Masterpieces from the Rau Collection
Industrialist turned
bush doctor
The only child of a wealthy German industrialist, Gustav Rau was born
on January 21, 1922 in Stuttgart. In his twenties, he joined the family
business and eventually earned a doctorate in economics. At the age
of forty, however, he decided to abandon his role in the family business
to devote himself to humanitarian activities in Third World countries.
He returned to school to become a doctor, graduating with a medical
degree from Munich University. In 1971, he sold the factories he inherited
from his father and uncle to set up the Fondation Médicale du
Docteur Rau, whose purpose was to diminish misery and disease in the
Third World through preventative practices and the distribution of medication
and food.
Dr. Rau’s specialty was pediatrics, and he
decided the greatest need for his abilities existed in Africa. He worked
initially in Nigeria, then in Zaire, and in 1977, he built a hospital
in a remote village near Zaire’s border with Rwanda. During his
two decades in Africa, he lived a Spartan life but allowed himself one
indulgence—purchasing art. He made trips to Europe several times
a year to build his collection. With the rolled-up cuffs of his pants
revealing his hiking boots, Rau remained ever the bush doctor, even
when bidding at international art auctions.
A stroll through paintings
from six centuries
Dr. Rau selected each work in his collection personally without professional
advice, and unlike most private collectors, he did not focus on a single
area of art or attempt an academic survey of period or theme. Each individual
work triggered his personal esthetic response, and each acquisition
was bought not for investment, but for the pure pleasure of looking
at it.
It is hardly surprising that a preponderant subject
of the paintings in the collection of a great humanitarian is the human
face. One feels the humanity in the characters in his collection: the
lady with pink by Renoir, the young woman by Greuze, the elderly cook
by Gerard Dou, St. Jerome by Ribera, the Algerian woman by Corot and
the child Rebecca Watson by Reynolds. But the Rau collection also stands
out for its historical breadth and offers a remarkable stroll through
six centuries of European painting as seen through one man’s appreciative
eye.
In 1999 Dr. Rau signed a new will giving his art
collection to UNICEF of Germany with the stipulation that it eventually
be sold to raise funds for Third World philanthropy.
At its initial presentation at the Musée du
Luxembourg, the exhibition of the collection drew record attendance
and was declared by the French press to be the best art exhibition of
2001. Making its national premiere at the Portland Art Museum, Masterpieces
from the Rau Collection is truly a rare opportunity to view one
of the world’s largest and most visually appealing collections
of European painting.
