August Thyssen (1842-1926) was the founder of the Thyssen family's financial empire, which had its roots in the iron and steel industry. Although he was blessed with great artistic sensitivity, August Thyssen did not have time to devote to collecting art until his later life. Keen to build up a collection of sculptures, he turned to the most famous and important sculptor of his day, c. The outcome of this relationship between the German industrialist and the French sculptor was a magnificent series of seven marble sculptures. The outbreak of the First World War interrupted this first foray into art collecting in the family. August Thyssen died in the post-war years, at a time when the German economy was in serious difficulties. The sculptures remained in the possession of a branch of the Thyssen family in Germany until 1956, when they were put on sale and acquired by Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Four of them now form part of the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. The correspondence that survives between Rodin and August Thyssen, and in particular a letter dated 1911, goes to show that the son of the German industrialist, Heinrich - the third of seven children - was starting his own art collection. However very little is known about its early years. Heinrich Thyssen, who held a PhD from London University, married Baroness Margit Bornemisza de Kaszon, the daughter of a Hungarian nobleman, in 1905. Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, whose new companies were completely detached from the iron and steel industry, set up residence in Hungary, in Schloss Rohoncz Castle, owned by his wife's family, and established the collection there. In 1919, the Bela Kun revolution forced him to leave Hungary, and he moved his businesses to Amsterdam, the city where his son, Hans Heinrich, was born in 1921.
Despite the economic difficulties of the post-war, Heinrich Thyssen (1875-1947) continued to collect paintings throughout the 1920s, albeit very discreetly, and when his collection (known then as the Schloss Rohoncz Collection) was first exhibited in 1930, in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, it caused a real stir among art historians of the time. Its success encouraged the Baron to continue collecting and to buy sculptures, furniture, tapestries, jewellery and other works of art, as well.
In the period between the two world wars, many private collections were disbanded. With skill, intuition and the advice of top specialists, Heinrich Thyssen engaged in an intensive policy of acquisitions. Initially he focused on German primitives. Soon, his collection boasted key works from that school by artists such as Hans Balding Grien, Altdorfer, Durer, Cranach and Holbein. Following in the tradition of German collectors, the baron was also very fond of Dutch painting, and his collection grew with names of the rank of Robert Campin, Petrus Christus, Roger van der Weyden, Jan van Eyck, Memling and John of Flanders. However, his interest did not stop at the Northern Renaissance, and he also acquired Italian paintings, such as the Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of a Knight by Carpaccio, Portrait of Ferry Carondolet with his Secretaries by Sebastiano del Piombo and Saint Catherine of Alexandria by
Caravaggio. In time, other key names in art history were added to those illustrious artists: from England, painters such as Gainsborough and Reynolds; from France, Watteau, Fragonard and Chardin from France; and from Italy, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Canaletto and Guardi...
With the future of the collection in mind, he decided to move to Switzerland, the only European country at that time, the 1930s, that seemed to guarantee a peaceful location. In 1932 he bought a villa on the banks of Lake Lugano, known for centuries as Villa Favorita; a palace built in 1687 which belonged to Prince Leopold of Prussia. While continuing to buy works of art to add to his collection, Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza built a gallery in the garden of Villa Favorita to house the paintings in the best possible conditions for an art gallery and to put them on show to the public.
In 1936, the work on the Villa Favorita Gallery was completed and it opened. Unfortunately, the start of the Second World War interrupted the project and Heinrich Thyssen was forced to close it in 1939. It opened again in 1949, this time permanently and thanks to his son, Hans Heinrich, who took up the baton passed to him by his father, who died in 1947. After the death of the first Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, who by then had collected some 525 works of art, the collection was divided up among his four children.
At the age of just 26, Hans Heinrich decided to continue in his father's footsteps - the only member of the family to do so - and he also took over the running of the family business. His brother, who was involved in biological research, was not interested in the business or in the collection, while his two sisters forced the art collection compiled by their father and left as a legacy to his heirs, to be split up. Despite the difficult circumstances brought on by the war, and with the aid of financial compensation and a great deal of sacrifice, Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (1921-2002) managed to keep the bulk of the collection intact, but not all of it. That recovery process continued over time, and in 1988 he bought back Paradise by Brueghel from one of his sisters. This experience in his youth was to prove important when, thirty years later, he was forced to weigh up what to do with the collection once again.
