Head of an Old Man, 1751 – 1760

About the Acquisition

Councillor of Commerce Julius Lemmé of Frankfurt, who died in Odessa in 1905, left this study to the Städel Museum in his will. In 1924, his eighty-two-year-old widow, Wilhelmine Lemmé – by then destitute – approached the museum administration with the plea that it should pay her a pension in view of the one-time gift. Advising her that it was under no legal obligation, the administration approved a monthly payment of fifty Reichsmarks, raised only two years later to 100 Reichsmarks. The payments continued until Wilhelmine Lemmé’s death in 1933.