A crisis of identity

From Professor Gabriel P. Weisberg

'To be Siegfried or not to be Siegfried' or is it 'To be Samuel or not to be Samuel'? That is the question that has plagued the history of art nouveau for decades. It has also reappeared as an issue in the review by Julian Treuherz on the 'L'Art Nouveau, The Bing Empire' exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum, in which Mr Treuherz reactivated the old issue of Samuel rather than the true name of Siegfried ('The Entrepreneur of the New', APOLLO, February 2005, pp. 86-87). It has also prompted some thoughts about this situation, as enumerated below.

How can a mistake about the name of an individual, who is no longer unknown, be perpetuated for so long? How is it that after two exhibitions and their accompanying books (1986 and 2004) the individual who is the subject of the studies, the major promoter of art nouveau internationally, still be given the wrong name? The answer is certainly not stupidity, but perhaps only a moment of inattention or a mental cramp that can be explained by the fact that at his death Siegfried Bing was called Samuel in an obituary published in the Revue Universelle (15 October 1905) and, later in 1909, in an article for the Revue Bleue by Camille Mauclair--a universally respected art critic of nineteenth and early twentieth-century art.

Perhaps even more noteworthy, later scholars of art nouveau, such as Robert Koch, corrected S. Tschudi Madsen, who rightfully called Bing Siegfried, by renaming him Samuel! The present author of the first book on Bing (1986), and the author and organiser, with others, of the present Bing exhibition, while he had corrected himself by 1986, also called Siegfried Samuel in his first series of articles on Bing, published in The Connoisseur in 1970. The mistake has also been repeated in many other books or catalogues up to now. We should all now make our mea culpa, rightfully calling Bing Siegfried, which is his true name, the name he was given by his parents at his birth in 1838, the name found on his passport, the name on his marriage license, the name found on his death certificate and, finally, the name that is carved on his tombstone in Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

But what still remains are a series of confusing situations which have had a tendency to perpetuate the myth about Siegfried Bing's first name. It is perhaps Bing's own fault, since he always signed letters, business documents or articles 'S. Bing'. This raises the question as to why he used the initial 'S' and not his full name? One answer has been that since he lived in France at a time when having such a German-sounding name might have made his life more difficult, especially since he was German until he became a French citizen in 1876, he chose to hide Siegfried as his real name. The confusion might also result from the fact that he had a brother called Samuel Otto. Born in 1850, Samuel Otto, as Siegfried did, died in 1905. And certainly there could have been confusion in the press at the time of the death about these brothers. Although Samuel Otto Bing was apparently not engaged in the art trade, others could have mistaken him for Siegfried, one reason for the confusion about Bing's first name in 1905.

Now, with the benefit of considerable primary research, with the publication of scholarly publications and with an awareness of many official documents located, the name Siegfried Bing is the way in which this visionary promoter of art nouveau must be known. To continue to use the name Samuel is to corrupt the truth and to demonstrate inattentiveness to what has been happening in art nouveau studies for the past twenty-five years. So, Siegfried it is, for ever after, and Samuel must remain a name of mythmakers. To neglect this point is to devalue the proof found in documents and archival research.

Gabriel P. Weisberg, Department of Art History, University of Minnesota

From the Head Curator, the National Trust

Adam Bowett's interesting article in your January issue, 'George I's coronation throne' rightly suggests that the figures of bound captives supporting the throne (below left) are modelled on Italian prototypes. Perhaps the most likely would have been Pietro Tacca's captive mori (actually Turkish slaves) at the base of the monument to Grand Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany in Piazza della Darsena in Livorno (installed 1623 24). Not only were these celebrated statues (below right) much reproduced in prints and in the form of small reductions, but Livorno (or Leghorn) was the prinicipal point of entry to, and departure from, the Grand Ducal dominions and thus well known to all visiting Englishmen.

Tim Knox, The National Trust, London SW1

A subeditorial error resulted in an incorrect location and picture credit for one of the works illustrated in Martin Bailey's article 'Van Gogh: The fakes debate' (APOLLO, January 2005). No. 36 in the list (p. 63) belongs to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and we give the correct entry below:

36. Path between garden wafts. 1890, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, JH2078/F1589a.

Charcoal and pencil on paper, unsigned, 32 x 40 cm. Photo: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

The drawing has been questioned, and in 1977 it was described by the museum as 'Van Gogh?'. The museum currently has an open view on its authenticity. Earliest provenance: Comtesse de Cumont, Avignon. References: Four centuries of French drawings, exh. cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1977, p. 256; Heenk, op. cit., p. 204.

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