Carl Storch and Cornelius Gurlitt

Wendl, from Germany, sells on 4 March 2017 a "Carl Storch" water colour of a firl, estimated at 90 Euro.

It isn't great art, but the name Carl Storch brought back some memories from my youth.

There is a Hungarian book illustrator Carl Storch (1868-1955). There is also the painter Karl Storch (1864-1954, also known as Karl Storch the Elder). Apparently both used Carl and Karl, so distinguishing the two is very hard (some even claim they may be the same person). Karl was mainly a painter though, and worked in Prussia, Königsberg, basically the North of Germany and thereabouts. Carl was Hungarian (from Budapest) and worked in Austria and München, so the South of Germany and thereabouts. This work is supposedly by Carl.

Carl Storch was an illustrator in the style of the great Wilhelm Busch, and worked like him for the Fliegende Blätter and many other humoristic magazines. For some religious organisations he created Pukchen and Mukchen (or Puk and Muk in Dutch), the adventures of two small creatures (gnomes probably) living with lots of family at "Klaas Vaak", the Sandman. They have lots of adventures all around the world (both the real world and a fairy-tale world), offering hours of mindless funny escapism for small children. The books were written mainly between 1926 and 1940, and looking back at them they offer the typical white colonial image of the world one might expect (though nothing resembling Nazi ideals, the books can be compared more accurately with something like Tintin in Africa); but the artwork is exquisite, and explains why these books have remained popular with many collectors while most other works of the period have been long forgotten.

I've never seen an original illustration by him on the market, and a good Puk and Muk one would fetch good money. The painting here is nothing like these, but I can imagine some hardcore collectors wanting it anyway just to have something tangible by him.
Doing some basic research on Carl Storch, I learned that part of his artwork is now in the Sazlburg Museum, and that the city also has a Carl Storch street. Which gives us another connection to the art world, as the probably most famous inhabitant of that street was...

Cornelius Gurlitt, the infamous "owner" of a massive hoard of Nazi looted art, discovered in 2013. The vast majority (some 1,400 items) were found in Munich, but some 250 works were stored in his house in Salzburg. While it was the smaller set of paintings, it was at the same time the more important one, with oil paintings and water colours by Picasso, Courbet, Corot, Manet, Renoir, Nolde and Monet.

Looted Art shows some of these works, including the Monet and Courbet from Salzburg.

So, from a not really remarkable 1950s watercolour to interbellum children's books to a Nazi art collection and a Monet, it may be unusual for this blog but live is boring when one gets too predictable...