Adolph Vogelweith (or Georges Adolphe)

Adolphe Vogelweith was an artist and collector based in Paris and active within the artist community of Montmartre at the turn of the twentieth century.

Little is known about the life and career of Vogelweith. In 1922 he lent art from his collection to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s Galerie Simon exhibition, Les Inconnus (The Unknown). Other collectors whose works were on view in the exhibition were associated with the Parisian Cubist circles, among them the artists Adolphe Basler, Jacques Dufresne, Fernand Léger, André Lohté, André Malraux, Louis Marcoussis, André Masson, Picasso, Maurice Raynal, Maurice de Vlaminck, as well as Kahnweiler himself.

Research suggests that Vogelweith may have acquired works at several art auctions at the Hôtel Drouot between 1921 and 1923. The French government had confiscated the works from German nationals, including Kahnweiler, Richard Goetz, and Wilhelm Uhde, at the start of World War I. An annotated copy of the first sale of Kahnweiler’s property on June 13–14, 1921, preserved in the collection of the Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, lists the name “Vogelweit” in connection to lots 77, 94, and 102: Picasso, The Scallop Shell: “Notre Avenir est dans l’Air” (1912; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Promised Gift from the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection), Kees van Dongen, Nu couché (Reclining Nude), and Vlaminck, La Flute, respectively. The annotated auction catalogue for Goetz’s sale on February 23–24, 1922, preserved in the collection of the Frick Library, New York, lists the name “Vogelweitz” in connection with lot 10, André Derain’s painting of 1911, Fleurs (Flowers). Hôtel Drouot also hosted the posthumous sale of Vogelweith’s collection in December 1932. It included works by Max Jacob, Moïse Kisling, Marie Laurencin, Henri Le Fauconnier, Lhote, Jacques Lipchitz, Marcoussis, Jean Metzinger, Picasso, van Dogen, Vlaminck, and several examples of African art.