dealer/antiquarian

Frederick Mont (A. F. Mondschein / Adolf Fritz Mondschein / Frederick Mondshcein)

New York (United States)

Description

Frederick Mont (also: Adolf Fritz Mondschein or Frederick Mondschein) (1894-1994) had, before World War II, an establishment dedicated to the art trade in Vienna: Galerie Sanct Lucas (founded in 1926), of which he was co-owner. Around 1938, with the rise of Nazism, he left Austria; he first went to the UK, where he had to change his name to Frederick Mont, before settling in the USA.

Together with Bertram M. Newhouse he worked at the head of the Newhouse Galleries in New York, and also collaborated with the American art dealer Victor Spark. In London he also participated in a business dedicated to the art trade together with Wilhelm Austerlitz (The Frick Collection. Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America).

In order to facilitate the export of certain works of art from Spain to the United States, during the 1950s Frederick Mont made some donations to the Museo del Prado, such as Ignacio Iriarte's Paisaje de Pastores or Anciana sentada, attributed to Antonio Puga. He supplied works by the great masters to various American museums and counted among his clients, for example, the American magnate Samuel H. Kress (1863-1955). Mont marketed in the U.S. Mont sold several works from Spain, such as the panels by Juan de Flandes from the church of San Lázaro in Palencia, which he acquired from the Palencia antiquarian Arcadio Torres, four of which are now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Adoration of the Magi, Annunciation, Baptism of Christ and Nativity) or a good part of the canvases by El Greco and his workshop that made up the apostolate of the parish church of Almadrones (Guadalajara), today dispersed in different collections, among them the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum (Merino de Cáceres and Martínez Ruiz, 2023, pp. 282-297).