Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1897 Hanover, Germany

Died: 1963 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1936

Other name/s: Franz Zatzenstein, Franz Zatzenstein-Matthiesen , Franz Catzenstein-Matthiesen , Francis M. Matthiesen, Francis M. Zatzenstein, Franz Manes Matthiesen, Franz Manes Zatzenstein-Matthiesen, Francis Catzenstein Matthiesen

Biography

Art dealer and gallerist, Franz Catzenstein was born into a Jewish family, the son of Aenny (Anna, née Gottschalk) and Leo Catzenstein, the city’s medical officer, in Hanover, German Empire, on 24 July 1897. Later, he was known under several different names, including Francis Matthiesen (common in English references). He had one sister, Ellen Catzenstein-Bernkopf, who was a sculptor. After studying in Munich - where he joined communist opposition to fascism and participated in street actions - Matthiesen returned to Hanover and, during the period of hyperinflation, acquired and resold a substantial portion of the Electors’ collection. He married Maria (Mara) Matthiesen around this time. Soon after the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, Matthiesen's international connections gained him the role of managing the sales of masterpieces from the Hermitage Museum, between the Soviet Government and the Ottoman Empire-born, Armenian oil magnate and English-French-Portuguese emigré, Calouste Gulbenkian, and, later, the American billionaire, Andrew W. Mellon, with the assistance of New York art dealers, M. Knoedler & Co and London’s P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Reportedly, Matthiesen also enjoyed a close friendship with the German poet Gottfried Benn – an early sympathizer of Nazism who later rejected it – travelling together on European road trips to France and Spain during the 1920s.

There is some conflicting information about who started the Galerie Matthiesen: according to the Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon entry on Leo Catzenstein, Franz began as an employee (Schulze, 2020, p. 84), while many English language sources claim that Matthiesen himself started the gallery (National Gallery of Art). Ben Uri, through direct communication with Patrick Matthiesen (Matthiesen’s son), confirms that, using capital generated from the Electors sale (which was financed through a loan from his uncle, who ran a department store in Hanover) Matthiesen founded the Matthiesen Gallery in Berlin in the early 1920s. As Thomas Krakauer notes (1995, p. 2), the gallery was named after his first wife, Maria , who died around 1936. By 1923, Franz Matthiesen was appointed as the gallery’s director and became its owner. The gallery became known for its focus on French Impressionism, with exhibitions dedicated to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1924), Honoré Daumier (1926), and Édouard Manet (1928). His father, Leo Catzenstein, was opposed to his involvement in the art trade and refused to finance his early ventures.

After a visit from the Gestapo in 1934 or 1935, Matthiesen left Berlin, briefly establishing a business in Zurich before moving to London, where he was resident by 1936. Reportedly, in England he began calling himself Francis Matthiesen. In 1933, his sister had an exhibition in Hanover, poorly received under the new regime. Nevertheless, Matthiesen remained the managing director of his Berlin gallery until 1935, with shares owned by the Zurich art dealer Gottfried Tanner and P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Matthiesen established a new Matthiesen Gallery at 142 New Bond Street, London W1, which operated until 1963. Soon after opening the new space he presented a solo show for refugee sculptor, Georg Ehrlich and in 1938 he mounted an exhibition in his new premises titled Venetian Art and the Refugees, in aid of the Baldwin Refugee Fund and exploring the role of Venetian old masters and foreignness. By 1939, Matthiesen’s mother, sister, and newborn niece, Yael, fled to Mandatory Palestine. Two of Matthiesen’s ex-employees, Heinz Mansfeld and Margarethe Noelle, then took over the Berlin gallery. In 1939, the business, given its Jewish ownership, was liquidated and Aryanized, with a number of works sold or intended for the so-called Führer Museum. After acquiring assets from the Matthiesen Gallery, Mansfeld and Noelle continued the business under the same name. Noelle eventually took sole ownership in 1948 and ran it until 1984. In 1947, Matthiesen became a naturalised British citizen with the name Franz Manes Zatzenstein-Matthiesen. In 1950, some of the artworks that had been confiscated by the Nazis and transferred to the Netherlands were returned to him.

In 1978, Matthiesen’s son Patrick established a new Matthiesen Gallery in London, building on his father’s legacy. This gallery continues to focus on international dealing in Italian, French, and Spanish art from the 14th to the 19th centuries. In 2021, Patrick and the heirs of the original gallery’s shareholders received a painting by Marc Chagall that had been owned by his father but sold by the Dresdner Bank (who received it as collateral in 1934) to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was quickly bought by a European collector. in July 2018 Patrick Matthiesen presented a case history of the Matthiesen Gallery at the inaugural conference hosted by The International Art Market Studies Association (TIAMSA) held at the at the Courtauld Institute at Somerset House, London.

Francis Matthiesen had three children. With his first wife he had a daughter, Maren Beate Antonia (born in Munich in 1921). With his second wife, Fredericke Katherina Früh, he had a daughter, Suzanne. His son Patrick was born in 1943 to his third and final wife, the Russian-born Olga Petrovna Tarrash Bode. Francis Matthiesen died in London, England on 10 May 1963, after which a sale from his estate took place at Sotheby's in London. In the UK public domain, works from the Matthiesen collection are held by the British Museum. In summer 2024 Francis Matthiesen featured in Ben Uri's exhibition, Cosmopolis: The Impact of Refugee Art Dealers in London.

Related books

Lynn Rother, Kunst durch Kredit. Die Berliner Museen und ihre Erwerbungen von der Dresdner Bank 1935 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017)
Evelyn Karet, The Antonio II Badile Album of Drawings: The Origins of Collecting Drawings in Early Modern Northern Italy (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014)
Fiedler, Susanne and Torsten Knuth, 'Vexierbilder einer Biographie: Dr. Heinz Mansfeld (1899-1959)' Mecklenburgische Jahrbücher, Vol. 126, 2011, pp. 298-299
Nina Singer, 'Galerie Matthiesen', in Christine Fischer-Defoy et al., Gute Geschäfte. Kunsthandel in Berlin 1933-1945, exh. cat. (Berlin: Aktives Museum Faschismus/Widerstand in Berlin, 2011), pp. 73-80
Peter Schulze, 'Catzenstein, Leo', Dirk Böttcher, Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, and Hugo Thielen, eds., Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon (Hanover: Schlütersche, 2002), p. 84
Thomas Krakauer, Family Portrait: History and Genealogy of the Gottschalk, Molling, and Benjamin Families from Hannover, Germany (Durham: T. Krakauer, Durham, 1995)

Public collections

Related organisations

The Matthiesen Gallery (founder and owner )

Selected exhibitions

Cosmopolis: The Impact of Refugee Art Dealers in London, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2024)
Gute Geschäfte – Kunsthandel in Berlin 1933-1945 (featuring Francis Matthiesen), Active Museum in the Centrum Judaicum/Berlin State Archive, Berlin (2011)
Constantin Guys (solo exhibition), Matthiesen Gallery, London (1948)
Sir Francis Rose (solo exhibition), Matthiesen Gallery, London (1940)
Lady Kinross (solo exhibition), Matthiesen Gallery, London (1940)
Venetian Art and Refugees (group show), Matthiesen Gallery, London (1938)
George Ehrlich (solo exhibition), Matthiesen Gallery, London (1939)
Petley Jones (solo exhibition), Matthiesen Gallery, London (1939)
Nineteenth century French drawings (group show), Matthiesen Gallery, London (1938)
Alfred Jannioux (solo exhibition), Matthiesen Gallery, London (1938)
Michael Rothenstein (solo exhibition), Matthiesen Gallery, London (1938)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Francis Matthiesen]