Alte Nationalgalerie: the Scharf Collection

The Scharf Collection, one of the most significant private art collections in Germany, is being showcased in a large-scale exhibition for the very first time. The collection primarily consists of French art from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as international contemporary artworks.

The exhibition in the Alte Nationalgalerie presents a selection of some Protected content , including prominent artworks by the likes of Auguste Renoir, Pierre Bonnard, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet, and takes visitors on a journey through the collection: from Goya and French Realism to the French Impressionists and Cubists to contemporary art. One special highlight is a selection of prints by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

The Scharf Collection is a direct continuation of what was once Otto Gerstenberg’s extensive private Berlin-based art collection, which encompassed the dawn of modernism with artworks by Goya to the pioneers of the French avant-garde with works by Gustave Courbet and Edgar Degas. Gerstenberg’s daughter Margarethe Scharf was able to preserve the majority of the collection despite considerable war losses suffered during the Second World War. His grandsons Walther and Dieter Scharf each went on to establish their own collections based on the artworks that had been bequeathed to them, with Dieter Scharf focussing on surrealism. His collection has been on permanent loan to the Nationalgalerie in the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg since Protected content .