family tried to trace the paintings without any success. Most of the paintings were sold by Eduard Plietzsch to art dealers. A painting by Salomon van Ruydael was sold by Julius Böhler in 1948 to Dr. H. Becker. An “Interior of a Church” by Houckgeest was sold to the Municipal Museum of Düsseldorf, from where it was stolen in 1946, its whereabouts remain unknown.
Some paintings resurfaced in the last 15 years. Among them are the “The Lemon Slice” by Jacob Ochtervelt and the “River landscape” by Jan van Goyen. The painting by Jacob Ochtervelt is now with the Bavarian State Paintings Collections in Munich. It was donated to that museum by the daughter of Fritz Thyssen.
The “River landscape” by Jan van Goyen was bought by the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in South Hadley, Mass., USA, in 2003.