England – What a British auction house claims are a set of paintings and sketches by a young Adolf Hitler sold at auction Thursday for 97,672 pounds ($143,358).
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Among the 15 pictures is a portrait of solitary figure dressed in brown peering into wine-colored waters. The date is 1910, the signature reads “A. Hitler” and scribbled just over the mysterious figure are the letters: “A.H.”
So is this a portrait of the Fuehrer as a young man?
“I don’t think they’re fakes,” said Richard Westwood-Brookes, historical documents expert at auction house Mullocks that carried out the sale. He said he did not believe anyone would have the nerve to fake the pictures, given the global publicity they have received.
The portrait itself sold for about 10,000 pounds ($14,600). The buyer John Ratledge, 46, said he planned to hang it at home or in his office.
Westwood-Brookes said the paintings were sold to the current vendor, who is not identified, by a soldier serving with Britain’s Royal Manchester Regiment in 1945, when it was stationed in the German city of Essen.
Best known as the genocidal dictator who butchered millions in his quest to unite Europe under German rule, Hitler also had a largely unsuccessful career as an artist in his early years. He is believed to have painted hundreds of pieces, although most art critics have been unmoved.
Westwood-Brookes acknowledged that the pieces were “hardly Picasso,” but – concerns over authenticity aside – Hitler’s works had a track record of attracting high bids. In 2006 watercolors and sketches attributed to the Nazi leader raised more than 100,000 pounds at an auction in the small town of Lostwithiel in southwestern England. Another batch of purported Hitler paintings is due to come up for auction in the German city of Nuremberg later this month.
Even if it were proven genuine beyond a doubt, the Hitler watercolor would not be the first self-portrait of the Nazi dictator discovered.
In 1987 the late historian Werner Maser said he had unearthed an oil portrait of Hitler executed in 1925. Maser, who wrote several Hitler biographies, told the AP at the time that the painting showed Hitler in traditional Bavarian dress with short trousers and long white socks.
They should hang it up in there bathroom.
They don’t think anyone would have the nerve to fake the pics,they obviously don’t know the story with the fake diaries
Was he thinking about jumping? Looks as if he wanted to jump into a stream full of blood, something that eventually did. He killed millions enough to fill a lake and in the end committed suicide. What do you think?
If I had the money for one of these, I absolutely would’ve used it. Then I would’ve glued it to a Welcome mat and stuck it outside my front door, so that I could walk all over it every time I walk in or out.
Today it is very hard to fake art. They analyze the pigments and dyes used and can determine their age. They can look at the canvas and figure out by the stitching where it was made. They can piece together the facts VERY well. In recent years, many paintings have proven to be fraudulent in this way.
That being said, i would have it laminated and molded to line the bottom of my toilet (forgive me if that is crude). It seems that might be the only way in which I would want to see it.
how do u go from painting to killing over 6million people ?
How very foreboding – it looks like a river of blood.
Notice also how he is sitting on a bridge to nowhere. (The bridge does not connect to any road, but just ends abruptly.)
i actually enjoy this painting. its very revealing about what was on his mind and what he thought about himself at the time.
I like the bridge picture, perhaps because we built our own footbridge, which is similarly simple. I don’t confuse the evil of Adolf Hitler as an adult with the art he did as a much younger person. The art itself is primitive and relatively unlearned, and in that way may have some tenuous connection with his vicious adult behavior.