National Gallery Adds Painting with Storied Past
Carl Moll, "At the Lunch Table," 1901
oil on canvas, 42.25" × 53.5" (photo by NGC, Ottawa)
The National Gallery of Canada is acquiring a painting by Austrian painter Carl Moll (1861-1945) that was believed lost for nearly a century.
At the Lunch Table, now on view in the European galleries, is the first painting by Moll to enter the national collection and the artist's first work in a public institution in Canada.
Painted in 1901, it was soon exhibited in Vienna, Munich, Budapest and Berlin. By the late 1930s, the painting was owned by Siegmund Isaias Zollschan of Vienna.
The Zollschans, a Jewish family, were persecuted by the Nazis and Siegmund died in the Holocaust. However, his son Arthur was able to flee and eventually making his way to North America.
At the Lunch Table was among several possessions that Siegmund had sent to a relative in Canada for safekeeping before the Second World War. It has been in the family's care ever since.
Moll, and his friend, Gustav Klimt, were founding members of the famed Vienna Secession, which represented the remarkable creativity of the Viennese avant-garde at the turn of the 20th century.
At the Lunch Table depicts Moll's family, including his stepdaughter, Alma Mahler. A calm and personal work, it's an important example of Moll’s renowned interior scenes, showing Viennese society at a time of radical change.
Source: National Gallery of Canada
