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LOT 3351
Signed 1909 Dated Adolf Hitler Watercolor of the North Austrian Landscape, with Peter Jahn Certificate - Rendered in watercolor
on white boardstock with matting (total size 13” wide by 9 1/4” tall, visible area 7 3/4” wide by 5 1/2” tall), the painting depicts a man driving a one-horse carriage through a shallow stream, with trees and assorted buildings in
the background. Signed in the lower left hand
corner is “Adolf Hitler/1909”. Perhaps the most
infamous starving artist in European history, as
a lad Hitler had aspirations towards fine art and
took his shot twice on entering the Vienna Academy
of Fine Arts. Twice, he was shot down, and the second time they told him straight out that he’d be better off
as an architect; the contrast between the crisp, well- rendered buildings in the background and the brown blob steering the wagon makes it pretty clear they were trying to steer him right. Unwilling to go back to school to get the needed credentials to apply for architecture, he tried to slog it out as a street artist. While he often flogged off individual paintings as payment for goods or services, he also made connections with men like Samuel Morgenstern, who could act as intermediaries or up-front buyers for his works. Abandoning his artistic endeavors after World War I, Hitler went into politics instead. Later, a group of experts (including Peter Jahn) would be recruited to find, assess and recover Hitler’s works; the ones Hitler personally found to be a good
wanting were destroyed. Per the included certificate, Jahn describes the painting as being from the Fischlham, an area of Upper Austria notable as being where Hitler first went to school, and notes that it was one of a small group found in the personal inventory of Morgenstern and procured around 1937. The letter does not document the chain of possession after Morgenstern and Jahn. The aforementioned certificate bears notary seals from Vienna and includes a black and white image of this art on the back, stamped at the corners with the notary seal and reinforced with tape.
CONDITION: Fine. The painting shows some minor brown spots, mostly reserved to the sky and the negative spaces at the edges of the scene. The matting also shows stains, with a section of paper trim material absent from the top edge and the trim on the bottom edge partially undone and secured with tape.
Estimate: 7,500 - 13,000
196 reflection on his work became VIP gifts, the ones found