Art collection Heylshof Museum

The art collection in Heylshof in Worms…

must be the most varied and content-rich private collection in Germany. As such, it has a general significance over and above pure artistic interest. It is a proud monument to the culture that the bourgeoisie of the German towns also brought about, away from the main centres…

The collection gained its definitive form in the last decade of the 19th Century. Most of the old German paintings and sculptures came from the Cologne family Stein. In Cologne, people understood the artistic value of these things as early as the Romance era. The basis of the collection of German tankards and glasses also originate from Cologne and were later added to through fortunate acquisitions. The collection of German stoneware is the most significant collection still in private hands…

Above all, the porcelain collection is one of the greatest of its kind and in the forefront stands the produce of the neighbouring Frankenthal manufacture. Nearly all the craftsmen who worked there are represented here through splendid examples of their characteristic work…

The unity of the same artistic way of thinking also determined the character of the art collection.
Although a splendid piece from a 15th Century Florentine artist has been added to the old German masters, which are mostly of the Cologne school, the rest of the collection (with a few exceptions) mainly consists of Dutch artwork from the 17th Century. Apart from paintings by Rubens, masters of landscapes, interiors, genre and still life are nearly all present.

From German artwork of the 19th Century…you find…classics of former times such as Rottmann, Schirmer, Schwind and Stinle; apart from the beautiful Venus Anadyomene from Böcklin, the main tone is given by the Düsseldorf and Munich schools. These are the artistic circles with which the family had personal contact. Whilst the Düsseldorf masters such as Knaus, Vautier and the two Achenbachs frequented the Steinschen house in Cologne, the acquaintance with the Munich circle of Lenbach and Kaulbach came about through the collaboration with Gedon and Gabriel Seidel.”