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Louis Friedrich Sachse and the making of Berlin as a capital of art Review of: Der Pionier. Wie Louis Sachse in Berlin den Kunstmarkt erfand. Anna Ahrens. Cologne/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2017, 780 pp., 288 b. & w. illus., € 100.00 pbk, ISBN 978-3-412-50594-3
The nineteenth century in Germany was a key era for the development of the modern infrastructure for the study of art and its history. Museums were built, magazines were published, art historical chairs were founded and art became available to an ever-bigger part of society. Thanks to new developments the reproduction of images became easier, more accurate and more accessible, making them available for a wider public. Yet, despite the dynamics of the era and the increased scholarship of the last decades on the nineteenth century, there is still much that is not known. This holds true especially if one ventures beyond the focus on academic art history.1 One important blind spot, author Anna Ahrens tells us, is the art market. This is where Louis Friedrich Sachse comes in: entrepreneur, patron of the arts, salon holder, art dealer and many things beside.
An entrepreneur rather than a scholar, Louis Sachse was at the forefront of the development of the Berlin art market, constantly pushing the boundaries of the art scene. His broad interests led him from lithography to daguerreotype and photography, from collecting drawings and watercolours to starting his own salon for contemporary art. It is therefore safe to say that Sachse was a dynamic character, and one that fully warrants the scholarly attention that he receives in Der Pionier. The book offers a multifaceted study of the early international artistic networks in Berlin and Paris, as seen through the eyes of what could be called one of its main protagonists. Ahrens draws together the many lines that connected Sachse with so many individuals and institutions in the Prussian and Parisian art world. Through this tracing of interconnections, Der Pionier offers valuable insights in the connection between artistic reproductions, contemporary art, and the development of the art scene in general as well as complex Berlin society in the nineteenth century. Based on a great number of letters, the author presents Sachse initially as an eager young man, bright and hard working, who...